[quote]lixy wrote:
The BBC reports:
"In the Iranian TV interview, Leading Seaman Turney, 26, said the group had been seized in the Gulf because “obviously we trespassed” in Iranian waters.
She said her captors had been friendly and the 15 personnel, who were all based on HMS Cornwall in the Gulf, were unharmed."
I wonder how hedo and his fellow cyber-warmongerers will dodge this one…[/quote]
Well it’s obvious how the cyber-Jihadist feels about it…troll much?
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
lixy wrote:
The BBC reports:
"In the Iranian TV interview, Leading Seaman Turney, 26, said the group had been seized in the Gulf because “obviously we trespassed” in Iranian waters.
She said her captors had been friendly and the 15 personnel, who were all based on HMS Cornwall in the Gulf, were unharmed."
I wonder how hedo and his fellow cyber-warmongerers will dodge this one…
That is what they all say so they will not be abused any more. The Brits captured by Iran in 2004 made similar statements while in captivity but as soon as they were out of the Iranians power they told of the beatings and other physical abuse they endured as well as being taken our in the desert and going through mock executions.[/quote]
They do have a lot of practice kidnapping people. Wonder why they didn’t try and pick up a US crew?
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
That is what they all say so they will not be abused any more.[/quote]
We’ll see about that as the crisis unfolds…
For now, it’s the word of the Brits against that of the Iranians. After the WMDs fiasco, I can’t help but consider Downing St.'s statements as dubious.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
That is what they all say so they will not be abused any more.
We’ll see about that as the crisis unfolds…
For now, it’s the word of the Brits against that of the Iranians. After the WMDs fiasco, I can’t help but consider Downing St.'s statements as dubious.[/quote]
But you take the Iranian’s word at face value…lol.
You do realize the Iranian’s kidnapped the Brits don’t you? Not the other way around.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
“There is clear evidence of disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-08-22-amnesty-lebanon_x.htm
Should they trade lives one for one?
This is one of the stupidest statements I have ever read. That you use it to try to prove some kind of point is bizarre.
The whole jist of your “argument” is that Israel plans its military operations and they try to inflict more casualties than they receive.[/quote]
[i]"The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement [sic] on world affairs…
The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DP [Displaced Persons] as long as the Jews get special treatment.
Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog…"[/i]
–President Harry S. Truman - July 21, 1947
[quote]JustTheFacts wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
“There is clear evidence of disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-08-22-amnesty-lebanon_x.htm
Should they trade lives one for one?
This is one of the stupidest statements I have ever read. That you use it to try to prove some kind of point is bizarre.
The whole jist of your “argument” is that Israel plans its military operations and they try to inflict more casualties than they receive.
[i]"The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement [sic] on world affairs…
The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DP [Displaced Persons] as long as the Jews get special treatment.
Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog…"[/i]
–President Harry S. Truman - July 21, 1947
[/quote]
Truman was pretty racist in his early days, referring to Asians and Blacks in very derogatory terms. Amazing that he desegregated the military.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
That is what they all say so they will not be abused any more.
We’ll see about that as the crisis unfolds…
For now, it’s the word of the Brits against that of the Iranians. After the WMDs fiasco, I can’t help but consider Downing St.'s statements as dubious.[/quote]
Wow. It turns my gut to know there are people who think like you.
The video supplied by Iran is right out of the terrorist playbook! Hold people hostage and show it on tape. How nice. You can get a beat up man to say anything to a camera. You are wack job, and so is the extemist Iranian Government.
[quote]Rockscar wrote:
lixy wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
That is what they all say so they will not be abused any more.
We’ll see about that as the crisis unfolds…
For now, it’s the word of the Brits against that of the Iranians. After the WMDs fiasco, I can’t help but consider Downing St.'s statements as dubious.
Wow. It turns my gut to know there are people who think like you.
The video supplied by Iran is right out of the terrorist playbook! Hold people hostage and show it on tape. How nice. You can get a beat up man to say anything to a camera. You are wack job, and so is the extemist Iranian Government.[/quote]
In lixy’s world, nothing the terrorists do is wrong, and nothing the U.S. does is right.
[quote]JeffR wrote:
pat36 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Brad61 wrote:
I wonder if the British captives are receiving Bush’s high standard of detainee treatment?
Waterboarding?
