[quote]Gkhan wrote:
And is Al-Jazeera really any different?[/quote]
I loathe Al-Jazeera, but I think they’ve definitely come a long way since the 90’s. As of today (and though I don’t consult it often), they provide slightly better journalism than Fox.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
What if the Iranian regime puts out propaganda that a nuclear war with the US can bring about the return of the 12th Imam?
You think it’s crazy? Radical Christians in this country support Israel, not because they like Jews, but because they read the Bible and to them it says “Jesus will only return if the Jews live in Israel.” So they think that by supporting Israel, right or wrong, they are hastening the return of Christ to earth.
So if Christians believe something this crazy, it is not off base to think that radical Muslims would think something equally as crazy.
Well?[/quote]
If you study Christian theology carefully, you’ll see that it does speak of Jews in the land of Israel as a precursor of the return of Jesus. It’s not some propaganda they made up.
Get me anything anywhere that speaks of nuclear war with the US as a precondition to the 12th Imam rising from the dead (or coming down from heaven) and you may have an argument. Else, you’re just spreading FUD.
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/SHIA/HIDDEN.HTM
“Imam Mahdi will return at the head of the forces of righteousness and do battle with the forces of evil in one, final, apocalyptic battle.”
How do you know nuclear weapons will or will not be used in this final battle?
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
UB07 wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
North Korea + Actually HAS Nukes = Worse
North Korea has Nukes but is starving to death.
And Iran is such a greater threat?
Iran isn’t really a threat to the U.S., certainly not an existential one. They don’t have nuclear weapons, and even if they did, we’d have a couple thousand more than them.
I guess you dont comprehend what nuclear warfare really is.
I guess you don’t have a grasp of basic logic. Let’s say Iran gets a nuclear weapon. Let’s even say they get to North Korea’s level and build a half dozen. Leaving aside the issue of how those bombs get to the U.S., we’ll go the Hollywood route and say Iran can smuggle “suitcase nukes” into the U.S. and blow up three cities. All of these things are pretty big leaps, but I’ll indulge you here.
The minute the above happens, America’s nuclear arsenal, which does have ICBMs, bombers, MIRV warheads, etc., turns all of Iran into a sea of glass. Deterrence. Simple concept. Iran can be contained just like the Soviet Union was, in fact far, far more easily. So remind me again why we should be in hysterics here?
We’ve managed to survive a North Korean and Pakistani bomb OK, and those are both far scarier situations for the U.S. any way you measure it.[/quote]
Except the men in charge of Iran paint themselves as religious fanatics and believe in suicide bombings for their religion. They have military parades with simulated suicide bombers wearing explosive vests prominently displayed.
Do you really think we can trust them to have the bomb?
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/SHIA/HIDDEN.HTM
“Imam Mahdi will return at the head of the forces of righteousness and do battle with the forces of evil in one, final, apocalyptic battle.”
How do you know nuclear weapons will or will not be used in this final battle? [/quote]
Do any of these little gems actually predict a winner?
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Do you really think we can trust them to have the bomb?
[/quote]
Do you really think we can expect to keep control of all the good weapons on the planet forever?
At some point, realizing that someone somewhere will get them, we should probably try to defuse the world situation a bit such that the resources of nation states are not arrayed to help deliver those weapons in our direction.
Or not. Perpetual global conflict is fun too.
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
JeffR wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
North Korea + Actually HAS Nukes = Worse
North Korea has Nukes but is starving to death.
And Iran is such a greater threat?
Iran isn’t really a threat to the U.S., certainly not an existential one. They don’t have nuclear weapons, and even if they did, we’d have a couple thousand more than them. If you think Iran would hand nuclear weapons to terrorists, you need a course in common sense.
Let’s try logic here, huh? If we take this story at face value, it’s the Post, a tabloid, but Jane’s is pretty reputable, great, Syria has lots of chemical weapons and is mounting them on short range ballistic missiles. Big fucking deal. Mustard gas has been around since the First World War, sarin almost as long.
Chemical weapons are less deadly than high explosives of equal weight - that’s why the term WMD is a politicized term for idiots and for those who con idiots. Not entirely sure which of the two categories best fits the NY Post.
Syria has chemical weapons. Israel has nukes. Syria is not even a threat to Israel, let alone to us. Instead of this stupid cowardly hide-under-the-bed fear mongering WMD stuff, a smart administration would be pushing the Israelis to negotiate with Syria (which the Israelis are already doing at low levels) to break them off from Iran, which helps Israel, us, Iraq, the Palestinians, etc. Instead we get moronic WMD fears.
gdol,
I would like you to go back and read your most recent post. Then read it again.
It is filled with assumptions that are pretty damn thin.
Your mind seemingly CANNOT grasp the concept of using front groups to do the dirty work.
Here’s syria and al qaeda:
http://www.reformsyria.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=278&Itemid=66
First off Jeffry, do you even know who the Reform Party of Syria is? It’s founder and leader is a man who embraces the title of “Syria’s Ahmed Chalabi.” I’m gonna hope you’ve read enough to realize why that’s not a good thing.
