can anyone else see the next American victim being Iran, now don't get me wrong I don't care one way or another but bush should at least be honest about it and say I want more oil for all my daddys friends rather than saying this piddling little country is threatening us.
I think you see this wrong. Iran won't be the victim on the long run. You think Iraq is bad? Iran will end up a fresh new level of hell for the Americans. They are way more prepared and motivated then the ragtag "insurgents" in Iraq. And seeing how stretched the US forces are right now....if I were in an American uniform, I'd be frantically looking for a way out of it.
Given how most people in the United States detest Iran, I don't see how the US would even bother occupying the country after it's been nuked into glass.
now they start the same propaganda crap again.... do i have to remind anyone that this is war propaganda? and... wasnt it the us war propaganda that was proved wrong long time ago? you know... when they talked bs about hussein having weapons of mass destruction... in what country where women first allowed to vote? switzerland or iran? in what coutry are women alloed to drive a car? saudi arabia or iran? from what country where the majority of the guys in the planes in the 9/11 attacks?
The US won't nuke Iran. Why? Because it is on a huge oil field, that's why. And oil is what it's all about... can't do much with oil that will be rendered radioactive for the next few million years. Not to mention that Saudi Arabia and the US aren't friends, don'cha know? Don't let all those pleasant smiles and handshakes fool you (remember that Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein once exchanged hands and pleasantries. With friends like these...). As naokaji reminds us: Saudi Arabia is currently building a HUGE wall on its border with Iraq to keep the riff-raff our. It goes out of its way to make the US military currently based in Saudi Arabia feel as unwelcome as a junkie visiting the home of a crack dealer. How do you think it will react if Iran gets nuked? How do you think the fundamentalists in Pakistan will react? Pakistan has nukes too. How do you think North Korea will respond, and China, to this brazen unprovoked use of nuclear weapons? Do you think that the rest of the Western world will stand by the US, or start to nervously shuffle away from the firing line? Not to mention the Iranians who survive. And the Syrians, and the Lebanese, and the Afghans, and everyone else who is a bit pissed with the US already. 9/11 would be a Disney cartoon in comparison to the backlash that they would serve up. So this idea of the US nuking Iran is crazy talk. Please do not adjust your brain --normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. QFT.
The difference between propaganda and truth is seen by direct observation. If the intelligence had been directly confirmed (and it wasn't) then the weapons of mass destruction would have been more probable. The Bush administration made up its mind to go into Iraq and looked for reasons to do so. The flawed intelligence was used in such away as to obviate the truth for its own purposes. On the other hand, the truth, of the matter concerning Iran behind attacks in Iraq may be a little more certain. It seems they keep capturing Iranians and Iranian arms in Iraq. If the latter is not true then it's propaganda. However, if it is the truth then the US is well within their rights to seek help at the United Nations which is what they are doing according to the original story posted in this thread. This will go absolutely nowhere because China is on the UN Security Council, and it gets a very large portion of its oil from Iran. China has also been very stalwart when sanctions were sought against Iran's nuclear program. I'm not sure, but Iran may be trying to take the right of women to vote away according to yet another news story that I saw on the TV. In Tehran, women are not allowed to drive except those that drive the "women only" taxis. Or, at least that is what I saw when there was a story about it on TV. Propaganda or truth? Try taking a green cab in Tehran if you are male. Then, let me know what the truth is please. Switzerland?
Er, yeah. They keep capturing Iranians in the most unexpected places: in Iranian diplomatic liason offices. Even the Iraqi officials (you know, the guys that are friends with the US?) were stating that they were part of a diplomatic mission in the city of Arbil in northern Iraq. And the eight that were detained in Bagdad? The US admitted it was all a mistake. But I guess that did not make the CNN. "Observations" means dick. Remember how on 5 February 2003 Powell showed all sorts of satellite images of blurry oblongs in the sand, claiming them to be bioweapons labs mounted on trucks? But hang on, didn't they have pictures? Didn't they have statements of people who, like, saw things with their own eyes? I don't know why I'm wasting my breath here. The Bush administration has been found blatantly lying, distorting reality and manipulating evidence to suit their political agenda for years, and here you are, poor sap you, ready to give them the benefit of the doubt on Iran. I mean, does Bush really have any more credibility than Ahmadinejad? Iran is full of progressive, young, educated people. The Zoroastrian, Jewisn and Christian religions are officially recognized and protected, and have reserved seats in the Parliament. But the West is seriously pissing of the Iranian government and alienating its population and now there is a fundamentalist backlash. Large numbers of women are in civil service and higher education, and with fourteen women being elected to the Islamic Consultative Assembly in 1996. Women make up 27% of the Iranian labor force and the percentage of all Iranian women who are economically active has more than doubled from 6.1% in 1986 to 13.7% in 2000. According to the research ministry of Iran, about 6% are full professors, 8% associate professors, and 14% assistant professors in the 1998-99 academic year. Women accounted for 56% of all students in the natural sciences, including one in five Ph.D. students. Of course there is segregation and things are far from equal yet. But we have glass ceilings and gender inequality here in the West. And apparently we now tell women to cover up, too.
