Religion is Evil!

Well, again, it's not really "allowed" if you do what you want and no one is able to stop you. The "international Community" has no enforcement mechanism. UN mandates and resolutions aren't even binding on member states. The sole purpose of the UN is to get states together at the table to talk. The flip side of that is, if you don't like what the other guy has to say, you can't really do anything about it.In a society with no police, "allowable by law" is meaningless. The UN is not the world's police. Well, yeah. I certainly think they are. The question is, what does forbidden actually mean when the rules themselves give no meaningful penalty for violation?It's insufficient simply to point out that Iran's development of nuclear weapons puts them in violation of the NPT. That's a justification for action, but on its own it has little meaning. The question is - how shall we respond to Iran's development of nuclear weapons? Sure, I'd prefer to believe that the future has a lower likelihood of nuclear exchange than a higher one. And it's certainly the case that predicting the future is a bit of a mug's game. I can only observe and arrive at my own conclusions, same as you. It doesn't bother me that we may arrive at different ones. Plenty of people meet those criteria and have never been the targets of Mossad. Even assuming the basest of motives for the actions of Mossad it's tough to see any reason they would assassinate someone except for a belief on their part that it served the interest of Israeli power.

"I am torn by war, I know little of why I am here. I only know not to separate myself from my gear. If I am to die, let it be for my brothers and no other." Salute.

"Due process" doesn't specify any particular process. A secret assassination court might very well fulfill the 5th Amendment, if it was established according to a law passed by Congress.

Sorting out right and wrong in those circumstances is so incredibly conflicting. I was fortunate in that in my military time I never had to think about it, and besides being 20 something and enamoured by airplanes I didn't think that deeply anyway.

As I said previously - I doubt that US constitution legally applies to assassins hired by the US in Iran to kill Iranians anyway.But those who point to the letter of a law like this are usually doing so to avoid adhering to the spirit of, or moral reasons for, the law.

And the counterpoint to this is that I see no reason to assume that the interests of Israeli power align with our own except in some extreme hypothetical examples.I don't know all the details, but it wouldn't be the first time Mossad have been suspected of assassinating a nuclear scientist. Back in 1980 there was Yehia El-Mashad who was working with the Iraqi nuclear program when he died in suspicious circumstances (and an associated prostitute called Marie-Claude Magal who was allegedly a witness to some aspect of the plot, also suffered a tragic 'accident'). I don't think any evidence has ever surfaced over the last thirty years that he was developing nuclear weapons or even making weapons grade material. The French seemed to have a good relationship with the man.

Do you think that those who did the killing are justified in taking on the role of being not only the "the world's police" - but also the world's judge jury and executioner?Do you think in the absence of a world police force it is a case of every nation for itself and anything-goes on that basis?

Let's not confuse every defensive system with the absurdity that is SDI. There are systems that have some effectiveness against crude technology weapon. Nothing 100% effective, true, but such systems can work well enough to make a first strike a relatively poor option, for countries with only a few missiles. Why the condescension? Do I have a reputation for idiocy that arrived in this discussion before I did?Countries who are developing nuclear weapons have generally also developed missile capability at the same time. We should expect Iran to do the same thing. More name calling? Labeling them as the 'Nookler' axis of evil? Sanctions?I'm suggesting that when countries develop offensive weapons, be they pointy sticks, or nuclear weapons, that other countries don't suddenly acquire a moral imperative to invade them. It appears to me that Iran is correct about that. They might well take the NK approach of stalling and pretending to bargain for as much as they can get, and then deploying weapons anyway.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Maybe, but then if you're going to insist that "due process of law" has to mean "exactly how we treat criminals in the US", then every other country's legal proceedings are illegitimate and we must start a world war to empty all foreign prisons, right?I don't think it's always a stance of moral cowardice to assert that the protections of the US constitution apply only to Americans; in most cases that's a recognition that other countries actually do have the equivalent sovereignty to govern their affairs as they see fit - not necessarily as we see fit. I think you can allow for different countries to solve problems in different ways without devolving into full-on cultural relativism.

