• papajack said on Jul 23, 2008....

  Not likely

• anonymous said on Jul 23, 2008....

  seems to me the USA is scared, that sucks

• theothersister said on Jul 23, 2008....

  I don't look for Bush to do anything major before he leaves office.

• uniquely-ironic said on Jul 23, 2008....

  Historically most presidents don't do much the last few months of their second term.

• crybabylu said on Jul 23, 2008....

  papajack, anon, other, unique----thanks, but there has been some speculation, just wondered what everyone here thought.

• curmudgeon said on Jul 23, 2008....

  If anything it will be covert - like hitting terrorist training camps or trying to plant agents or ordering reconnaissance missions or something.
   
  But nothing hugely overt like bombing or invading. There's just no time for that.

• crybabylu said on Jul 23, 2008....

  Thanks curm, that is what I think too!

• anonymous said on Jul 23, 2008....

  No.Israel will start the war for him. They have publicly stated they will start the war while Bush is still in office.

• firesky said on Jul 23, 2008....

  Nope!

• steppenwolf68 said on Jul 24, 2008....

  Hello Cry, W and all his henchmen are too stupid to do anything about Iran. It would be best if they just fade into the background. Our forces are already stretched too far an we lost sight of the real problem, Afg. The world's biggest problem will be solved when these guys are back in Texas, or wherever they came from.

  Look at the map. All they have to do is sink a supertanker at a sensitive location and they cut off the region from the rest of the world. And everyone will hv cold asses comming winter.

  I lived out there for a while, and all I can say is that the powers that be have absolutely no idea of what the problems are and how to solve them. Me, yes, the problems... but not how to solve them. And who cares anyway? The bureaucrats are only interested in their brown noses and notthing else.

  All we can do is hope for sanity. Too much, you say? Ok, but hope is the last thing to die.....

• SeanRenaud said on Jul 24, 2008....

  It's nto a matter of if Bush does somethign it's a matter of if Isreal does soemthing.  If Isreal moves we will back them, that's almost without question.

• eurekame said on Jul 24, 2008....

  How can Bush do anything...when we do something people complain, but arent willing to back it up. We are a media based country; he won't push his negitivity more so...

• husbandhater said on Jul 24, 2008....

  As I once said before. He stretched our resources so thin that he can't so he's going to have to eat shit with that situation there.

• SeanRenaud said on Jul 24, 2008....

  He'll recall every single military discharged in the last 4 years, and every reservist and/or reallocate troops if Isreal needs us against Iran, don't think he (or the new president) won't take the appropriate actions to defend our ally.

• anonymous said on Jul 24, 2008....

  he would have to do a draft because there is not enough troops.

• crybabylu said on Jul 24, 2008....

  I really appreciate all of the response on this.  I can see all points each view has made.  thanks to:

  Sean. HH, eureka, steffen, fire, and anon.

• sheltercrow said on Jul 24, 2008....

  Countdown to Crawford: The last days of the Bush administration.

• SeanRenaud said on Jul 24, 2008....

  There are lot of troops when you remember everybody who'se gotten out in the last four years plus any remaining reservists.

• center_right said on Jul 24, 2008....

  I would say that he won't.  If he did, then people would say he was trying to use our military to influence the election.  He's unpopular and in his last year.  If he had a higher approval rating, then I would say he probably could.
  
  
  The problem is Israel.  They will attack Iran within the next year and possibly before the election.  If that happens,  all bets are off.
  
  
  As far as sinking a tanker in the straights causing us to have a cold winter, that's pretty silly.  We're going to go "Oh shit...a sunk ship....guess we're screwed".  I think we can take care of a sunk tanker and I don't think their navy can shut it off.

• sheltercrow said on Jul 24, 2008....

  An attack on Iran would send the price of oil through the roof. The U.S. military is the largest single user of oil in the world. Israel gets part of it's gas supplies from Iran through a swiss intermediary.
  
  It get some gas from Egypt.
  
  CAIRO (IPS) - In the last two months, popular and parliamentary opposition to the sale of Egyptian natural gas to Israel -- at undisclosed prices -- has mounted. As a result, in a rare nod to public opinion, the government recently announced it was "revising" the terms of the sale agreement.
  
  "The government was finally embarrassed into partially addressing our concerns," Mohammed Anwar al-Sadat, former MP and spokesman for the recently founded Popular Campaign against Gas Exports told IPS.
  
  The full-scale export of Egyptian natural gas to Israel officially began on 1 May. A 2005 agreement between Egypt and Israel allows the Cairo-based East Mediterranean Gas, a joint venture between Egyptian and Israeli businessmen, to sell approximately 1.5 billion cubic meters of Egyptian natural gas annually to the Israel Electric Corporation for a period of 15 years.
  
