A Belgian Tervuren Investigation

The Belgian Tervuren investigation, Part 1 – early days

I have tended to think one would be better off with a breed that for some reason has launched off into a non-show-ring effort of some sort. The “Working Airedale” people seem to have done that. Also, Germans who raise German Shepherds for protection-work rather than the show ring. I have heard, but don’t know whether it is true, that German German-Shepherds are much healthier than American German-Shepherds.

Also, The Dobermann (with 2 “n’s”) signifies the German version of the Doberman. I contacted one of those 2-N breeders and the man I spoke to was rude and insulting. He described his dogs as better in every way than the American Doberman, and there was no point in comparing a Ridgeback to a Dobermann – that was just dumb. Good bye! Well, good bye then.

Dogs raised solely for hunting like many of the breeds in the South might be good as well. I took a serious look at the Plott hound at one point, but I could find no breeders outside of the South and I wouldn’t be willing to drive all that way from California. I liked everything I read about the Plott hound except its “bell-like” bay.

Some breeds that have been newly added to the AKC registry like the Anatolian Shepherd seem to be very healthy. Breeds in the process of being added like The Thai Ridgeback might be very healthy as well.

When I was considering the very unpopular Irish Terrier, I discovered that it had very little genetic disease. I looked long and hard at that breed, but in the end thought it might be a little too small for some of my outings, and it was definitely too pugnacious. It was at least as pugnacious as the American Staffordshire Terrier, but the Amstaff has the bad reputation while the Irish Terrier does not – at least not amongst the general public.

When I began investigating the Belgian Tervuren, I was initially worried about its having become extinct. That is, it had gone out of existence but was brought back by crossing the Malinois, the Belgian Shepherd and the Laekenois in order to get the Tervuren look back. I thought the gene pool of the revived Tervuren might be dangerously small; such that any serious genetic disease might occur more frequently than if the gene pool was larger. What they did to get the Tervuren back reminded me of what was done to revive the Irish Wolfhound, but at first everything I read indicated that the Tervuren resurrection was a greater success.

People who like the Airedale and the Amstaff often like the idea that these are tough dogs that can whip other dogs. I don’t. I would not feel relaxed walking either of those breeds next to another large dog. My girls are bad enough, but not because they want to fight. Ginger wants to play and Sage just gets agitated. But the Tervuren is given 3 checks (by the Coile Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds) in regard to “friendliness toward dogs.” The RR has 2 checks, the Airedale, Irish, and Amstaff 1 check. On the other hand, the Tervuren is given the highest “protection ability” rating: 5 checks (as is the Amstaff). The RR & Airedale all get 4 checks.

At this point I thought the Tervuren would be less of a problem around other dogs (than the RR, Irish, Airedale, or Amstaff) but would provide a better protection level of all but the Amstaff. And it could do that without having the Amstaff’s “bad rep.”

The Belgian Tervuren Investigation, Part 2, Epilepsy

But then I ran across the following alarming information:

http://www.abtc.org/index.php/find-a-tervuren-mainmenu-93/frequent-questions-mainmenu-276/25-health-concerns

This article includes the following:

“Idiopathic Epilepsy occurs in substantially all purebreds and mixed breeds. Idiopathic Epilepsy is defined as ‘repeated seizures of unknown cause’. Known causes of epilepsy can include heat, poison, head trauma, infections, parasites, diabetes, and birth defects.

“The idiopathic condition is found with regularity, but not great frequency, in the Belgian Tervuren. The percentage may be as low as 2% or as high as 30%. We guess the actual numbers to be somewhere in-between. It usually does not surface until between 2 and 5 years of age. Typically, epileptic seizures occur once every several months, and will last about 5 minutes, although some more frequent and severe cases have been reported. This is probably considered the Tervuren's most troublesome health problem.

“The condition, or something that causes an individual to be susceptible, appears to be inherited in some Tervuren. The mode of inheritance of epilepsy isn't understood, which makes it difficult to eradicate. The ABTC is aggressively sponsoring veterinary research that, hopefully, will provide a better understanding of the nature and frequency of this threat.”

