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Iran War Clock Set At Ten Minutes To Midnight
Hugh Pickens writes "The Atlantic has assembled a high-profile panel of experts, including a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran, a Senior Vice President at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Deputy Head of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, and a military correspondent at Haaretz, to periodically estimate the chances of conflict with Iran. The Iran War Clock is not designed to be pro-war or anti-war. Instead, the purpose is to estimate the chances of conflict in the hope of producing a more informed debate. Each panelist makes an individual estimate about the percentage chance of war and we report the average score and based on this number, the Iran War Clock is adjusted so that the hand moves closer to, or further away from, midnight. 'On the one hand, the panelists are highly knowledgeable. On the other hand, there are sufficient members of the panel that any individual error should not have an overly negative effect on the aggregate prediction.' If there is a zero percent chance of war, the clock hand is at 20 minutes to midnight. Each extra 5 percent chance of war moves the hand one minute closer to midnight. 'We're humble about the accuracy of this prediction, which is really a collective "gut-check" feeling. But it may be closer to the truth than the alternative forecasts available.' The panel's first estimate puts the odds of war in the next twelve months at 48 percent, consistent with predictions market Intrade.com, which estimates a 40 percent chance of a U.S./Israeli strike by December 2012."
Hearing the ticking of a clock and seeing a deadline approaching always has a calming effect!
I'm sure this will be taken every bit as seriously as the Doomsday Clock.
This is possibly the most deliberately confusing way to try to explain our chances of war to anyone. Twenty minutes to midnight means a 0% chance? Why are we restricting a scale designed to have 720 minutes to just 20? This is just designed to scare people (for whatever reason) into thinking war is more probable than it really is. I have no problem with the panel, just the manner in which they displayed their results.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
is give peace a chance.
The chance of going to war with Iran is a 9.5 based on a scale from 9 to 10.
WTF - a zero chance of war means 11:40pm. Shouldn't that be closer to 12:01 AM? I mean 10 minutes to midnight (when, I presume, we launch the pumpkins and somebody gets caught wearing rags instead of a ball gown) sounds a lot worse when compared to a 24 hours day than to a 20 minute window.
Threat Level for the day: Chartreuse
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I assume none of you tech types are actually going to die in Oil War III?
This (and the Doomsday Clock) are just stupid gimmicks. They get in the way of facts. It's just lousy journalism.
Just state the percentage chance -- percentages are clear. Even if they are just probabilities and do not necessarily reflect what will happen in any way.
Considering Iran's leadership, anything could happen at any time. Using a retarded clock with a deliberately confusing scale isn't going to make that any clearer.
This is possibly the most deliberately confusing way to try to explain our chances of war to anyone. Twenty minutes to midnight means a 0% chance? Why are we restricting a scale designed to have 720 minutes to just 20? This is just designed to scare people (for whatever reason) into thinking war is more probable than it really is. I have no problem with the panel, just the manner in which they displayed their results.
I thought the same thing. Why not simply say "48% chance of war by December 2012"? Another thing I found quite humorous was that this is titled "The Iran War Clock" which made me think 'damn those war mongering religious fundamentalists' but then when I get to the end of the summary I see they reference a "U.S./Israeli strike" which makes me think 'perhaps this should be called The U.S./Isreali War Clock'? I mean, is this clock about Iran nuking a neighbor or Israel? Or is this clock about the US and Israel tag-teaming on Iran? Or is it a split and, if so, what's that split on the 48%?
And yet another peculiar thing was that I searched around for the panel's positions and stances of each member in order to understand why this war clock is now at ten minutes and how this is any different than, say, the past twenty years of Iran. It's a coin flip that war will break out by the end of the year? Hasn't this always been sort of the sentiment with Iran? What makes this so different now, specifically?
My work here is dung.
'We're humble about the accuracy of this prediction, which is really a collective "gut-check" feeling
Actually, we asked two guys if there would be a war. One said "yes", the other "no". So we were going to say there was a 50% chance, but then we changed it to 48% because that sounded more scientific.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
except the US has now been at war for almost 11 years and most people are tired of it and the 5000 or so dead soldiers. there is close to 0 public support for another war
and the US army isn't ready for it either
How about we just stop playing world police? I don't want to send our youngsters out there to die in another shithole just because of overly paranoid people in government.