  After being extracted from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, the gas is then pumped via a submarine pipeline to the southern Israeli cities Ashdod and Ashkelon.
  
  The deal follows several years of on-again, off-again negotiations. Talks were often delayed, as Israel's consistent abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip made Egyptian participation in the scheme politically awkward.
  
  Where does Israel get its oil?
  
  From Russia and former Soviet republics. Israel produces only a couple thousand barrels of oil a day, which means it relies on the global market for more than 99 percent of its consumption. It's difficult to name all of the country's suppliers—in 2004, Israel's minister of national infrastructures admitted that "Israel's situation is complicated. We don't have diplomatic relations with most of the countries from which we import oil." But over the past 25 years, significant fuel imports have come from Angola, Colombia, Mexico, Egypt, and Norway. In more recent times, the Israelis have turned to Russia, Kazakhstan, and some of the other -stans for the bulk of their oil.
  
  Another complication
  
  

  Last month the Swiss foreign minister visited Iran and, together with President Ahmadinejad, attended the signing of a multi-billion euro contract for Iran to supply Switzerland with large amounts of natural gas over the next 25 years.
  
  The US State Department immediately condemned the deal and said it would be investigating whether it breached the Iran Sanctions Act. Israel complained too, describing the Swiss minister's visit to Tehran as an "act unfriendly to Israel". Various Jewish groups also joined in the protests, including the World Jewish Congress.
  
  This righteous indignation was entirely predictable but more than a little odd nevertheless. On March 30, the Swiss newspaper Sonntag retaliated with the revelation that Israel, supposedly observing an ironclad boycott of all things Iranian, has been buying Iranian oil for years.

  The story is in German but Israeli journalist Shraga Elam has provided me with a translation which I'll quote from here.p
  
  

  "Israel imports Iranian oil on a large scale even though contacts with Iran and purchasing of its products are officially boycotted by Israel. Israel gets around the boycott by having the oil delivered via Europe. A reliable Israeli energy newsletter, EnergiaNews, reported this last week [March 18] ...
  
  "EnergiaNews got the information about the Iran trade from sources with ties to the management of Israeli Oil Refineries Ltd ... According to EnergiaNews the Iranian oil is liked in Israel because its quality is better than other crude oils.
  
  "The report by EnergiaNews editor Moshe Shalev states that the Iranian oil reaches various European ports, mainly in Rotterdam. It is bought by Israelis and the necessary European bill of lading and insurance papers are supplied. Then it is transported to Haifa in Israel. The importer is the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co (EAPC), which keeps its oil sources secret."

  
  
  EAPC was established in 1968 as a joint Israeli-Iranian company to transport oil from Iran to Europe. After the fall of the Shah, Iran ceased to play an active role in its affairs and there are ongoing legal disputes between the two partners.
  
  The Swiss report continued:
  
  

  "It is not clear if the Iranian exporters know about Israeli purchases of their oil. At the other end, the Israeli buyers and governmental offices are well aware of where the high-grade oil comes from, although it is a blatant defiance of the boycott. The EnergiaNews article even made it through Israeli censorship, which asked only for some changes in the text. The fact that the report cleared the censors increases the credibility of the information. In the past, such reports were forbidden.
  
  "When questioned by Sonntag, an energy expert of one of the leading Israeli papers confirmed the EnergiaNews report: Israel has been importing Iranian oil for many years. The expert stressed, however, that the purchases were made on the free market and not directly from Iran."

  
  
  Sonntag quoted a spokesman for Oil Refineries Ltd as denying that his company imports and processes Iranian oil. However, Sonntag pointed to a report in Haaretz newspaper last October which said that an Israeli energy company called Paz would be refining Iranian oil and supplying it to the Palestinian Authority from the start of this year.
  
  This begs the question: if Iran is, as Bibi Netanyahu argues, an existential threat to Israel, why does the government allow such trade? Would Israel have the US attack Iran's nuclear programme and provoke a potential region-wide conflict while it cannot seem to wean itself from high quality Iranian crude? You'd think if Israelis are cowering in fear from an Iranian bomb and the arch antisemite Ahmadinejad, they wouldn't want to trade with such an enemy.
  
  When is a boycott not a boycott? When it's in your naked economic interest to circumvent it, apparently. But one should ask: if Israel doesn't honour its self-declared boycott of Iran, why should the rest of the world honour its boycott of Hamas and Gaza? If Israel doesn't honour its own boycott, then why should members of Congress vote with AIPAC when it proposes a measure that even Israel honours only in the breach?

• crybabylu said on Jul 25, 2008....

  thank you everyone for your comments....

• crybabylu said on Jul 25, 2008....

  thank you , sean, center, and shelter.

• steppenwolf68 said on Jul 26, 2008....

  So, you see, like everything else, it's not so easy. Very interesting info here. Thanks for all the enlightenment!

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