The Belgian Tervuren Investigation, Part 3, Thinking about it

In evaluting a piece of equipment for an aircraft, two considerations were primary, 1) the failure rate and 2) the significance of the failure. An Engineer could not have gotten by with such sloppy thinking as to say the failure rate may be as low as 2% or as high as 30%. It was my job on the C-17 to question engineers about such matters. “As high as 30%,” I would have yelled? “That’s unacceptable.”

If he had responded by saying that his best guess was that “the actual numbers” are someplace between “2% and 30%, I would have told him he was speaking nonsense. You build an aircraft with “worst case scenarios” in mind. “What happens if this has this problem 30% of the time,” I would have demanded?

“Well,” the engineer would have had to say, “it will fall to the ground, froth at the mouth, urinate on the floor, but not to worry, this failure will only last about 5 minutes.”

That level of failure would not have been acceptable in an aircraft and it isn’t really acceptable in a Belgian Tervuren. The Tervuren is supposed to be a top-of-the-line protection dog. But how well will he be able to do his job if he is frothing on the floor?

I looked for more information on this epilepsy problem and found on a Belgian Tervuren site the following: “Epilepsy genetic marker study--Researchers at UC-Davis are working to identify the major gene effecting epilepsy in Tervs. We hope this will lead to a genetic screening test for epilepsy!”

Part 4, The difficulty of finding a healthy Tervuren -- or any other dog

I am not now, nor have I ever been a dog breeder, but I have dealt with many of them in the process of attempting to acquire healthy dogs. I was initially as naïve as most prospective dog buyers. A breeder does not typically volunteer negative information about the dogs she has produced. Unless you study, you find this negative information out the hard way when the dog you purchased develops a genetic disease. I had a German Shorthaired Pointer that became deaf and blind. I had one Rhodesian Ridgeback that was way up in the vicious range and another that developed cancer and Cushing’s disease.

As I contemplated buying another Ridgeback I questioned a great number of breeders about the health of their dogs, especially about what they were doing about genetic disease. I didn’t begin this questioning until after I had researched the matter with a great number of books and articles. George Padgett’s Control of Canine Genetic Diseases is a prime example of what I studied before bringing the matter to the RR folks. What happened next was very like what I imagined happened to critics of Stalin. Of course these RR folks couldn’t actually send me off to a Gulag, but they dearly wished they could.

Not all breeders opposed me. Some contacted me privately to say they agreed with me. Some even steered me to breeders that had a reputation for producing healthy dogs “in their lines.” So I ended up buying two Ridgebacks from a breeder who had been “lucky” in that regard. As it is, one of those Ridgebacks, Sage, developed a severe allergy. The other was recently diagnosed as having “Gingival Hyperplasia.” These aren’t major genetic diseases, and I will indeed consider myself “lucky” if these are the only diseases they develop. But Sage, the one who has the severe allergy” is only 4 ½; while Ginger, the one with “Gingival Hyperplasia” is 6 ½. A lot of time remains before they will be considered old.

So, knowing what I know (from my investigation) would I buy a Belgian Tervuren – even though in other respects it seems like an excellent choice for my circumstances? No, not unless I learned something from a breeder (assuming I believed her) which countered what I had read. If she told me that she had no Epilepsy in her line, that might cause me to reconsider the Tervuren, but as it is, I could not bring myself to buy a dog knowing it was possible that 30% of all Tervuren pups would develop epilepsy. I’m better off sticking with allergies and Gingival Hyperplasia.

Vets and bureaucracies

Someone who runs a Rhodesian Ridgeback discussion group and knows quite a bit about them read my blog note on Ginger’s current vet adventures and was confused by it. I tried to make this event clear, but it doesn’t surprise me that I failed. And I didn’t even include everything in my blog note about this vet episode.

I didn’t mention that another thing the vet was to do was remove a callous from one of Ginger’s elbows. The vet and her assistant during the examination said that many dogs get calluses on their elbows. I was there when the tech asked the vet whether to charge the normal amount for such a removal or something less. He came back in and said they would charge me $20 for this removal. But after I got Ginger back and read the material they sent home with me, the description of this callus removal sounded very like the description I once read about Trooper’s cancer. And the boilerplate I read about this callus (mass) removal didn’t preclude cancer. But I noticed the charge remained $20, even though they would have been justified in charging me more had they run into complications.

