Iran

I usually try to keep my political ranting segregated to places like bars, but the stories I've been reading over the last week from back home have me scared, quite frankly. Living overseas during the buildup to the Iraq war wasn't fun. If the rumors about US plans to attack Iran have any basis in fact, the protests resulting from such action will be even worse. People overseas are much more predisposed to anti-Americanism now than they were in 2002. And if, god forbid, we were stupid enough to use nukes, well, I shouldn't need to point out that the Japanese have particularly strong feelings about the use of nuclear weapons (so much so that there are ongoing protests about plans to replace the Kitty Hawk with a Nimitz-class nuclear carrier at Yokosuka). It wouldn't be pretty here.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has more about the limited effectiveness of bunker-busters (Flash animation).

And if people can't understand why Iran could possibly be so deadset on aquiring the bomb, maybe this graphic will help. US flags denote countries where we have military basing and/or flyover rights.



There. I apologize for my ranting. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Japan-blogging.