Bush warns of ‘World War III’

October 17, 2007

Much of the president’s press conference today was devoted to discussion of the administration’s policy towards Iran, which was not at all encouraging.

Q: But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?

BUSH: I think so long — until they suspend and/or make it clear that they — that their statements aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it’s in the world’s interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian — if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace.

But this — we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.

I was going to explain why this is crazy, but I see that Matt Yglesias beat me to it. I hope he won’t mind too much if I blatantly steal borrow his observation.

Two points. One: This is inane. World War III? Against Iran? Really? Because Iran seems a lot like a medium-sized middle income country with few military capabilities rather than a near peer-competitor of the sort against which you might fight a world war.

Two: Note where Bush has placed the goalposts here. Not preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Preventing Iran from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I’m not sure what the significance of that switch is, but it seems significant.

Like I said, not at all encouraging.

Isn’t the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon to be found in any college level physics textbook? Hasn’t it been repeatedly found to be freely available on the worldwide network of non aluminum tubes they call the internets?

So do we plan to bomb them into computer illiteracy as well as functional illiteracy?

  • Take a ride on the Tehran express courtesy of the Bush administration.

    One a side note, this also represents the admin’s plan for dealing with you-know-who (he who must not be named – aka OBL). They’ll get him throught the increased cancer risk on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

  • It might be WWIII if Russia decides to back up Iran. And then Bush and Putin could have a race to see who can lock up the most dissidents.

    See you guys in the Gulag.

  • it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon

    Wow. You can find out how to make a nuclear weapon with open sources through the public library. Nuclear weapons are not easy to produce, but the theory behind it is 65 years old. The rub comes in actual production. Refining a material (Plutonium) that is incredibly toxic and unstable; purifying bomb-grade uranium (which would require a lot more purification than Iran is capable of right now); creating the shaped charges so that the implosion will force critical mass; these are very, very difficult engineering problems. The only way to prevent Iran from having the “knowledge” necessary to make a weapon would be to destroy all universities in Iran with a physics department (actually, while were at it, let’s take out the physics classes in high scholls to, just to be on the safe side), remove Iran from the world wide communications system, eliminate all libraries, and kill every single physicist in Iran or who we think might communicate with Iran. (Sounds like a Bushite wet-dream).

    The point is, when it comes to nuclear weapons, the knowledge is not the secret. The engineering to make it work is the secret.

    Is he (Bush) really this stupid?

  • It’s a damn good think the Democratic majority in the Senate would never do something so stupid as giving Bush all the justification he needs for a preemptive strike against Iran, right!

    Right?

  • Is it just me, or is it just him, but everytime Mr. Bush opens his mouth these days, he is truth challenged and rhetorically disoriented. Gives great support to the bumper-sticker observation made awhile back: Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot. If WWIII begins it will be because of the failed and incompetent foreign policies of this WH, not because anything else, especially simply because Iran has ascended to the community of nukes. I would even go so far as to proffer that no orthodox Muslim would dare to use nukes on innocent human beings. It is not part of the Koran.

    No, WWII will begin when the rest of the world gets tired of our Bush sponsored arrogance and hubris.-Kevo

  • Bill (Thanks for serving) – asks: “Is he (Bush) really this stupid?”

    Yes.

    It could be mental deterioration where he can only absorb enough to mimic his handlers.

    In a fit of honesty, Dick Cheney says: Chauncey Gardiner, welcome to to the Republican party. Our media outlets will cover for him, and most people ignore the internet. Let’s get that oil!

  • I think, in this case, that Bush is speaking the truth….If Iran DOES continue trying to acquire nuclear technology, it WILL be a major threat to World Peace….because Bush and the neos will start Iraq II: Bigger and Quagmire-ier in Iran…

  • Racerx, I thought about that this morning. Here is what BushCo (and the alleged Russia expert Secretary of State) have blundered their way into.

    You have Putin, who has a serious complex, because his precious USSR broke up and the KGB (nominally) disbanded. He is every bit as nationalistic as the AQ who seek to establish a super-regional Caliphate. But he needs a way to get back in the game – Russia is still too economically and diplomatically weak to really get back in the game without help.

