Iran War Clock Set At Ten Minutes To Midnight 315
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."
Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Framing? (Score:5, Insightful)
All we are saying..... (Score:4, Insightful)
is give peace a chance.
So in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
The chance of going to war with Iran is a 9.5 based on a scale from 9 to 10.
Can I get that in Libraries of Congress? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Doesn't seem to be any outrage here (Score:4, Insightful)
I assume none of you tech types are actually going to die in Oil War III?
And More Framing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Student of American History (Score:5, Insightful)
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 no? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Doesn't seem to be any outrage here (Score:5, Insightful)
you cannot have war profiteering (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do *not* follow Israel to Masada (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Senseless gimmick (Score:4, Insightful)
Senseless gimmick is right. Jesus christ. You can't assign a percentage figure to the chance that a particular war will break out. It's infantile. You just can't quantify it. It's all guesswork. Most of it is breathtakingly uninformed guesswork.
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Fascist Theocracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow your ignorance of the Iranian people and culture is mind boggling, that you actually believe what you wrote is terrifying.
Re:you cannot have war profiteering (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure you can. You just need the threat of a war, which will let you justify designing and building all sorts of new weapons, hiring new advisers, conducting field exercises, etc. You need a war every decade or two so that the threats seem valid, but we've already had plenty, so there's no need for another. All the profiteers need right now is saber-rattling, and they've got that in spades.
Re:That is one hell of a complicated way of saying (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Student of American History (Score:2, Insightful)
Sadam was killing a hell of a lot of people, though, to keep control. And he was fond of torture - he'd torture people to death just for fun, and his followers seemed keen on it as well. So compared to the status quo ante, the ongoing civilian death count wasn't so much. Compared to the casualties in most wars, the civilian death count was nothing.
And, hey, it worked. Democracy in Iraq, Arab Spring, too early to say how it will all end but this democracy fad might just catch on.
Re:Student of American History (Score:4, Insightful)
It might be your nature. It isn't mine. It isn't human nature. And there's everything wrong with it.
Re:Framing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't we have a left wing liberal as a president right now?
You're f-in kidding, right?
Re:Framing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't we have a left wing liberal as a president right now?
It hurts too much take this as a joke, so I'm just going to say no, we have a moderate conservative as president right now.
If you do not like who is running the country and making the policies, you can vote them out of office.
Not really. Every election comes down to two candidates who, on the middle east, differ only in terms of whether they want to start wars or not. AIPAC and other pro-war interests are too strong to allow anyone into the short list who will say things like "The Israeli government is the aggressor in this situation, not Iran." The powers that be will not give us that option.