655,000 dead means they will nuke Iran...

[Deere_John]

I was working in the kitchen last night and it suddenly came to me: 655,000 dead is of the order of magnitude of the deaths from the use of a nuclear weapon. They figure that they got away with killing that many, that the streets aren't filled with mobs of protesters, that there are no international calls for Bush and Cheney to be charged with war crimes, so it's not such a big step up to a million or two from a nuclear attack.

I would really like to be wrong on this one.

[onenote]

1. My guess: you are wrong

The admin disputes the 655,000 number so it hardly seems that they would use it as a benchmark. And the 655,000 deaths were not all directly caused by the US -- they included the deaths that we indirectly caused by destabilizing the country, such as the deaths caused when Sunnis blow up Shiites and vice versa. Dropping a nuke would put responsibility directly on us...much different.

[driver8]

2. No offense, but that is some of the strangest logic I have ever heard. n/t

[Deere_John]

4. None taken, but not so strange....

One of the things that would discourage a nuclear attack planner would be the fear of the world's reaction to the mass casualties. Well, the world just heard of mass casualties (direct and indirect) from a fairly credible source and seems to be pretty relaxed about the whole thing. Pretty easy for our hypothetical planner to believe now that the world could deal with a bigger casualty count.

[damntexdem]

3. No, if they nuke Iran, they will kill far more.

They'll run it up into holocaust numbers. And they should later face a second round of Nurenburg trials for it, too.

[Deere_John]

5. Don't disagree, but they can lowball the estimates going in...

...to convince themselves. Not like they haven't done it before.