    You have Iran, who by this time might have been a marginal ally had we played our cards right when Khatami was President, but who instead we relegated to the Axis of Evil. They saw two things happen thereafter: (1) we attacked Iraq, who had no actual WMD and (2) we did not attack North Korea, who did. They decided of their fellow Axis members, they’d rather be more like NK and not be bombed, thank you – we drove them to expedite their nuclear ambitions. We also drove them to increased nationalism which resulted in their electing a nutjob who loves attention and is willing to be provacative to get it. And finally, by decimating Iraq and destablizing the region, we greatly increased Iran’s relative power.

    And to this powder keg, we add what little spark Bush and his bull-in-a-china-shop sAdministration has, which alas is just enough to cause an explosion. He never can find the right temperature or approach with Putin, first being too permissive and then too late and too clumsily pulling on the reins. And he needlessly uses anti-diplomatic language in a way that gives Iran much, much more prominence on the world stage than it deserves.

    But that prominence does provide Putin just what he needs to get back in the game: what if tomorrow Russia signed a defense treaty with Iran? Now Bush is screwed: he has said Iran will be stopped. But he can’t really call Russia’s bluff on the defense treaty. So instead, Bush’s bluff is called and Iran goes nuclear. America looks inept and impotent, Russia now looks like it is calling the shots; the only option is a very literal WWIII of apocalypic proportions. Putin is just nuts enough to do it. . . what about Dubya?

    If I’m Putin, I take that gamble knowing that the American public – and likely its military leadership – are not willing to risk the end of the world over Iraq. And just like that, the US is the paper tiger and Russia is the superpower – all because Bush is the single most diplomatically inept President to ever roam the Earth. All of this is possible because of his big mouth and stupid, arrogant approaches.

  • Bush and Putin – like a testosterone pissing contest.

    And if Pooty Poot decides to park a few nukes, along with a few thousand Russian (well armed and armored) Technical Advisors…

    what then?

  • a nutjob who loves attention and is willing to be provocative to get it

    Yes, I’ve always felt that Ahmadinejad and Ann Coulter are identical twins, cruelly separated at birth.

  • Again, at 24%, Bush (and the Republican Party) are entirely too popular for my blood. We can achieve the total overthrow of the DC machine until Bush bombs Iran.

    Embrace the bomb.

  • All of this is possible because of his big mouth and stupid, arrogant approaches.

    And, as you said in the beginning, Madame Secretary, Ph.D.

  • Each and every day in each and every way President Bush secures his position as the worst President in American history. If the United States survives this Presidency, actions must be taken to prevent another like him from ever taking office.

    The United States cannot survive another of his kind.

  • I just hope they (Putin and Bush) don’t use Iran as an excuse to begin the cold war again and justify a nuclear arms and weapons build up.

    Bush has proven he’s got a big mouth and makes inappropriate statements and then laughs about all the uproar they cause.
    With their one little nuke they might get made in 5-7yrs he thinks Iran might use it on Israel (who has countless nukes they won’t talk about) when they are surrounded by countries such as Pakistan and India and Saudi Arabia etc who already have nukes,he wants us to believe this little country is completely suicidal knowing the enormous nuclear capabilities the US has and that we would wipe them off the face of the earth, this one little country would do all that.
    Bush’s scare tactics are working in reverse here. We are more afraid of what Bush/Cheney would do with a nuke than what Iran would do with one if they had it. I am more threatened by the insanity of this administration than anything Iran might be thinking. Bush would have us believe they are all insane in Iran like Iran is to believe Americans are all insane because of Cheney and Bush. We don’t buy it anymore. There’s been too many lies coming out of this administration already. Bush has got a big dangerously embarrassing mouth and congress needs to reel him in.

  • He never can find the right temperature or approach with Putin

    Zeitgeist, I think you miss a key point here (though I agree with the structure of your analysis overall). The critical misstep – the big, major, glaring, neon-glowing, flashing STUPID error with Putin – was not talking to him about setting up a missile defense system in Eastern Europe first.

    This should have been felt out – diplomats from the US should have been having backroom conversations with their Russian counterparts. “How would Putin feel about doing this? What if it was a joint-venture? Perhaps the US could throw a bit of money Russia’s way, set up a few factories? Maybe some ‘technology-sharing’?” But no – Bush blunders into Russia’s backyard promising former client states that the US is going to plant missiles in their countries to protect them from the terrarists in the Middle East WITHOUT even mentioning it to Putin. And why? Because Bush and his advisors never ONCE thought that Russia was relevant to the decision.