Stripped naked and hosed with water, kept in freezing cold?
Hooded for days at a time?
Chained standing up with arms over head, overnight? “Stress positions”?
Smeared with shit?
You know, the “Club Gitmo” routine… it’s like a spa, only with frat-style hijinks. If they didn’t get their fingers chopped off, “then it aint torture”!
The last group of Brits Iran captured were abused and mock executed and I have yet to see you condemn Iran’s actions.
Why would they? The Iranians are against Bush, anyone against Bush can’t be all that bad, right?
Tony Blair is scared to do anything about it. They should give Iran 24 hours and then start laying waste to Tehran, but what will likely happen is some sanctions will be lifted, or money will be traded or prisoners.
What it seems to me is Iran is testing the waters on how much crap they can get away with. Apparently, a lot.
Pat, will you join me in joining the counter-protest against bradley and th rest of the code pinkers?
iran, is OBVIOUSLY a serious threat.
JeffR
[/quote]
I’d love too, but I have been so fucking busy with work, life, etc. I don’t have a lot of time to fuck around here. So I just drop in every once in a while. Besides, I broke my right hand a couple of weeks ago, so typing isn’t the easiest thing.
It’s also kind of fucked up my training a little which is what I am most pissed off about.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aiT80yA0dSZk&refer=home
Well (if this is accurate), it isn’t as bad as it seemed. Or maybe it’s worse.
Any thoughts?
[quote]Rockscar wrote:
Wow. It turns my gut to know there are people who think like you.[/quote]
Who would have thought some people’s opinions might actually diverge? Live and learn, I guess…
I don’t know. I’ll wait for their release before deciding if it was a terrorist playhook or not.
I believe the term you’re looking for is “whackjob”. Wack job has a different meaning. Anyhow, the Iranian government is extremist by necessity rather than choice. One wonders how nice it would be in Tehran had Mossadeq not been overthrown by the CIA.
[quote]Beowolf wrote:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aiT80yA0dSZk&refer=home
Well (if this is accurate), it isn’t as bad as it seemed. Or maybe it’s worse.
Any thoughts?
[/quote]
It is propaganda. If it is anything like when Iran did this in 2004 she was reading from a script. Because she is a woman she may not have been abused but she may have done it to save one of the others from abuse.
[quote]lixy wrote:
… Anyhow, the Iranian government is extremist by necessity rather than choice. One wonders how nice it would be in Tehran had Mossadeq not been overthrown by the CIA.[/quote]
This is so stupid. It likely would have ended up subservient to the Soviet Union and rebelled against them. And they booted the Shah 28 years ago and still do not have their act together.
[quote]bigflamer wrote:
In lixy’s world, nothing the terrorists do is wrong, and nothing the U.S. does is right.
[/quote]
That’s where you’re wrong; In my world, terrorism has roots and don’t spring out of the blue. Also, the fairy tale that the US spends trillions of dollars on a military to spread democracy and protect the world is questionable.
Get back to me if you can grasp the difference.
[quote]lixy wrote:
The BBC reports:
"In the Iranian TV interview, Leading Seaman Turney, 26, said the group had been seized in the Gulf because “obviously we trespassed” in Iranian waters.
She said her captors had been friendly and the 15 personnel, who were all based on HMS Cornwall in the Gulf, were unharmed."
I wonder how hedo and his fellow cyber-warmongerers will dodge this one…[/quote]
Sorry, Lixy, I actually agree with some of the stuff that you say but cannot in anyway comprehend how you can seriously think that the marines have not been pressurised by the Iranians into providing the above statement- it’s far too convenient!
If it was in the West, no government would parade a group of marines on TV and get them to issue a statement saying how ‘well treated’ they were and that ‘oops… perhaps they were in the wrong’.
No-one would believe that! Perhaps we’re just to cynical?
Is a U.S.-Iran War Inevitable?
By Robert Baer
You wouldn’t be wrong to wonder if Iran hasn’t lost its mind seizing the 15 British marines and sailors, and in so doing, handing Bush a casus belli even he couldn’t have imagined.
But then again you’d be missing the grim fatalism that has settled over Iran of late, the resigned belief that a war with the U.S. is all but inevitable. This week Iranian diplomats are telling interlocutors that, yes, they realize seizing the Brits could lead to a hot war. But, they point out, it wasn’t Iran that started taking hostages ? it was the U.S., when it arrested five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Erbil in Northern Iraq on January 11. They are diplomats, the Iranians insist. They were in Erbil with the approval of the Kurds and therefore, they argue, are under the protection of the Vienna Convention.
