With three exclamation points, yet. The local provincialism for that would be a double-dog dare--or more accurately, perhaps, a triple-dog dare, although I have never heard it expressed quite that way.

This piece of bravado refers to a two-part observation, concerning both Iran's nascent nuclear program and its ongoing murder of American military personnel. As to the former, I will defer for the moment; it being obvious that no amount of evidence, including Iran's constant stonewalling of the IAEA, would be sufficient to convince you of their nuclear-weaponry intentions. As the singing duo, Simon and Garfunkel, sang in "The Boxer" about 40 years ago: "A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest."

As to the latter point, I would suggest a recent Hot Air blog, which notes that "(a) Hezbollah officials have already been captured inside Iraq, (b) members of the Mahdi Army have admitted to training with Hezbollah, (c) per Petraeus’s testimony before Congress, Iran is trying to build an Iraqi version of Hezbollah, and (d) according to military sources quoted last month in the NYT, Hezbollah’s training Shiite militiamen in Iran." And although I am confident that this, too, will be dismissed out of hand, I will provide you (and others, interested in the matter) with the pertinent link: Hot Air inside Iraq

You are suggesting, then, that the possibility that Iran is marking time, as it busily works to enhance its military might, is roughly equivalent to the possibility that "the sun wont rise tomorrow," "the world will end tomorrow," or that "the US will nuke Russia" in the foreseeable future. Is that about right?

Even if you believe that Saddam never possessed WMD--and the absense of evidence is not the evidence of absence, as the old saying goes--the most damning case you can possibly make about the Bush Administration's proclamations in this regard is that they were honestly mistaken. Although I have heard the silly mantra, "Bush lied, people died," ad nauseum, I have yet to see or hear even the flimsiest piece of evidence in support of this position.

Now let me get this straight: Iran will not fully cooperate with the IAEA, making it impossible for that body to compile the evidence as regarding that suspect country's nuclear program; and since the pertinent evidence remains hidden, it would be pure "speculation and hearsay" to conclude that Iran has embarked upon a nuclear-weapons program. Is that essentially your argument?