When it comes to guys like Ahmadenijad, I guess university presidents, 60 Minutes reporters, and even the NYPD have to wear their disapproval on their sleeves in order to avoid getting smeared by all the usual suspects. We have become a nasty, fearful people indeed.

The very same actors involved in our 2003 production, and I pointedly include the media here (couldn't have done it without 'em) are again setting the stage for another big hit from team Bush/Cheney. Kudos to Columbia's president, Scott Pelly, the NYPD, Mr. Ahmadenijad, and Joe Lieberman and John Kyl for all playing their parts perfectly.

The demonization of dopey Ahmadenijad continues apace, while the guy with the actual control over Iran's military and nuclear program is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Ahmadenijad is just a national embarassment. How big an embarassment? Iranian tv (controlled by Khamenei's gov't) has a hit miniseries on right now based on a true story about an Iranian diplomat in Paris who helped Jews escape the Holocaust during WWII. Khamenei is no dope and he remembers the brutal war Iran lost against Iraq in the 1980s. My guess is he's not relishing one against us, but it's out of his hands. It's all up to the Decider now.

I should have said, " I guess university presidents, 60 Minutes reporters, and even the NYPD feel they have to wear their disapproval on their sleeves in order to avoid getting smeared by all the usual suspects.

A nuclear-armed theocracy, JohnS, is something worth stopping at a fairly high cost. That the Iranian government is actually controlled by a messianic cleric and not by a dimwitted civil engineer is no comfort to me. The folly of our time is that we literally went after the wrong country in a fit of national stupidity, leaving our hands tied when it comes to stopping a potentially real threat. That's not to say I'm for a war against Iran, just that we would be in a much better position to press the Iranians to stop their nuclear weapons development program if we didn't have our military apparatus fighting multiple insurgencies in Iraq.

Iran doesn't have a plutonium program. If Iran were to have some kind of secret uranium enrichment program (the IAEA says there isn't one and they were about the ONLY agency right about WMD in Iraq), Iran could possibly build maybe a fission bomb/year.

Then their problem becomes miniaturizing and engineering the bomb to fit on the Shihab-3, Iran's medium range ballistic missile. Once that issue is solved, the Shihab-3 still only has a range of 1300 miles, so even at that point, Iran is no threat to us. Of course, they could target , say, Jerusalem, but I believe that city is the third holiest site in Islam. Not to mention that Israel could respond with anywhere from 100 to 400 nuclear weapons launched by plane, intercontinental ballistic missile, and submarine.

No, the problem we are having with Iran is not that it is, or is about to become, a "nuclear-armed theocracy." Our problem is that Iran refuses to recognize our (and Israel's) hegemony over their neighborhood, and we simply refuse to share power in the ME with them.

BTW, in 2003 Iran proposed wide-ranging talks to us that included full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel, and ending their support for Palestinian militant groups. We blew them off completely.

I would note that much of the left-right mutual incomprehension on this issue has an excellent explanation in terms of Haidt's theory of varying moral intuitions (which has gotten a lot of press of late). Conservatives tend to have a visceral concern for the respect of hierarchies that liberals tend not to have. Thus conservatives may be feeling a visceral concern that Columbia _has granted status_ to Ahmadinejad, where liberals are only experiencing the episode in harm terms and justice terms. So, since no one was hurt, and since Bollinger was acting within his rights, and even promoting the key justice-serving norms of the free clash of ideas in foro publico -- there's nothing in the situation to vex the liberal mind. So liberals are puzzling over the fuss, while conservatives are frustrated that liberals can't see the problem of giving such a position to such a man. Again, just the sort of thing Haidt predicts.