The American Spectator

Carole Graham /p> p> RHYMES WITH HOEDOWN br> Re: Jed Babbin’s Iran Showdown : /p> p>We’d better think long and hard about taking Babbin’s advice in “Iran Showdown.” What are the chances that we will inflict major damage on the Iranian facilities? I’m not a military expert, but judging from past attacks I would say the chances are not good. We would need faultless intelligence, when experience tells us it’s mostly faulty. Then we would need perfect execution, which never happens. The mostly likely outcome would be minor damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities. No one in the world would judge our attack as justified. Then what? Wait for more faulty intelligence to tell us that Iran is still on the path to a bomb? An aerial assault on Iran today would put us on the same path we followed with Iraq after the first Gulf war — sanctions, escalation, and then invasion strung out over a dozen years. If we’re not willing to put boots on the ground in Iran and chop off the tyrant’s head, and I’m not, then we need to find some more creative solutions to the problem. br> — Roger D. McKinney br> Broken Arrow, Oklahoma /p>

One of my biggest gripes in life is the fact that we keep sending in ground troops. We bombed Japan in WWII. It was done to stop a nasty war in its tracks, and save many lives on both sides. Since then, we have limited bombing and sent in a lot of ground troops. We don’t seem committed enough to bomb first and ask questions later. Civilian casualties are part of war. 9/11. If we must attack Iran, and we must, let’s get out all the good stuff and do it right. Civilians are working in those plants helping their tyrants set up this mess. And if we send in our troops to surgically remove the bad guys and leave the innocent civilians, we will be trying to sort the bastards out for eternity. Like we did in Nam and are doing in Iraq and just about every war before and in between. Enemy doesn’t have guts enough to wear a uniform and stand up and fight. Once our men are in, it is hard to back up and really bomb.

We were so close. Hanoi was just about ready to throw in the towel. Politicians grounded the 52’s and Hanoi was hidden behind American POWs. Hanoi knew public opinion here at home was siding with them.