AC
OK you're the resident conspiracy guy on this site (not meant to be derogatory) Actually, I enjoy your posts and for a while thought you might be Jay Hansen, himself.

Any thoughts on the near simultaneous admission of Isreali nukes by Gates & Olmert?

Gates:
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20061210-073102-7363r

Olmert:
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1841092006

Israel has used rumored secret nuclear weapons stockpiles as a covert deterrent for quite some time but maybe things are finally heating up enough in the ME to make it an overt nuclear deterrent.  Who knows??

==AC

But the Arabs & the World have known of Israeli nuclear capability all along.

Why would the two adherents of "strategic ambiguity" -- US & Israel -- be fessing up now?

Check out this article:

SNIP

Iranian Professor: US and Israel have Been Trying To Divide Iran For Years
Professor of geopolitics points the finger at US Neoconservatives and Israeli Zionists, Highlights past co-operation to make Iran a nuclear nation

 http://tinyurl.com/yz4dum

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Monday, December 11, 2006

An Iranian political science professor has said today that Iran and the US signed an agreement in 1978 which allowed Tehran to seek nuclear technology in order to meet its future energy demands but no one now talks about the agreement. He has also asserted that Zionists in Israel in co-operation with neoconservatives in the US have intentionally been trying to divide Iran for decades.

As reported by the IRNA news agency, Professor of Political Geography and Geopolitics at Tehran's Tarbiat Moadarres University, Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh, said it was the US that encouraged Iran to develop nuclear energy.

Mojtahedzadeh asserted during a speech at an international conference of world geologists that in 1978 the US had proposed the former regime of the defunct Shah launch a nuclear program in order to prevent a future energy crisis some 50 years down the line.

Mojtahedzadeh also suggested that the repeated attempts to paint Iran's nuclear program up as a military program directly contradict the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) repeated confirmations that Iran has not violated any laws or regulations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Earlier this month he also gave an interview in which he asserted that Zionists and their neo-conservative colleagues in the US have for years been trying to divide Iran.

==AC

I read the article.

Sorry AC, it doesn't address why "....would the two adherents of "strategic ambiguity" -- US & Israel -- be fessing up now?"

Your arguments are usually stronger. Maybe we both need to ponder it a bit more.

I wasn't putting that out there to answer your question.  I posted it because it was an interesting article.  I should have said off topic but everything I post is off topic.  ;-)

BTW
Maybe Israel is nervous Iran will turn something up at the conference:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6167695.stm

They may just be putting the word out not to fuck with them "officially"...

==AC

"They may just be putting the word out not to fuck with them "officially"..."

You're misunderstanding "strategic ambiguity." Everyone has known -- for a long time -- they're nuclear capable; why would they/US fess up now?

Of course, we don't know, but I'd hoped you had an intriguing/ plausible theory.

Quote from Olmert article:

"Israel doesn't threaten any country with anything -- never did," Olmert told SAT 1. "The most that we tried to get for ourselves is to be able to live without terror. But we never threatened any nation with annihilation.

OTOH, the one woman play "Golda" has an interesting scene where Golda Mier orders that nukes be placed on planes, and the planes placed on alert with pilots on-board (targets Cairo & Damascus, bombs enscribed Never Again) before even one tank enters Israeli soil.  Israel was facing a tactical defeat on lands it had recently conquered, but far from a strategic defeat that would endanger national survival.

Not conclusive, but it was clear that the Israeli playwright knew her well (she spent lots of time at the underground Dimona nuclear research station in the Negev, one balcony was named after her supposedly).

Given the Iranian history during the war with Iraq (a variety of poison gases were used on Iranians, but they never retaliated in kind) and the Israeli history noted above (assuming it is true), an objective neutral observer would see Isreali nukes as the greater threat.

Add to this the rumored "Samson Option" to destroy all civilization in the Middle East if Jersuleum were to fall.

Best Hopes for Rationality,

Alan

Be careful Alan Israel doesn't like criticism;

Jimmy Carter's Kampf
by Jack Engelhard
Dec 08, '06 / 17 Kislev 5767
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=6757

That was Borat, not Jimmy Carter, who urged a crowd of lounge lizards in Tucson to join him in singing, "Throw the Jew Down the Well."

Carter has the same message, but (without the spoof) his narrative comes in a book that's just being released and is titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

Apparently the written word is not enough, so Carter has taken his grudge against Israel on tour. There he is with his brotherhood on National Public Radio, NPR, where Israel-bashing is always welcome; and here he is on C-Span; and he keeps on going and won't stop until he's got us all signing up for Holocaust Part 2.

==AC

Allowing the palestinians to have the land that was taken away from them following the 67 war is not holocaust 2. And, while ISrael was attacked, it was not by the palestinians but other arab states.

Those british who fought british troops in our revolutionary war are our heroes.  Palestinians that fight against US tanks and planes for the return of their land are terrorists.  Israelis that bomb homes, with US planes and bombs, known to be occupied by families are the new heroes.  Israelis who leave behind bomblets that will subsequently blow off childrens hands or feet are apparently civilized and certainly enjoy our full support.

It is not true that the palestinians are undergoing a holocaust.  It is true that Israelis treat palestinians exactly as minority white south africa once treated the majority blacks. It is also true that Mandela was at one time called a terrorist and was jailed in solitary confinement for life.