Is Iran a threat to the U.S.?
The following is an excerpt from A Tragic Legacy on the question of whether Iran is a threat to the U.S. and, to the extent it is, the role which Bush's belligerent policies have played in exacerbating that threat:
The cartoonish depiction of Iran embraced by Bush and his supporters is nothing more than pure fiction, completely removed from reality. The view of the Iranian government as irrational, intractable, single-minded evil-doers bent on threatening the United States and wreaking world destruction stands in stark contrast to their actions over the last several years.
It is simply beyond dispute that Iran’s behavior since the 9/11 attacks empirically disproves the President’s assertions about what motivates them and how they behave. Indeed, the gap between reality and the President’s rhetoric concerning Iran is almost impossible to overstate.
It is true that Iran – like most countries – pursues its own interests and security, and that has placed it at times in opposition to the U.S. It is also true that, like many governments around the world, including some of our closest and most important allies, the Iranian government is repressive in many ways towards its citizens and is far from a model democracy. And it is absolutely the case that intense anti-American rhetoric is commonly expressed by Iranian leaders, and in particular, Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, frequently issues ugly and threatening sentiments towards Israel.
But it is equally true that the interests of the U.S. and Iran have significantly converged since 2001, and when they have, the two countries – particularly during the early years of the Bush presidency – worked together towards common goals as virtual allies. During this same period, Iran has cultivated new and important allies around the world, and developed substantial commercial relationships with our own European allies. And it has maintained constructive and amiable relations with most of its neighbors – including, most prominently, the newly elected Government of Iraq.
In short, the picture of Iran that emerges from its actions is one of a rational state actor with which the U.S. can cooperate towards common goals. Iran has invaded no other countries. Its military spending and military power is a tiny fraction of that of the U.S. Iran could not threaten the U.S. in any meaningful way and the rational behavior of its leaders leaves little doubt that they realize that.
To the extent that Iran has become increasingly hostile to American interests, it is (at least in part) due to the fact that we have treated that nation as an absolute Enemy, which in turn has rendered it rational – one could even argue necessary -- for them to become more hostile. President Bush’s refusal even to negotiate with them -- and his insistence that they are the World’s Great Evil – has left Iran with no choice but to assume that no cooperation with the U.S. is possible. Quite the contrary, Iran is being forced, rationally, to assume that it will be treated in the same way as its fellow Axis of Evil member Iraq was -- with invasion and regime change –- and, as any rational country would, it is thus taking steps to deter such an attack.
In sum, treating Iran as Pure Evil to be shunned and demonized creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The subsequent actions which Iran undertakes as a result of being included on a short-list of the President’s publicly announced Evil Enemies of America – and as a result of being the target of threatening rhetoric virtually identical to that which President Bush employed against Iraq shortly before he invaded that country –- serves to bolster further the President’s view of Iran as an incorrigible evil. That then leads the President to issue still more threats and bellicose rhetoric towards Iran, which in turn drives Iran to view itself as an enemy of the U.S. and to act on the premise that an American attack may be likely.
Worse still, internal Iranian political divisions have been driven by an ongoing power struggle between forces of religious fanaticism and forces of political moderation. But as is true for the U.S. and most other countries, nothing has the capacity to unite an otherwise divided population more than external threats from other nations.
Even Iranians who agree on little else will set those differences aside in order to defend their national sovereignty. Iranians – like most people in the world across the political spectrum -- do not want the U.S. dictating their policies or internal affairs. Demonizing rhetoric and threats from President Bush towards Iran unite the nation behind its government like nothing else can.