    And that will go down as one of this administrations top “mistakes in judgement” (and I don’t put this one near the top lightly). Because that’s a major, major insult to make to a world power that is still feeling a bit stung by their topple from the top of the mountain, if not a major personal insult to Putin himself. In Putin’s mind, it’s probably far worse that the US didn’t even consider Russia relevant to the decision than it would have been had we deliberately and calculatingly put the missiles there to provoke them.

  • a nutjob who loves attention and is willing to be provocative to get it

    Yes, I’ve always felt that Ahmadinejad and Ann Coulter are identical twins

    It should read, I’ve always felt that Ahmadinejad, George W. Bush and Ann Coulter are identical triplets, cruelly separated at birth.

  • “…more afraid of what Bush/Cheney would do with a nuke than what Iran would do with one if they had it. I am more threatened by the insanity of this administration than anything Iran might be thinking.”

    Ditto. And my Republican family members wonder why I get pissed when they start singing Bush praise…

  • Most experts agree Iran might be five years away from getting Nuclear Weapons. That’s plenty of time to use diplomacy. What Iran might do is stop just short of getting nukes. They could just be a position so than can build nuclear weapons within months, if they decide in the future.

  • I don’t think Bush was warning of WWIII as much as he was doing his BE AFRAID thing again — just like the smoking gun being a mushroom cloud. On the other hand, every day he’s in office puts us two days closer to a major regional conflict.

  • Watching from the sidelines I can only wonder if there will ever be true reform in the US after this. Another poster already mentioned that it is not possible for America to survive another president of this ‘caliber’. I really hope that the US will get it’s house in order (no more campaign contributions, no more ‘popularity contests’, and some real democracy instead of ‘winner takes all’) because the rest of the world would not survive without the US for very long.

    And that would be a thing felt first in Israel, that I don’t doubt, nuclear powers or not. Musharaff is just about the only thing that stands between die-hard muslims getting their hands on the bomb, after that all bets are off. Forget about Iran for the next decade or more, Pakistan is far more of a risk, and thanks to Bush’ ineptitude Musharrafs days are counted, without the US to back him he’d be gone in a week.

  • Trust me—the engineering necessary to make a thermonuke functional is no secret. I can find it on the ‘Net. I can find it in the physics department of my “pedagogical cave.” I can find it at Amazon-dot-com, for crying out loud—they do sell textbooks, you know.

    Besides, am I the only one seeing the hilarious irony to all of this? Putin can play “Clever Nikita;” setting up nuke-batteries left and right in Iran if he so wishes, and America gets stuck with “Stupid Nikita”—some boozed-up dimwit who looks ready to start beating his shoe on the podium.

    Only in Bushylvanaia….

  • Wasn’t it early this year that bushco was scaring us by saying that Iran was 16 *days* from having a nuke?

    Bringing up the specter of WW III in name of fear-mongering is extremely STUPID. Good job, bushie.

  • Thank you, Steve. I listened to the broadcast press conference. I was dumbfounded when I heard our President utter those words: “it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon”

    Say WHAT? So now the executive leader of the United States is against knowledge? Now, to be fair, there are instances where secrets are necessary – military, corporate and personal. Withholding information to maintain secrecy is arguably appropriate in many occassions.

    However, not sharing technical knowledge (a military secret) is qualitatively not the same as fighting to keep a potential enemy from knowing something. The Iranian people are, as most people on this planet, intelligent. Their physicists already have the basic knowledge to utilize materials and technologies to create a nuclear weapon. All that they lack is the emperical information – the work-it-out trial-and-error of engineering development. Only time is in the way of success … assuming they actually desire to have a nuclear weapon capability.

    As has been correctly said in prior comments to this article, effective implementation of our President’s stated policy would be the elimination (read: death) of all physicists, employed or nascent, as well as all machinists, chemists, etc. Not to mention the necessary destruction of all written volumes on many, many subjects.

    So, I can agree that we citizens of the earth should support efforts aimed at non-proliferation of nuclear weaponry. To that end, we should openly discuss the deliterious effects of managing, let alone using, such weapons. The ideal end-game would have all peoples understanding that having or implementing nuclear weapons is a lose-lose, under any scenario and, finally, come to a world-wide agreement that these weapons should not simply be restricted, or their spread lessened, but that they should be eliminated from the planet. As I said, this is idealistic but I believe it illuminates the righteous path.

    Having knowledge should not be a crime. Having knowledge holds the promise that decisions will have a solid basis in reality. Reason and rationality demand the best information set.

    It is difficult for me to see our President’s comment as anything but indicative of a personal belief that gravely threatens us all.

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