Iran says will not beg for its atomic rights

Well, that sort of settles it. The big guy has weighed in on nukular power.

Iran will not beg world powers for its right to develop nuclear technology and has shown it will not retreat from the "field of danger" to protect such rights, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday.

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Just read the NPT. Here is one of the salient points.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also referred to as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), obligates the five acknowledged nuclear-weapon states (the United States, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, France, and China) not to transfer nuclear weapons, other nuclear explosive devices, or their technology to any non-nuclear-weapon state. Non-nuclear-weapon States Parties undertake not to acquire or produce nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices.

Of course, the US has already broken this treaty with India, but that's beside the point.

The NPT is the most widely accepted arms control agreement. As of early 2000 a total of 187 states were Parties to the NPT. Cuba, Israel, India, and Pakistan were the only states that were not members of the NPT.

So Iran has signed the NPT and is perfectly within its rights to produce nukular power plants. Unless and until they start producing weapons grade materials, they are not doing anything wrong.

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Who ya gonna believe?

Its your call. Do you believe an insurgent group with ties to al-Qaeda or the US military?

An insurgent group linked to al-Qaida posted a Web video Friday showing what it said was the downing of a U.S. military helicopter this week. Seven Americans were killed in the crash.

The U.S. military has said it did not believe the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter was shot down in the crash Wednesday northwest of Baghdad.

But a U.S. official, who was not authorized to address the topic publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said "the video appears to be legitimate" - meaning that it shows a Sea Knight crashing.

The two-minute video - which says it shows the "downing of U.S. aircraft on Feb. 7" - shows a helicopter that appears to be a Sea Knight flying. An object trailing smoke is seen in the sky nearby, and then the craft bursts into orange and red flames, with a spray of debris emerging from it.

The linked site has the video, but I couldn't get it to work so omitted a link to it.

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