Iranian grievances, real and perceived, don’t stop there. Tehran is convinced the U.S. or one of its allies was behind the March 2006 separatist violence in Iranian Baluchistan, which ended up with 20 people killed, including an IRGC member executed. And the Iranians believe there is more to come, accusing the U.S. of training and arming Iranian Kurds and Azeris to go back home and cause problems. Needless to say the Iranians are not happy there are American soldiers on two of its borders, as well as two carriers and a dozen warships in the Gulf. You call this paranoia? they ask.
The Bush Administration is doing nothing to allay Tehran’s paranoia. With the largest buildup in the Gulf since the start of this Iraq war, it’s actually fanning it. You have to wonder if Bush is counting on the Iranians’ overreacting the way they did when they seized our embassy in 1979. And lest we forget, this was driven by paranoia that we were plotting to destroy the revolution.
Add this to the rest of the bad news coming out of the Gulf, and things look pretty grim. The “surge,” despite what some claim, has barely made a dent in the violence in Iraq. Our Arab allies are jumping ship, apparently as fast as they can. At the opening of the Arab summit on Wednesday, Saudi King Abdallah accused the U.S of illegally occupying Iraq. The day before, the leader of the United Arab Emirates sent his foreign minister to Tehran to tell the Iranians he would not allow the U.S. to use UAE soil to attack Iran. That leaves us with Kuwait and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to face Iran.
I called up an Arab Gulf security official and asked him what he thought about it all. He said the view from his side of the Gulf is that if Iran does not soon release the Brits, a war between the U.S. and Iran is in the cards. “I for one am taking all the cash I can out of my ATM,” he said before hanging up.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1604546,00.html
I read an interesting Editorial in ‘The Daily Mail’ the other day, a rag that I would even use to wipe my arse with usually.
It seemed to argue that Iran might actually be prolonging this impasse as to prevent oil prices from falling further as they have done over the last few months, to support its economy.
Anyway, it maybe sounds just a little bit far-fetched to me but I was interested to see what you guys think.
[quote]lixy wrote:
We’ll see about that as the crisis unfolds…
For now, it’s the word of the Brits against that of the Iranians. After the WMDs fiasco, I can’t help but consider Downing St.'s statements as dubious.[/quote]
Do you really want to compare the credibility of the UK compared with Iran?
I mean hell, Iran said they found the cure for AIDS awhile back.
Get real.
[quote]tGunslinger wrote:
lixy wrote:
We’ll see about that as the crisis unfolds…
For now, it’s the word of the Brits against that of the Iranians. After the WMDs fiasco, I can’t help but consider Downing St.'s statements as dubious.
Do you really want to compare the credibility of the UK compared with Iran?
I mean hell, Iran said they found the cure for AIDS awhile back.
Get real.[/quote]
I, for one, think its cool that we can have a dialogue with someone who is anti-US/pro Al-qaeda, and is actually somewhere inside Pakistan, talking to us at the behest of his cell leaders.
[i]"Success is never guaranteed in any war.
But that’s no reason to guarantee failure."[/i]
A terrific article that discusses why the dems “contract with al-queda” is a bad, bad idea. I believe that the authors premise is correct, that we’re already witnessing the repercussions of our congress’s commitment to defeat.
Maybe our congress can display some backbone and support the troops with a commitment to victory, rather than a their commitment to retreat and defeat.
INVITING ATTACK
By RALPH PETERS
March 30, 2007 – SEIZED illegally, 15 British sailors and Royal Marines are hostages in Iran. Thanks, Speaker Pelosi.
It’s amazing that Big Media hasn’t made the obvious connection between the congressional Democrats long- promised move to hand over the keys to Iraq to al Qaeda and the decision by Iranian hardliners to bolster their position within Iran by grabbing those Brits.
The Iranians didn’t even wait for the final vote count. The rhetoric in the wake of the turnover in Congress was sufficient to convince them that Washington is ready to bail out of Iraq. The extremists in Tehran want to push us out of the Persian Gulf, as well.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his faction have been losing ground internally, but they hope a confrontation with the West will unite the people of Iran behind them. The Revolutionary Guards weren’t ready to take on U.S. forces directly, but they felt confident they could get away with grabbing Brits - and so far, they?ve been proven right.