I don't disagree with your take on Bush. I said that he was in gross misjudgment and had obviated the truth. What I said was Don't kill the messenger. "We" don't tell women to cover up. It was an airline employee and not the tradition of doing so.
I never believed Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 or was a threat to the U.S. (or anybody else) except their own population. I never agreed with the assessments, nor the action of a preemptive strike. They didn't attack us, so we had no reason to attack them. I don't hold with Bush's policies on hardly anything. Both his foreign and domestic policies truly suck. I could make a huge list of all the negatives and it would take me weeks to do so. But, I do take the history of warfare with a grain of salt. If Iran is shipping in arms and people to create mischief in Iraq it wouldn't be unheard of based upon geography alone. It is not prudent to discount that possibility if you are really seeking the truth of the matter. In other words maybe it's like saying "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water." In this case the baby being the truth of the matter and Bush-isms being the bath water.
I'm sure that some Iranian weapons have strayed into Iraqi insurgent hands, although I doubt that the Iranian goverment has anything to do with that. Just like considerably more US weapons have strayed into Iraqi insurgent hands... ...but I'm fairly sure that the US didn't intend to hand them out to them either. So why assume that Iran did?
This is a direct quote from http://news.bbc.co.uk/ who are quoting what the US is saying. I know that there are circles within circles when it comes to these things - sometimes a small ripple becoming large ripples and much for the worse. Example: WW I started after Archduke Franz's car took a wrong turn. It didn't cause the war in and of itself. But, the act of a small group of radicals, in the name of Serbian nationalism, set in motion events that propagated other events that eventually caused hostilities to break out. In that case, the Serbian people were blamed as a whole by the actions of a few. Sometimes, it only takes a spark to start a war. If the US is genuinely stating that they believe that something hostile is occurring then that can be dangerous as well. It is worthwhile to keep track of what is being reported. In this case, it is that the US government has publicly stated their beliefs that Iran itself is behind these hostilities. That is what I quoted.
Well, I wouldn't suggest being naive about this, Iran has a track record of wanting to see Shia Islam spread to other countries. The fact that Iraq has a Shia majority and was long ruled by a Sunni clan, it's perfect for what they want to accomplish. I am certain that weapons and expertise are flowing over the Iranian border, just as Sunnis are drifting over the Saudi border. Not unlike what the US has done in countless countries over the years, quietly putting know how and guns in peoples hands. Let's just face it, with the next election in the US, the American troops will be pulled out. There will be a brief, bloody civil war and Iraq will end up an Iranian vassal state, a buffer to the Gulf and Syria. Unless the Gulf states intervene and it becomes a larger conflict. Which seems unlikely, given the economic growth based on outside investment and the Shia populations in those states. And at the end America will walk away from yet another pointless military adventure wondering what went wrong, with the rest of the world waiting with baited breath to see where we will embarrass ourselves next. If we want to solve this and have something constructive to show for it, we need to triple the number of troops there for the next 20 years. We need to seriously rebuild the country and quickly bring real jobs online. What we are doing now is just *****-footing around and costing pointless lives. Build or go, life support just prolongs the pain.
There seems to be a basic historical rule that "My enemy's enemies are my friends", making at times for strange bed-fellows, like America, Britain and Russia on the one side, Germany and Japan on the other, in WW2. America arms its friends in Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, Vietnam, South America, etc; countries who don't particularly like to see American power extended, like China, Russia, Iran, etc, restore a bit of balance by helping the "other side". It's a chicken & egg situation over who started it and either side crying "Foul!" is sheer bloody hypocrisy.
No, it's called war by proxy. No American troops fought in the Israeli wars or against Russia in Afghanistan. Initially only military "advisors" in Vietnam. But it can escalate to war.
Nothing new really, it’s business as usual. They have been working on creating yet another conflict for a long time now; let’s see what kind of solution they present us with to a problem that they themselves created in the first place eh. …are obsolete “Those in power create problems in order to get reactions, and afterwards they present solutions (or “solutions”) to the problems that they themselves created in the first place”