So what was all that about? Was the initial examination wrong or did they discover something new during the “excision” of the mass (callus)? Or is this just a bunch of weasel-wording to protect themselves against a possible future law-suit. That is, suppose it was more than the vet told me during the examination. Suppose it turned out to be cancer and Ginger lost a leg. Would I not be upset? Would I not go back to this vet and say “you told me it was a callus and because you didn’t deal with it properly, she will be walking around on three legs for the rest of her life”?

I recently went in for some “follow-up in regard to some cataract surgery I had.” I had to sign disclaimers that warned me that this follow-up laser surgery might cause a whole long list of horrible things including permanent blindness. I asked the technician who had me sign this form how often these horrible things happened. He said he had never seen or heard of an incidence of any of them happening.

If in regard to my laser surgery I turned out to be the first case of everything going wrong and ended up blind, the ophthalmologist would be able to wave the form I signed in front of my blind eyes and say “look, you signed this form warning you that you might go blind.”

By the same token if the callus the vet charged me $20 to remove turned later into something more serious, she would be able to produce her copy of this form and show, right down at the bottom, that I had signed it. Even though I never read it until I got home, I could have right there in the office, with my groggy Ridgeback girl anxious to go home and the night clerk impatiently waiting. I could have read it there and not signed it, but then what?

Also, in regard to my complaint about my current vet’s bureaucratic approach to veterinarian medicine, someone who knew my history could remind me that I left my previous vet because she ran a chaotic office. I could not get anyone to answer my questions or deal properly with Sage’s problems. People do answer my questions at the new vet. The answers are not always correct, but they look me in the eye and say things. And, though I got a wrong answer about Ginger’s tooth removal, I’m sure I shall receive some sort of explanation next Thursday when the vet does a follow-up. So why don’t I just shut up? I will, probably right after this note.

Missile Defense of Central Europe?

http://email.capitolhillnewsonline.com/m/d85QdYoUIzv1TeR6SQlCRKY2GygndfuiQVVk6fFmaWUnv0wpjA

A reader sent me the above which is essentially a petition sent to Obama entitled, “Foreign Policy Experts urge Obama to Recommit to Central Europe.”

The main concern of the signatories is the Obama decision not to install fixed missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.

I have written some notes on this subject. I’m not convinced that the issues are as clear-cut as the signatories describe in their letter. For starters, did we really intend the missile defense system to guard Eastern Europe against Iran? Russia doesn’t think so and I’m afraid I don’t either. I have a low opinion of the leadership in Iran, but even if they had missiles to spare, I can’t believe that Poland and the Czech Republic would be very high on their “hit list.” In fact I can’t imagine why they would be on Iran’s list at all. Also, please note, Iran has no missiles that can travel all the way to Poland or the Czech Republic.

Surely, one of the reasons for the fixed Missile Defense system was to protect Poland and the Czech Republic against Russia. It wasn’t the only reason, but it had to be someplace on the list of reasons for installing them there. Maybe reason one was to protect everyone everywhere from Rogue States. But placating Poland’s and the Czech Republic’s fears of Russia had to be on the list someplace. They have been victims of Russian aggression in the past and do not trust Russia to never invade them again. The petition doesn’t discuss this fear.

Even if Russia did have imperialistic designs on Poland and the Czech Republic, which I don’t believe, they are in an extremely poor position economically and militarily to do anything about them. Oh yes, they do have missiles and they could, theoretically, bomb both Poland and the Czech Republic, but why would they?

Moving on to another issue, what if Russia developed its own missile defense system and launched a missile to stop an incoming missile from a Rogue State. Would the Polish Missile defense system shoot down the Rogue-State’s missile or the Russian missile intended to stop it?

Also, another thing not discussed in the above petition is that we intend to protect both Poland and the Czech Republic with our new plan. Consider the following article published today: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?ots591=4888CAA0-B3DB-1461-98B9-E20E7B9C13D4&lng=en&id=106572 It is entitled “A Better Missile Defense.” It states what I would say is my understanding of the new plan: “The administration’s move came in response to new US intelligence assessments that Iran’s progress in developing ICBM capabilities has been much slower than had previously been thought, while its short- and medium-range missile arsenal advances more rapidly than estimated.

“This makes an attack with hundreds of smaller missiles against US troops and allies in the Middle East and Europe the most likely near-term threat scenario – a scenario in which Bush’s proposed missile defense, yet to be tested under real world conditions, would have been useless.”