Iran’s hardliners watch our actions closely. Sometimes they read the smoke signals correctly, sometimes they don’t. They calculated that Prime Minister Tony Blair is now so weak that he wouldn’t dare retaliate. Furthermore, they figured that the Bush administration has been pushed onto the defensive by Congress and wouldn’t move to aid our main ally.
What the coming days will hold depends upon the political algebra in Tehran and London, Washington and Baghdad, Brussels and even Moscow.
But the one thing that cannot be disputed is that, without the congressional moves to impose a withdrawal date for U.S. forces in Iraq, the Iranian regime would never have grown so bold. In Middle Eastern warfare, a classic tactic has been to retreat in the face of strength, but to attack when your enemy withdraws or shows signs of weakness. That is exactly what the Iranians are doing.
They’re doing something else, too: trying to drive an ever-deeper wedge between Shias and the West. Iran?s extremists portray the Great Satan America and our allies as the implacable foes of the Shia. But ever-fewer Iranian Shias buy it: Their lives have been ravaged by their own regime, not by satellite broadcasts of “Desperate Housewives.”
But the Tehran tyrants have had more success on the parallel track: Convincing Westerners that all Shias are our enemies. This, in turn, makes it easier for Washington pols and lobbyists who’ve been bought by Saudi money to make the case that we should re-embrace the Sunni Arab dictators and demagogues who led us down the path to 9/11.
The Dems on Capitol Hill pretend that setting a deadline for a troop withdrawal won’t even have serious consequences in Iraq. Yet the reverberations are already ringing through the entire region. Not only do Iran’s worst fanatics feel emboldened, but the Saudis whom President Bush has been trying to hug anew treat us like beggars.
Speaking to the assembled leaders of the Arab world this week, King Abdullah declared that the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is “illegitimate.” Abdullah also dragged out the Palestinian issue again, damning Israel. Of course, the Saudis have always been willing to fight to the last Palestinian, while keeping the people of the West Bank and Gaza on starvation rations.
Saudi money’s always available to spread hatred, but not to build world-class universities, hospitals or industries for the Palestinians.
For good measure, our pal Abdullah deplored the violence in Darfur - for which he blamed “foreign interests,” suggesting that the aid agencies and international observers, not the Khartoum government, are to blame for the ongoing genocide. (It’s all Angelina Jolie’s fault!) Meanwhile, the Egyptian regime is reinforcing its despotism, while Syria’s looking at Lebanon and salivating again.
Back in Iraq, the Dems’ “Contract With al Qaeda” undercuts the progress our troops have been making since the arrival of Gen. David Petraeus (the Dems tossed him the keys to the car, but won?t give him money for gas). For all too many politicians, our 2008 elections are more important than the fate of our soldiers or the Iraqi people.
They’re doing all they can to guarantee failure. After a year of tragic setbacks, our new tactics in Iraq have brought real signs of progress. Ultimately, of course, that progress may come to nothing. Sunni assassins may succeed in reinvigorating the religious war with the Shia - who’ve behaved with restraint for the past few months.
Success is never guaranteed in any war.
But that’s no reason to guarantee failure. Threatening to cut off funding for our troops is simply despicable.
The Republicans in this administration made unforgivable mistakes in the Middle East.
Now the Democrats appear determined to do even graver damage. And they utterly refuse to consider the consequences of their actions.
The Pelosi-Murtha Democrats won’t even confront the likely results within Iraq if we quit prematurely. As for considering the effect their duplicitous bills and votes have on the calculations of bad actors elsewhere in the Middle East, the Dems just shut their eyes and cover their ears.
We’re in an appalling position where our enemies in Tehran, Riyadh, Khartoum and Damascus, and in al Qaeda’s compounds in Waziristan, are thinking ahead with greater clarity than our elected officials in Washington. This isn’t about politics.
It’s about the fate of hundreds of millions of human beings. It’s about our national security. It’s about the defense of civilization.
It’s about the lives of our men and women in uniform. And it’s about the 15 Brits held somewhere in Iran because the U.S. Congress signaled that there will be no penalties for attacking those who fight in freedom’s cause.