The title of the article says it all: Iran strike an unattractive last resort: Bolton
That's like George W. Bush saying that "war is a last resort" for Iraq, when he'd already decided ahead of time that nothing would stop his little adventure. He came into office in 2001 and on the day after his inauguration, the Veep was holding council with major oil and energy companies over a map of Iraq that had been marked up to divvy the oil fields among the participants.
What did Bolton actually say?
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"The use of military force is an extremely unattractive option and only to be used as a last resort," he said, adding he would favor regime change.
Bolton said the elements for regime change were present in Iran -- the economy was in difficulties, young Iranians could see the possibility of a different life and there were ethnic tensions within the country.
But he added that the United Nations and its allies had not done enough to bring about the required change.
"I wish that we had had a much more vigorous policy five years ago," he said.
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Of course, "regime change" is a nicely amorphous term, lacking enough substance that anything could be said to have failed the benchmark.
For Iran, "regime change" is not an option. Neither is giving up nuclear enrichment, which international inspectors repeated said appear to be only for peaceful use.
Just like they used to say that Iraq had no WMDs.
Just before Bush invaded anyway. But this time, Bush doesn't want to invade Iran. He and his fellows simply want to blast it back to the Stone Age, just like they threatened to do to Pakistan. They've been intending to for a long time now.
This is an Open Thread.