Leave Iran alone. If they actually *ATTACK* our allies, *THEN* I can understand going to war. But let's not fucking START one.
It was a Bush underling, Jed Babbin. Schwarzkopf was honored as a Honorary First-Class Private in the French Foreign Legion in 1991. France sent 18,000 troops to that war.
Every Israeli is require to serve in the military (or equivalent public service). And when those soldiers finish basic, they do it on top of Masada. Pretty powerful message. Better to take on the Roman Empire and be completely wiped out than to compromise, even in the slightest.
If Israel wants to jump off the cliff and start a war, that's their business. If they would rather all die than to compromise with the Palestinians or Iranians in any way, that's their call. Build all the provocative settlements on Palestinian land you like, put up more walls to ghettoize them even more, kill all the Iranian nuclear scientists you like. Keep being pricks all you want.
But this American doesn't want to follow them off the cliff that they seem DETERMINED to jump off of. I don't want to see my President start World War III out of some foolish bullshit belief that Israel is looking out for ANYONE else but Israel, that we're BFF's. Find another way to get the Jewish vote, Mr. President.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I feel like you haven't been watching the republican preliminaries...
Eh... it could go either way (waggling hand).
The world isn't about right and wrong and anyway, what you consider right and wrong is considered rather silly by 6 billion people. It is about trying to ensure that tomorrow won't be a hell of a lot worse then today. And a Muslim run world would be a hell of a lot worse? Want to proof me wrong? Reverse the migration streams. As bad as some claim the west is, a lot of people would risk a dangerous crossing in tiny boats for a living as toilet cleaners rather then be anywhere else.
What does migration have got to do with it? Libya used to help Europe in stemming the tide of immigrants from further south. Further uproar in that area will not help stem further migration, it was one of the reasons actions against Libya were opposed in the west by a lot of people (because they were for peace you thought? How silly).
Iran is a lynch pin in a very complex scenario where all the actors and their lines are unknown and performed in the dark for a blind audience. You could say it is playing a game but what game? With what rules and with which cards? The west has learned the hard way that enforcing its values on another culture doesn't work, Iraq and Afghanistan are disaster areas. Libya is too early to tell so going into Iran is unlikely be a quick easy win. But as long as Iran remains, Syria remains. Sudan remains, Northern Nigeria remains... gutting Iran would send a strong message but is also unacceptable... so what to do?
Nothing? Then you keep having to react to whatever it pulls next... Iran not hostile? Yeah, the mass murdering in Sudan and Nigeria are just for laughs. Iran knows Muslims soldiers have the military value of they regimental donkey so they fight their wars by proxy.
What do YOU propose is done in Syria? Nothing? Deny anything is wrong? Somehow blame it all on Israel? Well nothing you can do it about it without upsetting Iran. So thousands of Muslims die at the hand of Muslims and you do nothing? Speak up when you say that... no, that is not acceptable either.
Politicians are often said to think as this, "people say something must done, this is something, so it must be done". That is true enough... but people keep shouting "something must be done". YOU come up with something better.
Ideally, war should be the last answer, it often is. The pity is that it often also is the only answer. Will Iran be attacked by the end of the year? No idea. To many interest, not always as you expect, many conflicting and a lot of actors who are pulling unseen strings. It is not just about testing the west by proxy, those pulling those strings would also not want to be seen to fail again, so they might force their puppet to relax. (If Iran backed by China fails and the Chinese economy suffers are the oil now moves west again without China buying it cheap thanks to the Iran embargo limitting competition for it would the Chinese people realize they can rebel as well) Overly complex but that is how it is all connected.
War happens when those pulling the wires loose control of them. It has been happenig quite a lot really and by definition of loosing control, you can't predict it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Just in time for daylight savings time, after which the clock will be 10 minutes until 1AM, crisis averted.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
with out new wars.
