clock is still ticking on this round world. Gotta wait for his time zone to come up...

It came and passed twice. :)

There is only one argument here that people should be concerned about and that is Non-Proliferation. If everyone thinks Nukes are so bad then there is only one answer... stop allowing everyone and their brother to have them. First you have to stop the spread of Nukes then you can worry about the countries that have them now.

Well what do you know? There's something we agree on. I agree with you 100% on this one.

Can't disarmament and non-proliferation not be done simultaneously?

Nope, not at all. They are two separate and distinct things. Non-proliferation is to stop the spread of nukes. I back that. Not every country out there is responsible enough or have the need for them. Nuclear Disarmament is stripping a country's nuclear arsenal and I refuse to strip the US of our Nuclear Power so that down the road we can be held hostage by someone who didn't disarm as we were told they were... therefore I refuse to back any plan stripping any country who now has nukes of their nuclear arsenal. Over all these countries have shown they were pretty responsible with them. Why should every country disarm only to find Iran or some terrorist group armed themselves with nukes? There has to be a counter to that. The Pandora's Box of Nukes was opened over 60 years ago, we cannot put the evils that spilled out back and lock the box.. we can only stop more nations from getting the damn things. The debate over disarmament can continue but that in no way should be a part of Non-proliferation.

The United States is the only country to demonstrate irresponsibility with regards to Nucelar Weapons: Fat Man and Little Boy. Under the NPT (the same NPT the U.S. uses to rally the world against Iran), disarmament and non proliferation go hand in hand. The U.S. has violated the NPT on two counts: failing to disarm, and sharing nuclear arms with NATO nations (are you aware that Turkey shares U.S. nukes?). Iran has signed and is attempting to establish a nuclear power program, which the NPT justifies, and is asking for diplomacy to negotiate its advancement. And the only argument held against them is the infantile "we don't trust them". Russian missles were found to be in Hezbollah's possession, not Russian nukes. Iran will be monitored, by the same organization that monitored Iraq in the early 80's (were you aware that Iraq had a nuclear program until its facilities were attacked by Israel, justified by fear and no fact?). The IAEA has no evidence of a Nuclear Weapons facility in Iran. Iran is willing to cooperate so long as they are entitled to the sovereign right of providing Nuclear power to its people. Or would you rather they keep their mouths shut and develop nuclear technology in secret, like North Korea? I refuse to strip the US of our Nuclear Power so that down the road we can be held hostage by someone who didn't disarm as we were told they were... So allow fear to dictate? India, china, and Russia have an interesting policy regarding Nuclear weapons. The "no first-use" policy, meaning they will only react with nukes if they are attacked by nukes.

I absolutely love it when people have to go back 41 years to try to make that point of irresponsibility. lol John Mclaughlin of the McLaughlin Group had an answer for this that was the absolute best, his answer would be "WRONG!". First off the two bombs set off over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were at the beginning of the nuclear age, it was before NPT by approximately 23 years. (The NPT was signed by 59 countries on 1 July, 1968; The Bombs set off in Japan were on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945 respectively. Ergo NPT had not one thing to do with those cases. In addition the bombs were used, after painstaking debates and considerations, to shorten the war in the Pacific and save lives in the long run. We were at war and these bombs were bonifide weapons of war. There was absolutely no irresponsibility about the use of the bombs. Too many people not only love to perform Monday Morning quarterbacking by taking facts found out after the war and applying them to those making decisions before the war. Others like to promote their anti-nuke agenda unfairly in order to try to promote their stances. Then there who confuse a horrendous act with irresponsibilty. Zerosaurus, the US is a sovereign nation, our lord and master is not the UN. Get over it will you? lol No Nation is beholding to the UN World Government, they are a debating society and that is all they are... and they are not very good ones at that. The UN is not the final word and the US are not their "hitmen". So any arguments concerning the UN do not apply. However, as I said, NPT and Disarmament are two separate and distinct things... and I will keep them separate, thank you very much. So any complaints you have about the US not disarming are not valid arguments. LOL Yeah and the US has no First Strike policy in effect either. Our system is set up to where if incoming missiles are detected then we can send ours before they are destroyed. You cannot use WWII as a footprint of your agenda. Do you think the USSR or Nazi Germany would have hesitated to use the bombs first in order to turn the tide of war back then? Not on your life, chum. Either would have happily set off a nuke and why is that? The Nuke was new, it was destructive and it showed amazing power at the time. It was not until after those two bombs were set off that the full realization of the destructive power came to life.. it was an object learning lesson and it worked.

Very good NPT was enacted 20 some years after Fat Man and Little Boy. And if I made the accusation that the US has violated NPT with those two war criminals, than I would've ridiculed what I said. But that's not what I said. I said the US is the the only country to act irresponsible with nukes (no mention of NPT). The use of bombs in civilian areas isn't irresponsible? You shake your finger at Hezbollah for guiding rockets into northern Isreal, but killing hundred of thousands of citizens in two moves isn't? Hypocricy. the US is a sovereign nation So you recognize what sovereignty is? Why then does sovereignty not apply to other nations? The NPT is merely an agreement, one that can be backed out of with three months notice (North Korea). The United States can't keep its word on this agreement, Iran has. The U.S. uses it as an agenda to punish Iran, Iran realize the U.S. is in violation but what can it do about it, nothing. Few things the U.N. does ever applies to the U.S. (payments, kyoto) but when it applies to others, the U.S. is the first to point fingers and dish out penalties. It's a rapist preaching abstinence. Hypocricy. George W. Bush doesn't seem to believe we have a "No-first use" policy. See his statements made in March of this year.

