"his quaint town halls out in Arregone."

Since when is Hanford in Aweregone?

As far as what we should do if Iran decides to drop the big one on Israel, I don't know if we have much choice otherwise. Mollifying them doesn't seem to buy us a lot.

I'd be a lot more sympathetic if we held ourselves to the same standards re. developing and holding weapons of mass destruction, particularly of the nuclear variety. Seems like every time a call for worldwide consensus comes up, we ask for exceptions or won't sign oon. Yet we're righteously indignant when anybody in the vicinity of "our" oil reserves so much as talks about developing or using nuclear power - be it resource or weapon. Can you imagine the threats out of Washington if Iran were to begin sending out strike drones to target and kill what they considered to be "terrorists" in neighboring countries? Yet we seem to think it's our right to do so.

Fine, but be consistent about your position, and by no means no snivelling about it, when a nuke is lit off in NYC or such, traceable to Iran.

I think that it is more that China wants Iran to mine Afghanistan for them and the US thinks that is a bad idea.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06/14/discovers-t-minerals-afghanistan/

".....a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq arrived in Afghanistan and closely analyzed the geologists' findings. U.S. mining experts were brought in to validate the survey's conclusions, and top U.S. and Afghan officials were briefed."

"...The Times quoted a Pentagon memo as saying Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and cell phones."

Just so happens major deposits are shared by Iran and Afghanistan.....hmmmm...

You thought that Democrats try to avoid war? That's adorable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/pop-quiz-drones-assassinations-obama

"On Tuesday, AIPAC lobbyists will be swarming the Hill, pressing senators to sign the "backdoor to war" bill. They won't be telling senators and their staffs what they're really being asked to sign on to. After all, the text of the AIPAC/Graham bill itself tells a lie, by claiming that the United States policy is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon "capability," when that is not US policy today."

If you want to prevent a country from having Nuclear Weapons in the Middle-East, you need to start with Israel. They have illegally (via the West) tested and now possess hundreds of Nukes. The USA has a standing policy to not even mention this fact. Anyone trying to make an argument that Iran has no right to have a Nuclear Weapon, but Israel does is making the argument that some people are better than others (the Jim Crow of weapons argument).

Wyden is playing right into this deadly game of making up reality to suit an external agenda.

Never forget they were all wrong about Iraq. That should make people think very carefully about how likely it is they are right about Iran.
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/03/05/never-forget-that-they-were-all-wrong/