Greg Sheridan: The End is Nigh!

Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan has me aquiver with his apocalyptic prophecy of a mad, bad Ahmadinejad acquiring "a nuclear arsenal [which] encompasses the possibility of the destruction of us all." (Tehran on path to our destruction, The Australian, 18/2/10)

And you'd better believe him because, as the prophet explains, "[t]he truth is that history is littered with states behaving irrationally and pursuing irrational ends, and doing so in often destructive ways... Saddam Hussein was such a canny, realist calculator of the odds that his regime ended up gone and he ended up dead. It is intensely ahistorical to believe political regimes will always act according to Western conceptions of enlightened self-interest." (ibid)

Saddam? OK, he may have been as bad as Ahmadinejad, but was he as mad as Ahmadinejad? You see, back in 2003, "Greg Sheridan was a constant and loyal disseminator of the line that the Baghdad regime had WMDs and was prepared to use them. The fact that they hadn't been used early in the 2003 conflict was put down to the efficiency of the coalition forces in deploying 'its vast intelligence strength' ('without the presence of coalition forces it could have used WMDs easily'); and to Saddam Hussein's rational thinking ('Use of chemical weapons would therefore be little short of a suicide gesture'.)" (Americans try to psych rational opponent, The Australian, 22/3/03 - quoted in Getting the Story Straight: Greg Sheridan in the Shifting Moral Sands of Iraq, Martin Hirst & Robert Schutze)

Ah, but who remembers what "the most influential foreign affairs commentator in Australia*" was writing back then? Certainly not Australia's "most influential foreign affairs commentator." [*According to The Australian's website]

Yes folks, it's all doom and gloom from hereon in: "Stand by for some bad news. No, I mean really bad news. The world is not going to apply crippling sanctions to Iran. Even if it did, Iran would not be deterred from developing nuclear weapons."

The only ray of hope, it seems, would be the roar of Israeli F16s winging their way east: "The only way that Iran can be significantly delayed in its pursuit of nuclear weapons is through an Israeli air strike on its nuclear facilities." (Tehran on path to our destruction)

Wait a minute! Hold your horses! Put the sackcloth and ashes back in the box! Wasn't Australia's "most influential" once of the view that "Iraq remains the most likely source of WMDs for al-Qa'ida" (A threat we ignore at our peril, The Australian, 14/10/02)?