You're still stuck on this "missile" paradigm when it's far more likely that Iran - eventually - would attempt to deploy their nuclear weapon as a vehicle bomb or even a "suitcase nuke". I mean, the two nuclear weapons used in wartime were deployed as unguided bombs from airplanes, and that's only because you can't drive from Los Alamos to Japan. But you can drive from Tehran to Tel Aviv. Please allow me to apologize - condescension was not my aim. Frequently I try to break what I see as blinders made of unchallenged assumptions by means of stark questioning. But I guess that can seem condescending, too.All I'm saying is, the warhead of a ballistic missile is probably the least likely attack vector for an Iranian nuclear weapon. I think just about everybody agrees that Iran is going to do the same thing with their nuclear weapons as they do with their conventional weapons - supply them to jihadist terrorist groups as a form of proxy warfare against Israel and the US. We're already doing sanctions; we probably doing the most sanctions we can do without causing Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. And, frankly, given the massive devastation and loss of life caused by a decade of sanctions in Iraq (as well as their complete uselessness in actually extracting concessions) I'm far from convinced that sanctions are a more humane alternative than assassinating a small number of nuclear scientists.

No I'm not stuck on that point. But you did ask about it in your response which implied that I was an idiot for even mentioning anti-missiles. I can scarcely be blamed for responding further.
For the record, yes, I do know the difference between a nuke and a missile. Whereas killing Iran's nuclear scientists is unlikely to have such a result? I'm not convinced. That's fine. I agree with you on that point. But reasonable people might disagree that such an explanation is enough to justify an assassination policy. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : Removed snippiness. Crashfrog has already apologized.

Except that recognizing the sovereignty of countries on this issue isn't really our policy. We do expect our government t mouth off about human rights issues, and intellectual property laws, and due process in other countries. Sometimes we even invade countries in part because of how they treat their own people.

Yes, but we've yet to invade France (where they need no warrant to search your home) for violations of the Fourth Amendment, for instance, or Finland for not requiring that arrestees be Mirandized. Just because we do something in a particular way here doesn't mean that it's the definition of "due process."

You can't search someone's home without a warrant in France, except under a State of Emergency.

You betray your lack of knowledge of nuclear weapons. The so-called "suitcase nuke" is not a simple device; it takes decades of research to miniaturize a nuclear weapon to the point it takes up little enough space to fit in even a non-commercial vehicle (you cannot actually carry a "suitcase nuke" like a suitcase; they're small, not light, you could put one in the trunk of a car or in an SUV. Remember, it's still filled with plutonium, which has a density of 19.74 g/cm^3, as compared to lead, which is "only" 11.34 g/cm^3, and you need enough for critical mass and the mechanism that initiates the reaction...). I'm not even positive that Iran possesses the industrial and research capacity to pull it off any time in the foreseeable future.More pointedly, a nuke carried in a vehicle like a car bomb runs some very significant risks. You need to actually deploy such a device to a target worth hitting, which means driving it across borders and risking normal police stops. The weapon would almost certainly need to be carried in a full tractor-trailer, unless you're looking multiple decades into the future; those sorts of vehicles need to go through checkpoints for customs.No, missiles are actually far more likely as a delivery system; Iran doesn't require ICBM capability to hit Israel. I believe they have already test-fired ground-based missiles that have a projected range capable of reaching Israel. Their task at this point is developing a nuclear weapon, and then miniaturizing it sufficiently to fit in a warhead that can be mounted on one of those missiles. Nuclear weapons are extremely heavy (being based on Uranium or Plutonium) and are usually quite large when first developed.ICBM-interception missiles would be useless - we're talking basically about a glorified SCUD launcher, like what we saw in Desert Storm. PATRIOT missile batteries can intercept a fair number of those types of missiles if deployed (and I would imagine we would do exactly that, or sell some to Israel, if Iran becomes nuclear-capable). This means Iran would need a large first-strike capability to ensure that any targets will actually be hit. And, of course, firing a medium-range missile like that would be an act of war that would result in an immediate response, even if we didn't know the attack was nuclear yet. From both the US and Israel. And Israel has nuclear weapons. And Israel is very trigger-happy.The difficulty isn't developing nuclear weapons, nor in making a rocket. The difficulty is miniaturizing a nuclear weapon so that it will fit on the rocket and not interfere with its range or flight profile, because a nuclear warhead is so different from conventional payloads. And good luck getting a nuclear weapon that far. It's easy to sneak an individual with a little equipment past customs checkpoints. Nuclear weapons are somewhat more difficult.