I'll tell you how. First we dropped two small nukes on Japan way back in 1945. Some people out there refuse to accept that as anything but irresponsible. I'll also tell you something RBP may not know or think of. The Nuke Test Site in Nevada has been illegally accessed by a protester who was hoping to run out on the test site and stop an underground nuclear test. The SPs (Security Police) not only caught the guy but hauled him off site with out ever interrupting the countdown. I've heard people use that as an excuse for US Irresponsibility, but not many. However RBP fails to realize the US never acted irresponsible with nukes. Those Bombs were designed in the 40s for use. They were thought of as very powerful bombs. When Truman decided to use them then he believed that it could cost millions of lives to get Japan to surrender and put things back to normal in the pacific. A few thousand lives nowhere compared to millions and the cost of the war continuing too boot. It is said that when Truman saw the effects of those two bombs, He was horrified as everyone else was.

Millions? Where did you get that figure? The U.S. lost 400,000 soldiers in WWII most of them on the Nazi front. The island hopping technique had cornered Japan to the main island of Honshu, and savage firebombing techniques in Tokyo had extinguished 100,000 civilians. The nukes were not necessary, especially after seeing the damage Trinity created.

The use of bombs in civilian areas was initially the acts of the Japanese. The started bombing Chinese cities in 1937 and continued right up to the end of the war when those two little guys finally stopped them in their tracks (much to the relief of millions living under japanese imperialism). Where is the irresponsibility? So, where are you from. If you were from China, Korea, SE Asia, perhaps your views would be different, but instead you just parrot some radical socialist tripe about disarmament (which was generally used to weaken the West for the amusement of Papa Joe and Mao).

I concur. It's all fine and good for us to sit here and examine history with a microscope and say "They were wrong." We often have more facts to go on than they did, at the very least we have the luxury of knowing the outcome. The Japanese were not very nice people. They brutalized the Chinese and Koreans and acted superior to them. The weren't very considerate of us either. The war with Japan wasn't a deal of the Big evil US picking on little innocent Japan, it was an armed conflict between two warring nations or more.

strike me as odd. ===================================== You sure are!

lol Funny, I was thinking the same thing. :)

Zero, I respect alot of the arguments that you make, but I am in complete disagreement with you on this one. Yes, one fear is that Iran would pass these weapons onto state supported organzations such as Hezbollah. But it's not all about protecting Israel. It's also about protecting the entire Middle East (the world's largest source of oil production) and the rest of the world. It's about preventing nuclear holocaust. You seem to be under the assumption that all nations would use nuclear weapons responsibly for fear of retribution. But history hasn't born out that scenario. There have been plenty of occasions where nations haven't used their power responsibly. And I'd like to avoid the nuclear fallout that would be the only means of rectifying irresponsible use. I sure wouldn't want to rely on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's good sense. I'd rather he didn't have the ability to wreak havoc in the first place. Let him find another (less dangerous) means of boosting his economy.

While Iran's possessing nukes might be troubling from historical perspective amongst reasons.... It strikes me odd that we allow sworn enemies, who can be trigger-happy, namely, Pakistani and India, to possess the bombs. Furthermore, we expect Iran and the world, not to question our BIASed logic. /-:

But I don't put it past them to somehow 'misplace' or lose track of their nuclear material, which happens to wind up in the hand of terrorists, like Al_Qaeda, who would more than likely make use of that material in this country (to Iran's delight, no less). That's the fear, not that Iran would fire a nuclear missile in our way (something I don't put past them also - given the insane nature of their president).

The arguments made against Iran's nuclear program strike me as odd. One is the assumption that they have no need for nuclear power plants with so much oil in their country. Iran is a socialist nation meaning they've taken commodities and nationalized them to fund their government programs (education, health, transportation, defense). Oil is one of these commodities. Now if the nation were to increase their output of oil, by decreasing their need of oil, they could potentially raise more money to fund themselves. One way to remove the need would be to find alternate sources of energy. Thus they have a very good reason to pursue nuclear power. Second is the assumption that from a nuclear program comes nuclear weapons. Not one single nation that has had a nuclear program has denied research into weapons. So the two are hand and hand. But if Iran possesses nuclear weapons, so what? Is the fear that they will pass these weapons onto state supported organizations such as Hezbollah, which will in turn use them against Israel?
....

NO the fear is that they will use them all by themselves; hey, maybe they will have a nuclear accident and blow themselves up.

Well, here we are some three years after, and this argument is still raging across the globe, only the clock is now a second before midnight.

...in the news

Secret document exposes Iran’s nuclear trigger
Catherine Philp in Washington

Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.

The notes, from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6955351.ece

Iran's New Missile Flies Farther, Faster and Can Be Launched in Minutes
The Sajjil-2 Missile Would Be Harder to Detect and Knock Down

Iran tested an updated version of its most potent missile today, a weapon that Iran claims can fly farther and faster that previous models and that can be deployed more quickly.

The elements of speed and rate of deployment would make the Sajjil 2 missile more difficult for Western forces to detect and destroy before it is launched and harder to track and knock down once it is in the air.

The missile, which is Iran's most advanced two-stage surface-to-surface weapon, can reach targets up to 1,200 miles away. That puts Israel and American bases in the region, as well as parts of Europe, within its reach.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/iran-tests-long-range-missile/story?id=9351516

Still think they have peaceful intentions?

Unless something changes, and I mean now, I predict there will be a world war within two years.