Does Obama’s new plan render Eastern Europe defenseless? I can’t see that it does. This article provides a good description of the Obama plan:

“Phase one of the new plan envisions a sea-based missile defense by 2011 with the much smaller standard SM-3 missiles available today, which are designed to intercept shorter-range missiles typically flying slower and closer to the ground than ICBMs. Improved sensor technologies stationed in Southeastern Europe will complement the system, offering a variety of options to detect and track enemy missiles.

“By 2015, a more advanced version of the system would be deployed, including defense missiles that could be launched from both sea and land, while in phase three and four, further improved SM-3 missiles would, after extensive testing, address the potential Iranian ICBM threat to the US by 2020.”

“. . . First and foremost, the new system is based on current or soon available technologies and consequently will be operational six to seven years sooner than the previous program, and at less expense. According to General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two to three ships would suffice to protect Europe from shorter-range Iranian missiles. The use of the comparatively cheap SM-3 missile makes it a relatively inexpensive defensive system.

“It is also a more survivable system and offers a high degree of flexibility in terms of geographical deployment and adaptability to growing threats as it would allow the US to deploy potentially hundreds of SM-3 missiles to sites in Europe and American ships in nearby waterways, thus exceeding the interception potential of the 10 ground-based defensive missiles in Poland envisioned in the previous program by far.

“Furthermore, it offers the flexibility to adjust and technologically upgrade the architecture according to the current threat situation, while still leaving the door open to deploy long-range interceptors once that technology is proven to work and the Iranian ICBM threat advances beyond the merely theoretical.’”

I hate to disagree with the luminaries who signed the petition, and perhaps I my habit of reading widely rather than concentrating on such subjects as this one has put me at a disadvantage, but I still need to see sound arguments favoring the position of the signatories, and I haven’t seen them.

Vets, bureaucracies and national health care

I showed up at the Vet’s office last night at the time they told me to be there. There was no one else in the parking lot, but one person was at the desk in the office. I told her I was there to pick up Ginger. “Ah yes,” she said looking at a sheet of paper, “Ginger Helm.”

She then read me the list of things I would be paying for before I got Ginger back. One of them was the removal of the “Right Upper Third Incisor.”

“What? You removed a tooth? What for?”

“Well there must have been something wrong with it,” she said. “Wait, I’ll ask someone.”

Another person came out, someone I hadn’t seen before. And the desk lady asked, “why did you remove Ginger’s tooth?”

“Well, I don’t know specifically, but there was probably something wrong with the pulp.”

“Pulp?” I asked. “What’s that?”

“The nerve running through the tooth.”

Gad, I thought to myself. Ginger is only 6 ½ and already missing a tooth. That’s pretty depressing.

I put Ginger into the back seat of my Jeep, much to the delight of Sage who had been moping all day and drove to the nearest place to let Ginger and Sage walk a bit before taking them home. After I got home, and after I shocked my wife by telling her the vet had removed one of Ginger’s teeth, I took out the packet of stuff they gave me and began reviewing it in detail. I looked down the list of charges on the invoice and noticed there was no charge for tooth removal. There was something on “Ginger’s Release Instructions” which did indeed say “Right Upper Third Incisor,” but that’s all it said. The release instructions didn’t say the tooth had been removed.

I rushed over to Ginger’s mouth, looked for missing incisor’s and didn’t find any. I got my flashlight and looked again and still couldn’t find any.

I noticed something else from the invoice. It said nothing about the main reason I had taken Ginger in, the flap in her gum that she had torn loose in the vicinity of her upper right incisors. Good grief I thought to myself. The checkout list didn’t mean the upper right third incisor had been removed. It probably meant the gum flap above the right upper third incisor had been removed.

Is my experience with this vet unique in our modern world? No, it is very common in any organization that has created a bureaucracy. My vet is very bureaucratic. She has intricate procedures and copious forms that must be filled out by her underlings. Maybe one of her underlings was supposed to describe what was done in the vicinity of the “right upper third incisor” but got so busy she didn’t get around to it. Then the clerk at the desk misinterpreted the form because when it mentioned a tooth it usually meant that tooth had been removed.

