Old Guy:"I am telling you, Iran is pure, nasty as horseshit, evil. They clearly want to dominate in the middle east. If they get nukes, the entire world is in for a bad time for quite some time"

AS HAS ALREADY BEEN POINTED OUT, IT APPEARS THAT THE USA (NOT IRAN) IS THE ONE WITH ITS TROOPS, TANKS AND BOMBERS SWARMING ALL OVER THE REGION - ON TWO BORDERS WITH IRAN ALSO. HOW DO YOUB THINK AMERICANS WOULD FEEL IF IRANIAN TROOPS ETC., WERE OCCUPYING CANADA AND MEXICO?

"If they keep messing with Israel they might become the nuked instead of the nuker"
USING THE NUKES EVERYBODY KNOWS THEY 'DON'T HAVE' OF COURSE!

"Several countries have nukes so why is the US the singled out as "cause" of the problem?"

I'M NOT SURE ABOUT THIS ONE. IT MIGHT BE THAT A) THE USA WAS THE FIRST TO HAVE THEM B) THE USA HAS BEEN THE ONLY ONE TO ACTUALLY USE THEM ON CIVILIAN POPULATIONS SO FAR (KILLING A QUARTER OF A MILLION PEOPLE IN JAPAN) C) THE USA HAS MORE THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY (RUSSIA IS A CLOSE SECOND I BELIEVE) D) THE USA HAS SHOWN A WILLINGNESS TO USE THEM AGAIN - WITNESS THE 'NUKE AFGHANISTAN!' TALK BACK IN 2001.
The problem, Old Guy, is that old clown G.Bush has rasied the nuclear stakes enormously with his warmongering in recent years. Countries that don't have nukes look around and see that the USA treats countries with nukes, with respect. They realise that if they get a few bombs quickly enough, they'll be talked to instead of bombed. Ok, so it's not guaranteed, but they have less chance without them. If my country had US troops massing near its borders, it'd probably be nervously thinking about acquiring a few nukes too. Thank God we have no oil.

"Yeah, Fucking idiots that preach genocide might believe that"

My apologies in advance if I wrong you here, but I suspect you yourself might be only a step or two from preaching genocide too - against Iranians (they are people too, even though many have big beards and they speak a different langauge).

Re. a Palestinian state: "A second one would be good. They can't run one so two would be even better. Then they can piss and moan twice as loud about how all theur self inflicted problems are someone else's fault"

Oh, come on! I'm sorry, but I just can't let this pass. Where do you get your information? You really must have no idea what is happening in the occupied West Bank. I'll try and elucidate for you, as there are perfectly good reasons why the Palestinians can't 'run' their state, as you put it:

First of all, it has been official Israeli policy to settle the West Bank - Palestinian land - with Israeli Jewish settlers (as opposed to Israeli arabs / muslims etc., who make up part of the population also). This has happenmed under all Israeli Prime Ministers since 1967 without exception. It has reached new high levels since around 2000, a year, which unsurpisingly enough coincides with the Intifada (uprising).

So how this works is that the Israeli governemnt select a spot where they want to build a new town. It doesn't matter that Palestinains might have their homes or their farms there, or even that it's someone else's country. The bulldozers arrive in, the houses are demolished. The olive trees are uprooted, the farms destroyed. The Palestinains are turned out of their homes at gunpoint -literally. Then a new town is built there for the Israeli settlers. Where these towns are not provided with a proper sewage system (not always an easy task in a semi-arid region) the waste and effluent is simply allowed to escape into the surrounding Palestinian land - with dire consequences for health and agriculture. A network of roads is then built to link the various settlements. Palestinians are not allowed to travel on these roads, only Israeli Jews. Since I know you are going to find it difficult to appreciate the racism involved, jut try to imagine the situation were reversed. Israel controls all the borders / exits to the West Bank, including those bordering with Jordan. Any Palestinians wishing to export their produce - olives, oranges, whatever, must go througha bewildering maze of bureaucratic procedures to acquire the correct permit from the occupying Israeli authorities. By the time these permits -often witheld at whim - are granted, it's usually too late and the produce has gone rotten and is no longer fit to export. This has the effect of severely damaging the Palestinian economy (the effect desired by the Israelis, since it encouarges the Palestinians to leave).
Curently the Palestinain authorities are under a boycott because the Palestinians decided they wanted Hamas to represent them. Now before you might rush to state the obvious, that Hamas wants to see Israel 'wiped off the map', just remember that a) Israel wants to see Palestine wiped off the map, the Palestinians expelled and Palestine annexed to form a part of Israel and b) of the two countries, Israel has far more of the resources with which to do it: Hamas don't have anywhere near the number of soldiers, guns, rockets etc., and none of the tanks, planes. So the chances of Hamas wiping Israel off the map are pretty slim, whereas Israel is already starting to wipe Palestine off the map by settling it and driving off the Palestinian natives. Now, I'm sure you can understand that easily enough, it's how the USA was settled.

Most of these settlers are decent enough souls, economic necessity makes the obnoxious choice of taking someone else's land less repugnant. The Israeli government provides many incentives to settlers. Many of these might much prefer not to be forced into such an unjust situation if they had the choice financially (which still doesn't excuse it - we are all free agents at the end of the day). But some settlers - the religious fundamentalists - are different. These believe in their 'divine right' to take over what they see as the Promised Land (though this is actually Samaria - not historically even part of Judea). These actually attack Palestinians, shooting up and petrol bombing their houses (e.g the town of Hebron) safe in the knowledge that the Israeli Army is standing by to protect them. The Palestinians are put under random curfews, which might last for any length of time. One ex-Israeli soldier told of how one night he was on patrol, heard a noise like drilling in a house. Calling a colleague, he went to investigate. He found an Israeli settler knocking a hole from his living room into the shop of a Palestinian next door (it was in the middle of the night). This settler entered the shop, threw all the stuff out on the street and changed the locks on the door. Thus he had just enlarged his sitting room!

I could go on and on.... but I think you get the picture. No one could 'run' a country under such conditions of Occupation and settlement. You also mentioned money being 'smuggled in' by Hamas etc., (and I guess your implication is that all this money will be diverted to 'terrorism'). Don't forget that the current Palestinian authorities - Hamas - have been under sanctions and so no money / aid is getting to Palestine (though money flows quite freely to the Israeli state that's occupying them, but hell, who said this is a fair world??) so that's another reason the economy's not doing so well. The 'smuggled' money is mainly to pay salaries, run hospitals and schools etc., all of which have been hard hit by the Occupation.

The final nail in the coffin is the so-called security wall which snakes all round the bigger settlements, effectively making some 40% of Palestine / West Bank a part of Israel. Thus it is unlikely Palestinians will ever have a state of their own, as successive Israel governemnts have worked hard to make facts on the ground ensure otherwise.

I know this has gone a bit off the thread on 'realisations on Iraq' but I couldn't let that comment on Palestine pass, it's deeply unfair and ignorant (and I use the word only in the sense of 'not being educated on a topic' and not as an insult, which I hope you appreciate).