US: Develop nukes, be rewarded!

The Age: North Korea may lose terror label

and News.com.au: US, india sign historic nuclear deal

Are both reporting from Washington (at least The Age names their Washington correspondent) that acquiring nuclear weapons will bring tangible rewards to your government. Now, perhaps in light of their attacks on or ambivalence to nuclear treaties (the NPT and CTBT) this is not surprising, but it certainly is worrying. Particularly if you are Iran.

There is no evidence that Iran is persuing a nuclear weapons program – despite the fact they’d be insane not to, when two nuclear powers routinely threaten them – and indeed plenty of evidence to the contrary. Yet Iran continues to be threatened with war. Meanwhile two countries who have acquired nukes through questionable means, with highly questionable governments (paricularly in the case of North Korea) are being rewards – seemingly for their possessing of nuclear deterrents. India continues to be one of the most unstable and bellicose nuclear powers -behind only Israel and Pakistan. North Korea, while they should be engaged, are certainly a far worse regime than Iran. Its just MAD…

Yet, despite Iran’s co-operation with the IAEA, having not started a war in 2000 years, and the current (abhorrent) crackpot regime being somewhat better than the previous (US-backed) Shah it is Iran who is targeted.
Next time you read about Iran’s nuclear program, remember – they don’t have nukes yet, otherwise they’d be rewarded.

 

CNN: McCain has better judgement?

McCain questions Obama’s ability to be commander in chief

Is McCain really in a position to question Obama’s judgement? The article quotes McCain as saying: “And in matters of national security, good judgment will be at a premium in the term of the next president”. Quite apart from the fact that good judgement has rarely been displayed by presidents, is McCain really in a position to say what good judgement is? Given that McCain’s claims of torture during his internment in Viet Nam have never been proven – indeed several POWs from the camp where he claims he was tortured – The Plantation – state that it never happened, they were never tortured there, and it was a release camp. Further more, despite his claims of mistreatment, he recieved medical care from Soviet and Viet Namese doctors – that’s right, unlike any other POW McCain received medical treatment from qualified doctors. None of these annoying irregularities has stopped McCain from playing the “war hero” role, and stating time and time again he was tortured, and has foreign policy experience, et cetera. Quite how spending 5 years feeding military information to the Viet Namese while a POW counts as valuable foreign policy experience, I’m not sure. But that hardly matters, as a Cuban psychologist who spoke to McCain came to the conculsion McCain was a “psychopath”, yet it is he who question’s Obama’s judgement?

More on McCain here