So it was left up to me to read the vets bureaucratic forms, notice the inconsistencies and actually look in Ginger’s mouth.

I have to take Ginger back in a week so one of the vets can check to make sure everything is healing properly. I shall bring up the matter of the missing tooth that doesn’t seem to be missing. It is possible that I am misunderstanding something still. Maybe they filled a cavity in the “right upper third incisor.” But when I tell her of the confusion caused by her system, will she slap her forehead and tell me her system needs revamping? Of course not. That is not what bureaucracies do. The fault will be mine for not understanding their system properly.

This isn’t unique to my vet. You can encounter the same sort of problems when you get your driver’s license renewed or visit the post office. If you don’t understand their confusing systems instantly that makes you a moron.

Now take my Vet problem and imagine a national bureaucratic health-care system. Pardon me if I seem overly pessimistic, but I’d rather you removed my right upper third incisor – and the left one too – rather than force me to go through something like that.

"Shines, shines the Name of Rodger Young"

My 6 ½ year old Ridgeback, Ginger is spending the day at the vets (some minor surgery & teeth cleaning),so I needed something distracting read. My other Ridgeback, 4 ½ year-old Sage is very upset over Ginger’s absence – the first time it’s happened in her life time. I’m upset as well, mainly because I can’t explain to them why this is happening. I am not someone who goes off every day and leaves them in crates. I am retired and almost never leave them. I couldn’t explain to Ginger why I was leaving her at the vets and I couldn’t explain to Sage why I wasn’t taking Ginger home with us.

So I read Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers again. Forget the terrible movie. It bears little resemblance to the book; which is excellent. It traces the career of Rico from before enlistment (in the Mobile Infantry) up through his being established with his own Cap Ranger team, “Rico’s Roughnecks,” on the Rodger Young. This all takes place in the distant future, long after the Russo-Anglo-Americans fought the Chinese in 1989. (Heinlein wrote his book in 1959. He apparently wouldn’t have agreed with Samuel P. Huntington that the Russians and Anglo-Americans have irreconcilable differences.)

Some critics have called this novel fascistic, but I have read it several times and would be happy to argue that point. The (awful) movie, yes, but not the novel. I wonder if these critics have actually read the novel.

Heinlein graduated from in 1929 and served in the Navy until 1934 when he received a medical discharge due to pulmonary tuberculosis. It is interesting that in the distant future imagined in by Heinlein, his heroes are not in the Navy but in the infantry, and this future infantry is strikingly like the Marine Corps with which he would have been intimately familiar. The future navy delivers Cap Trooper (Troopers launched from a space ship in individual capsules) onto a hostile planet, much as the navy in the Second World War and in the Korean War launched Marines by LSTs onto hostile shores.

Heinlein writes in his novel what I heard in Boot Camp, Civilians can’t understand what it means to be a Marine (or the Army Infantry). Civilian thinking is different from Military thinking and perhaps because of that the Civilian thinkers have erected “strawmen” of what they think this means. The Marine knows he has enlisted to give his live for his country if necessary. The Civilian demeans that and believes something preposterous, something on the order of suggesting that Marine loves carnage and killing.

I finished Starship Troopers and wondered again whether I should have stayed in the Marine Corps. I think I understand perfectly what Heinlein intended when he writes of the Cap Troopers. He is writing of the other world, the world that Civilians can only wonder about, and he does it well.

He concludes his novel with the following historical note:

“Young, Rodger W., Private, 148^th Infantry, 37^th Infantry Division (the Ohio Buckeyes); born Tiflin, Ohio, 28 April 1918; died 31 July 1943, on the island of New Georgia, Solomons, South Pacific, while singlehandedly attacking and destroying and enemy machine-gun pillbox. His platoon had been pinned down by intense fire from this pillbox; Private Young was wounded in the first burst. He crawled toward the pillbox, was wounded a second time but, continued to advance, firing his rifle as he did so. He closed on the pillbox, attacked and destroyed it with hand grenades, but in so doing he was wounded a third time and killed.

“His bold and gallant action in the face of overwhelming odds enabled his teammates to escape without loss; he was awarded posthumously the Medal of Honor.”

