Re: Iran perhaps more dangerous than Soviet Union
General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.Iran has, at present, no warheads and no reliable means to deliver the said nonexistent warheads to these shores. Iran will never have an arsenal comparable to that possessed by the late USSR, or even the smaller arsenal maintained by the USSR's successor state.
President Merkin Muffley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!
General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
It may be that the chance of one US urban center being incinerated by means of an intercontinental ballistic cargo container has increased these latter years, but had the Cold War gone hot we would have lost all of them.
That said, it's a shame we didn't reach some rapprochement with the Sovs a couple of generations ago. Had we done so, we and they could have carved up the Third World and its delicious resources like the Christmas roast instead of letting these midget despots play us one against the other for lavish subsidies year after year.
cordially,