What about Iran's continuing threats to destroy Israel, not just the supposedly mistranslated rhetorical device "wipe from map" but also the very real and unmistakable threats to destroy the country? What about their continued stockpiling of advanced missiles in Lebanon, manned by Iranian technicians, with the sole purpose of bombing Israel from just over the border, in direct violation of the 2006 UN-mediated armistice? What about Iran's continued sponsorship of terroristic activities all over the world? The large number of American soldiers blown up by Iranian-supplied bombs and armor-piercing ordnance in Iraq?
You can cluck about peace all you want, and both a mercantile/high tech Israel and a war-weary U.S. would love it to be a peaceful world, but unfortunately the real world simply is not so, and Iran least of all. Most of the Iranian people doubtlessly want peace just as we do, but they are ruled by crazy mullahs who have an apocalyptic vision of a golden cloud over Jerusalem. They are planning to nuke Israel, and idiots in the West ignore this at their own peril. Not only would Israel undoubtedly retaliate and destroy most of Iran's cities, but the conflagration would probably spread. Tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people are going to die if we don't stop them, by sanctions or by espionage or by outright war.
My gut feeling is that while the Israelis are talking war, they are actually planning more devious steps to halt the Iran nuclear project. For one thing, they have hinted all along that they have resources deeply embedded in Iran who have been sabotaging the nuclear projects since the 1980s. This may be a kind of disinformation, but Israel has thousands of Iranian immigrants to draw on, who are fluent in Farsi and the culture.
Probably, Mossad is hoping to detonate a dirty nuke of some sort deep inside the enrichment facility that would render the place unusable, kill minimal bystanders, and set the Iranians back by several years. It would be hard to trace the cause, and Iran would be faced with either admitting it was building nukes, or else try to cover it up while trying to rebuild, a daunting prospect given the tightening noose of sanctions. This would be the most appealing outcome to the situation.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Iran has been at war with us since the revolution.
More like America has been at war with Iran since 1953, when the CIA overthrew their popular democratically elected leader for oil profits. Learn some history. The 1979 revolution was payback after years of being under an American puppet leader.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Wow your ignorance of the Iranian people and culture is mind boggling, that you actually believe what you wrote is terrifying.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It might be your nature. It isn't mine. It isn't human nature. And there's everything wrong with it.
Israel will likely move sooner rather than later - they have no desire to get nuked, and no illusions about Iran's attitude towards them. I'm not sure we'll be a part of it. There's no real need for boots on the ground in Iran: the government is quite dependent on shoveling oil money to the citizens to keep control, that if someone bombed the oil platforms the government would collapse. And if that happens, it won't be $5/gallon gas at the pumps that Obama has to worry about in November.
Israel has plenty of military power for this. I'd like to think we'd go along as a show of support, but I wouldn't bet on it with the current administration (has Obama ever visited Israel as president?).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So you care as much about the old guy who just this second passed away (and another this second, and yet another this second) as you would (did?) about your own father passing?
Either your an emotionless psychopath, or you must spend every waking moment in mourning. The rest of us care more about people the closer we are to them. We love our immediate family more than our friends, our friends more than acquaintances, acquaintances more than friends of friends, friends of friends more than a random guy across town, a random guy across town more than a random guy across the country, a random guy across the country more than a random guy across the world, a random guy across the world more than a random guy from a century ago, and a random guy from a century ago more than a random guy from a millennium ago.
If you want to pretend to be a perfectly rational robot, aren't the deaths of the people killed during the sack of Babylon in the 16th century BC just as sad as those of the people killed in the recent midwest tornadoes? Of course, no actual human being would feel that way, but if it makes you feel special, go on pretending.
they have no desire to get nuked
Fortunately for them Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program, just a civilian nuclear energy program. Even Israeli intelligence feels attacking Iran is a bad idea. Though, it'd be real good for the military industrial complex and the financiers.
I'd like to think we'd go along as a show of support
Really, we should kill people in far off lands who don't threaten us because some war-mongers are creating propaganda about fake weapons of mass destruction? Didn't we just learn this lesson?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
That's pretty much the point. No matter how you look at it, this way of depicting things says war is inevitable. Clocks are intended to move forward. Eventually we're going to get to midnight.
yvan eht nioj
They are only negotiating the dates and times. Before or after the election.
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