Netanyahu, speaking at UN about Iran

In response to my note “The Bombing of Iran – hypothetical considerations” (http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2009/09/bombing-of-iran-hypothetical.html ) a reader asked if I had read Netanyahu’s speech at the UN General Assembly. It is a sad thing to read. On the one hand Netanyahu is fearless and vehement in what he says. On the other hand, why should he have to say things like this in 2009? The bulk of the U.N. seems to be where Hitler and the Nazis were in the 40s.

The Netanyahu speech can be found at http://mwcnews.net/content/view/33366/42. In it Netanyahu says, “. . . if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. . . .”

COMMENT:

Reading this speech, and especially the portion I quote above, and applying it to the matter of whether Israel truly expects diplomatic efforts to turn Iran from their nuclear ambitions, I would have to conclude that Netanyahu does indeed intend to wait and see, but it is apparent that he is not optimistic. For Netanyahu and Israel “the Jury is still out on the United Nations.”

In another portion of the speech, Netanyahu apparently to show the deficiencies of the UN how in Palestine “. . . after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians ? Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.”

He goes on to describe how Israel used the utmost care in conducting surgical strikes and yet though the UN gave the 8 years of Palestinian bombing a free pass, they did not do that to Israel’s response. The logic of Netanyahu’s speech doesn’t permit us to apply this lesson of Gaza to what Netanyahu might intend to do to Iran, and yet this has been a topic on the minds of many. What will Israel do if Iran intends to do something like the Nazis did against London? Is it a mere coincidence that he describes what Israel did in response to being bombed from Palestine? Or should we view it as fair warning to Iran?

The bombing of Iran -- hypothetical considerations

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLT558247

The above article, written by Dan Williams for Reuters is entitled “Analysis – Israel rethinks anti-Iran warnings.”

A while back I posted a note arguing that Israel would attack Iran’s nuclear facilities if US negotiations with Iran failed. Have I already been proved wrong? I’ll quote a few passages from the Williams article and comment below.

“. . . Suddenly, the Iranian "existential threat" seems to have receded from Israel's horizon.

“It began with a bombshell Sept 18 newspaper interview in which Defence Minister Ehud Barak asserted that a nuclear-armed Iran could not destroy the Jewish state. Similar public remarks followed from the general in charge of all military operations.

“Even hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman now sounds skittish about his government's long hinted-at willingness to go to war rather than see an enemy get the means to make a bomb.

“’God forbid -- there's no need to attack anything,’ he told Israel's Channel Two television on Monday.

“While Israeli officials insist that ‘all’ options remain available for tackling their arch-foe, few dispute that Barak -- the top strategist, alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- has taken a new rhetorical tack as major world powers prepare to revive negotiations with Tehran on Thursday . . .

“Short on the forces necessary to deliver permanent damage to Iranian nuclear sites, the Israelis hope the new talks will work, one official said -- or, failing that, eventually trigger U.S.-led military intervention. ‘The last thing we need to do right now is to distract from the diplomacy with the kind of threats that Iran can point to as 'proof' that they, not us, are the endangered party,’ the Israeli official said. . . .”

“A unilateral Israeli attack could draw reprisals on U.S. Gulf assets, further testing already strained ties between Netanyahu and President Barack Obama. Should Iran cut off oil exports, Israel may find itself blamed for a new global crisis. . . .”

"The idea that Israel can do the world's dirty work is under serious review. Sufficient follow-up support just isn't there."

“. . . Barak said that Israel . . . could deter or fend off any future attack by a nuclear-armed Iran.

"’I don't think we are on the brink of a new Holocaust,’ he said, clashing openly with Netanyahu's repeated likening of today's Iran to Nazi Germany on the eve of World War Two.

“. . . Netanyahu said he saw ‘eye to eye’ with Barak. The Prime Minister's Office denied that there had been any change to Israeli strategising on Iran. . . .”

As defence minister to Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, Barak was cautious on warmaking. According to a security cabinet official at the time, Barak argued against the 2007 sortie that destroyed an alleged Syrian atomic reactor, calling it hasty. Barak's aides denied that, and the fact that the air strike happened points, at the very least, to his ability to close rank. . . .”

“Iran is dead set against recognising the Jewish state and has numerous, distant, fortified and -- in the case of an uranium enrichment plant disclosed last week -- hidden nuclear facilities.

