I really don't know where CarolC finds the spirit to keep trying to reason with utter morons. Loads of good stuff here from LH too, and a good post from Paul Burke (re the Kosovo precedent etc).

I likedbeardedbruce's reference to the insoucience of Europe towards its oil dependency. He probably thinks the US can survive on its indigenous reserves until alternatives come along. Fat chance of that, even after Alaska's been destroyed.

Best of all was Teribus sneering at Russia's concern to feel safe - just as details were being finalised for America to put missiles in Poland precisely to "feel safe." (JFK nearly started WW3 when the USSR tried that in Cuba, which is much farther from the US than Poland is from Russia.) That's been a long-established plan, as pdq may care to note, since he thinks it was dreamt up the other day. But then pdq knows that Iran is a nuclear power, or seeks to be, despite a report to the contrary from his own country's intelligence services. (OK, those intelligence services have been wrong before, and famously, but does pdq know better?)