[Skybird]

Liberation looks different than what I see in Iraq, I think.

Iran: early this week strategists and economists in German TV calculated the costs for it for european economies alone, no matter if joining the war or not, for all the private households, business, everything. Amongst other factors it would translate into the loss of 250-350 thousand jobs in the first year in Germany alone. The financial costs for three war scenarios they lined out (all of them varying degrees of air-heavy campaigns) are expected to top the costs for Iraq until now - but after "just after 9-12 months". the costs for the impact on general oil trade "are beyond calculation". It is very unlikely, for these reasons, that America will get even as much support for an Iran war than they got for Iraq - which was a split affair, at best.

Couldn't hurt to be more careful in wishing for war with Iran. From the very beginning on I always said, and still say: it hurts us significantly more than them, iran is in a far stronger position than we are, Europe and america as well. May hurt our egos, but it is fqact in my eyes. I see absolutely no reason to risk such a dangerous high-risk-match right now, or soon. Negroponte, if I am not mistaken he currently is the director and/or coordinator of American intel services, said just days ago that according to American information Iran is "several years" away from having enough material to built nuclear weapons. No matter if it is true or not - even American propaganda efforts to influence the UN or world opinion are >relatively< tame, compared to the skyrocketing efforts there have been before Iraq.

Simple truth is, economically and financially we simply can't afford a war with Iran, nothing else than this. And our people have a far less capacity to suffer than the Iranians, living in a harsher country since long, and not being used to the level of luxury we take as granted.