The man hasn’t been to the country since he was 10, and he can’t even fucking speak Arabic well!!! So forgive me if I treat this source with just a little bit of skepticism. In the future, you might want to get slightly more solid evidence than the words of a “4th-rate Lebanese con man”:
Here’s al qaeda and wmd:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/26/jordan.terror/
Now, don’t respond to this for a couple of days. Think about it.
Now you tell me which one of our premises is more likely.
Yours: “No threat from these groups.”
Mine: “Serious threat from hostile regimes and their surrogates.”
I’d be interested to see if your mind is flexible enough to consider other alternatives.
Good luck.
JeffR
Again, I think I covered why “WMD” is a politicized word for idiots. Didn’t see even an attempt at a rebuttal there.
And remind me again why Syria would help Al Qaeda get (incredibly overrated) chemical weapons when it would ensure the destruction of the Syrian regime were Al Qaeda to use these weapons. Does that make any sense?
A secular, kleptocrat dictator is going to hand fundamentalist terrorists chemical weapons so that his regime will be swiftly destroyed by a superpower. Does that make any fucking sense? You can’t be this stupid. You really can’t be.[/quote]
gdol,
You do realize that countries use front groups so they WON’T BE DESTROYED?
I agree, most of these countries wouldn’t be foolish enough to DIRECTLY ATTACK the U.S.
They know that EVEN YOU would have a hard time with that (except for iran, of course.)
Unfortunately, we have people like you who come up with such gems as, “Syria has lots of chemical weapons and is mounting them on short range ballistic missiles. Big fucking deal. Mustard gas has been around since the First World War, sarin almost as long. Chemical weapons are less deadly than high explosives of equal weight - that’s why the term WMD is a politicized term for idiots and for those who con idiots. Not entirely sure which of the two categories best fits the NY Post.”
Ok genius, why exactly are they secretly working with the iranians on it now?
Doesn’t is seem REMOTELY suspicious that these two regimes are doing joint exercises with chemical weaponry and it’s dispersion methods.
Why now? Why in this way? If it’s such standard knowledge, what were they doing that caused their deaths?
If you were 1/1000th the intellectual you claim to be, you wouldn’t lock down your mind to unpleasant alternative modes of thought.
What makes you so despicable is that you’d be willing to look the other WAY NO MATTER WHAT.
syria and iran will and are passing weaponry and information to their front groups, (ala…Jordanian al qaeda (I noted you didn’t respond to that)), and you’ll say, "we’ll we can’t prove it’s syria.
You do know that syria is friendly with al qaeda? Right?
Why can’t your brain make the leap of intuition that all syria has to do is hand over the weaponry and say, “go to it.”
They probably rest easier knowing guys like you will forgive ANYTHING so long as they rub off the word “syria” from the weapon.
You are a complete fraud. You try to pass yourself off as an intellectual. If you were so erudite, you wouldn’t have such a brain block understanding that the bad guys are using surrogates to attack the West.
In summary, I’m glad you aren’t anywhere near a responsible post.
JeffR
P.S. If after reading this, your brain is still frozen, tell me the sources you trust. I’ll see if I can thaw you out.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Do you really think we can trust them to have the bomb?
Do you really think we can expect to keep control of all the good weapons on the planet forever?
At some point, realizing that someone somewhere will get them, we should probably try to defuse the world situation a bit such that the resources of nation states are not arrayed to help deliver those weapons in our direction.
Or not. Perpetual global conflict is fun too.[/quote]
Nuclear proliferation is a worldwide problem that isn’t going to go away. Any betting man knows the probability that we will never see another atomic attack on earth is pretty damn far fetched.
The cold wars manic race to achieve nuclear primacy or at least ensure mutual assured destruction has left the U.S. with the enviable or unenviable position, depending on your perspective, of having a fairly solid assurance of nuclear primacy.
If we really wanted to the U.S. could preemptively destroy any nations ability to attack us by using our nuclear arsenal. Another mutual assured destruction/nuclear primacy arms race with China is being predicted but has yet to fully materialize.
Iran and Syria clearly don’t like this because they have a certain powerful and influential segment of their populous that want to declare war and destroy Israel and would probably like to establish an empire in the rest of the middle east as well. The big stick of the U.S. arsenal is in their way.
Rogue nations or “terrorist”/“freedom fighters” backed clandestinely by a nation state attacking a modern city in the U.S., or an ally of the U.S., with WMDs is a real danger that will likely occur at some point in the future.
Of course the certain knowledge that the U.S. can and probably will retaliate with the total destruction of the perpetrators,regardless of collateral damage, is a powerful deterrent that some in the U.S. are quite vocal in promoting.
The entire scenario reeks of horror and the debate on how to best prevent or delay such a catastrophe is certainly far from a black and white issue. Even if the policy is executed flawlessly it isn’t unreasonable to consider that such a disaster may be inevitable.
The reality of human nature and history can be quite discouraging.
[quote]JeffR wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
Again, I think I covered why “WMD” is a politicized word for idiots. Didn’t see even an attempt at a rebuttal there.
