The real rat never left the ground

Have you read this: Iranians send animals into space?
If one takes Ahmadinejad's tieless (are there no ties in Iran anymore?) minions at their word, only a rat, turtles, and worms have been launched on their latest rocket. The good news is that for what little is left of their lives, they won't be on Iranian soil, and that must be liberating.

But can we believe that Iranian scientists have higher ethics than Russian or American scientists and resisted temptation to include a cat, a monkey, or a dirty, filthy, unholy, accursed, yucky dog? It's hard to believe. More likely, declaring such modest biological cargo is because Iranians know that vociferous Western animal activists like you and me would react with more outrage against their launching higher forms of life in a rocket than the US or any other government is acting against Ahmadinejad's blatant program to obliterate Israel. So, in the time-honored tradition of Middle Eastern culture, truth be damned.

As with any space mission, the only animals (Iranians or not) fit to go into space are humans. Humans know what they are doing, they believe it's important, and are standing in line for the next mission should a "Tehran, we have a problem" arise.

Since 1951, when two Russian mutts, Dezik and Tsygan, made the first suborbital flight, countless animals, who neither volunteered nor, if they survived, were rewarded with anything but more confinement, experimentation, and finally vivisection, have served the nebulous objectives of space programs. And speaking of your taxes at work: At this very moment NASA is funding space radiation studies (check the PCRM link) on live monkeys. While you ponder how on earth this will improve your life, please contact NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr., and tell him what you think about it

No sense in sending a letter of protest to Iran for the rat, the turtles, and whoever else they stashed into the rocket. As Barry Suetoro can tell you, Mahmoud Sabaghian doesn't listen to him either, even though they have name-switching in common. -- Dolores