"Barak's thinking on Iran definitely appears to have sway, for now," said an Israeli security official who is not aligned with the Defence Ministry. . . .”

COMMENT:

If we assume, for purposes of discussion, that Iran has deadly intentions toward Israel and has a nuclear armed missile, where in Iran would they launch it? If you look at a map, the shortest distance from Iran to Israel is over Iraq. Would Iran risk retaliation from the US by sending its missiles over American’s ally, Iraq? Perhaps not. If they move their launching site far enough north to avoid flying over Iraq, they would have to send it over Turkey, Syria, and perhaps Lebanon or Jordan to get to Israel.

If they move their launching site far enough south to avoid sending it over Iraq, they will have to send it over Saudi Arabia and Jordan to reach Israel. Saudi Arabia has been a traditional enemy of Iran. Could Iran negotiate a deal with the Saudis and Jordan to destroy their mutual enemy, Israel? Perhaps, but if the Saudis and Jordan did, they would risk antagonizing the US. Would they risk that?

But perhaps Ahmadinejad will argue that he has looked into Obama’s eyes, and Obama blinked, convincing him that the US will NOT retaliate if Iran sends its missiles over Iraq.

So even after Iran gets its nuclear weapon and a missile to transport it, launching it in the direction of Israel is not without its problems. And one mustn’t forget that many of North Korea’s test launches fell far short of their intended targets. Would Saudi Arabia or Iraq feel so confident in Iran’s technological capability that they would have no concern that a missile launched toward Israel not fall short and hit Saudi Arabia or Iraq?

But how does Israel view all these possibilities and have they truly taken their threat of bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities off the table? If I were in charge of defending Israel, I would not take too much comfort in Iran’s over-flight difficulties. All the nations under discussion are more or less enemies of Israel.

Notice also that by seeming to back away from its Anti-Iran threat, Israel is doing its part in assisting the diplomatic process. Let the diplomacy be entirely about Iran’s nuclear weapons and not about an impending threat from Israel. Let Iran be seen as the belligerent nation and not Israel.

Also for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that diplomacy with Iran fails, and Iran continues developing nuclear weapons. If Israel then decided to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, all the over-flight problems discussed above would have to be dealt with by Israel. So how would they do it?

One way would be to fly over Saudi Arabia and assume the Saudis would not retaliate; which would probably be a safe assumption. They would certainly complain, but probably not retaliate. Could the Israelis fly over Saudi Arabia without Iran getting wind of it in advance? I don’t know.

Sending a force down the Red Sea and around the Saudi Arabian Peninsula is another possibility, but that might be even harder to do without being observed.

Another possibility would be to cross Syrian airspace. They could then cut across the semi-independent Kurdish territory. The Kurds are not fond of the Iranians and might very well be encouraged to look the other way.

FURTHER COMMENTS:

Would Israel be justified in bombing Iran? Assume that you are in charge of a nation (Israel) and if another nation (Iran) expresses maniacal hatred towards you, threatens to destroy you and begins building a weapon to do just that, will you choose to let it happen or will you choose to destroy that weapon before it can be used against you?

There are other possibilities of course, you might against all existing evidence “hope for the best.” Surely, you might hope, no nation would deliberately destroy your entire nation. Against that you might recall that in the middle of the twentieth century, a group (German Fascists) with quite a lot in common with the political elements of Radical Islam attempted to do the equivalent of that and made considerable progress.

You might also hope you could rely on your ally, the US, to protect you against Iran (there is a hint of that in the Williams article), but some American administrations have failed you in the past. The Obama administration might be another. Are you willing to risk Israel’s existence on the assumption that it is not?

You might also think that no rational human being would bomb Israel out of existence, but do you really think that Ahmadinejad meets that description?

CONCLUSION:

Does the Dan Williams article provide any reason to retract my argument that Israel will attack Iran if negotiations (to get them to stop building nuclear weapons) fails? Iran hasn’t withdrawn its threat against Israel. It is still (according to supposedly reputable intelligence reports) building its nuclear weapons. In fact the British think Iran is very close to completing these weapons (see http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/837f30a0-ad30-11de-9caf-00144feabdc0.html ). So, no, I don’t believe that anything in the Williams article is cause to change my opinion. If the US did the job then Israel wouldn’t have to, but I don’t think the present American administration has the stomach for something like that.