And remind me again why Syria would help Al Qaeda get (incredibly overrated) chemical weapons when it would ensure the destruction of the Syrian regime were Al Qaeda to use these weapons. Does that make any sense?
A secular, kleptocrat dictator is going to hand fundamentalist terrorists chemical weapons so that his regime will be swiftly destroyed by a superpower. Does that make any fucking sense? You can’t be this stupid. You really can’t be.
gdol,
You do realize that countries use front groups so they WON’T BE DESTROYED?
I agree, most of these countries wouldn’t be foolish enough to DIRECTLY ATTACK the U.S.
[/quote]
OK, and you think even the inept CIA wouldn’t be able to figure out who had supplied the weapons in question? You think Assad, the weak ruler of a weak state, would gamble his power and his life on that? And to what end? How does attacking the U.S. homeland make any sense here? You don’t seem to want to use your head.
I have no idea. Does it matter? Chemical weapons, not that scary, certainly not to the U.S. What more is there to say?
Respond to what?
I do? Didn’t we go over how your source on the subject is highly dubious, to say the least? Remember Ahmed Chalabi? Do you even know who that is?
I don’t know, how about reputable journalists (George Packer and Tom Ricks would come to mind), less partisan think-tanks (CSIS for one), the rare politician with a reputation for telling uncomfortable truths (Ron Paul, McCain once upon a time), likewise honest retired soldiers and Marines (Generals Zinni, Van Riper and McCaffrey are a couple, NOT Wesley Clark), the occasional blogger with both intellect and integrity (Daniel Larison, Reihan Salaam, Andrew Sullivan to some degree). Is that enough to get you started Jeffry?
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Except the men in charge of Iran paint themselves as religious fanatics and believe in suicide bombings for their religion. They have military parades with simulated suicide bombers wearing explosive vests prominently displayed.
Do you really think we can trust them to have the bomb?
[/quote]
The men in charge of Soviet Russia preached a secular religion of world revolution, which was actually far more universalist and anti-American than even radical Islam. That worked out OK for us.
I don’t think an Iranian bomb is a good thing. I also think it’s probably not something worth waging war over, given the innumerable negative consequences of doing so, the biggest one being that it leaves the current regime far more firmly entrenched in power.
Let’s just invade any country that has any weapons they might use against us. we can never be sure they won’t use them.
[quote]JeffR wrote:
You do know that syria is friendly with al qaeda? Right?
[/quote]
Bullshit.
[quote]lixy wrote:
JeffR wrote:
You do know that syria is friendly with al qaeda? Right?
Bullshit.[/quote]
Just like Iraq was.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Not to be technical, but celebrity gossip crap is what made Murdoch the media mogul he is today.
[/quote]
Please see my “I Love Famous People” thread:
http://www.T-Nation.com/tmagnum/readTopic.do?id=1732876
Unfortunately, celebrity news is all too pervasive in the mainstream news outlets.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
USA + Largest Military on Planet + Stupid warmongering neocons in power == Perpetual Warfare
Who will you blame when Bush and his crew are out of office?
You think warmongering neocons are limited to the Republican party only?
Guess again.
Hey, you said it, not me.
Edit: Neocon = Republican, at least that’s what I’ve been told.[/quote]
Yeah, I think we need to be a little more general with the term neocon. I am going to use it for anyone that believes in the supremacy of the State over liberty. Both Democrats and Republicans require a large police state to keep “order”, lest we hurt ourselves.
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
The men in charge of Soviet Russia preached a secular religion of world revolution, which was actually far more universalist and anti-American than even radical Islam. That worked out OK for us.
[/quote]
But, bottom line, they were not suicidal religious nutjobs. They were doing what they were doing for political and economical control of the world. These guys are doing it because Allah commands them to destroy the infidel, Israel and Great Satan. Even if they die doing it.
Big difference.
[quote]lixy wrote:
JeffR wrote:
You do know that syria is friendly with al qaeda? Right?
Bullshit.[/quote]
They just give them safe passage into Iraq, right?
[quote]Chushin wrote:
Fitnessdiva wrote:
Let’s just invade any country that has any weapons they might use against us. we can never be sure they won’t use them.
Jeez, can you at least manage to write more than 1 (in this case, poorly constructed) sentence at a time once in a while?[/quote]
To be fair, what she’s saying is not far off what more than a few people in the Bush Administration are basically advocating, the “one percent doctrine”:
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Chushin wrote:
Fitnessdiva wrote:
Let’s just invade any country that has any weapons they might use against us. we can never be sure they won’t use them.
Jeez, can you at least manage to write more than 1 (in this case, poorly constructed) sentence at a time once in a while?
To be fair, what she’s saying is not far off what more than a few people in the Bush Administration are basically advocating, the “one percent doctrine”:
Bingo, and the bottom line is that if we and/or anyone in the rest of the world choose to run the planet like that, we are all in for a lot of trouble.
Nobody can make other people live a certain way, whether democratic, communist, Islamic sharia law, or any other way. Once we start trying to export ideas, like we did when we decided to invade Iraq, our country is going to decline. If we keep going this way, the US will likely be no more within 100 years.
It has always been this way throughout history. Hopefully the next election will be a course correction.