Thus, the more the President denounces and threatens Iran, the more he politically emboldens the very extremists whom he identifies as our Enemies. The President’s own domestic political fortunes demonstrate how threats from an external enemy unite even the most politically polarized citizenry behind their political leaders. Just as President Bush’s political power was greatly enhanced by Al Qaeda’s attacks on America – and is enhanced whenever Osama bin Laden re-surfaces to threaten America-- so, too, have the Iranian mullahs and other extremists been strengthened by Bush’s threatening posture and belittling treatment towards Iran. For exactly this reason, it is likely that President Ahmadinejad deliberately provokes confrontational exchanges with the U.S. and Israel. Few things bolster his political standing more than threatening rhetoric from George Bush.
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Much of the caricaturing of Iran has been enabled by the outlandish and malicious statements of Iran’s elected President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including his expressed desire for the elimination of Israel and doubts about whether the Holocaust really occurred as historians have documented. Though advocates of war with Iran have depicted Ahmadinejad as some sort of Supreme Leader of Iran, he is, in fact, nothing of the sort.
Iran’s most powerful leaders are the unelected Ayatollahs and mullahs who control most of Iran’s critical power centers; the power of the President in Iran is secondary and highly limited by multiple factors. Ironically, many of those who seek to inflate President Ahmadinejad into some sort of supreme leader in order to capitalize on the outrageousness of his statements were the same ones who continuously belittled the power of the Iranian presidency when it was occupied from 1997 to 2005 by an Iranian moderate/reformist, Mohammad Khatami.
Indeed, Khatami openly rejected the notion that Iran was on the opposite side of a War of Civilizations with the West, but instead aggressively advocated detente with the West. During the Khatami presidency, those who sought to persuade the U.S. to continue to view as Iran as an Enemy repeatedly insisted that Khatmai’s moderation was irrelevant because it was the radical clerics who had the real power in Iran, and the position of President was a virtual sinecure, maintained to placate demands among Iranians for some type of democratic representation.
Writing in National Review in 2003, Amir Taheri, the neoconservatives’ favorite Iran “expert,” called Khatami “irrelevant” and a mere “figurehead.” In 2002, The New Republic Editors dismissed him away as “timid and powerless.” And The Financial Times warned that it is “doubtful he has the powers” to impede the agenda of Iranian radicals. But now that an easy-to-demonize hard-line figure, rather than a reformist, occupies the Presidency, voices from the nation’s war-hungry precincts focus almost exclusively on Iran’s President as though he is some sort of Supreme Leader (a title which is, revealingly, one claimed by Iran’s true leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei).
The notion that Ahmadinejad possesses absolute dictatorial power along the lines of Adolph Hitler, or even that he is the most powerful figure in Iran, is sheer fiction. By the end of 2006, Ahemdinijad had suffered a series of significant defeats and public indignities, including the year-end loss of his supporters in local Iranian elections and the victory of one of his most powerful political rivals, Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Those elections installed moderate and reformist candidates who are opposed to Ahmadinejad on a whole spectrum of political positions. And the rebuke he suffered was personal in nature, as both his “spiritual advisor,” Ayatollah Mohammed-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, and even his own sister, Parvine, suffered crushing electoral defeats.
One of the leading anti-Ahmadinejad parties, the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, issued a taunting victory statement after the election results were finalized which read in part:
The initial results of elections throughout the country indicate that Mr Ahmadinejad's list has experienced a decisive defeat nationwide. They were tantamount to a big 'no' to the government's authoritarian and inefficient methods.
Manifestly, the freedom of opposing political parties to mount serious challenges to Ahmadinejad’s power, let alone to triumph over him and freely expressly such harsh criticism, negates the ludicrous attempt to depict him as some type of Hitler-like dictator with absolute power in Iran. He is nothing of the sort.
And while Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric towards Israel and about the Holocaust is repugnant, there is nothing unique about Iran’s position regarding Israel, particularly when compared to the broader Middle East. Indeed, scores of Middle Eastern countries share the Iranians’ refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist, including countries, which are cooperative with, even allies of, the United States.
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Independently, President Bush’s veneration of democracy as a measuring stick for the morality of other countries by itself strongly suggests that Iran is far from the top of the list of repressive tyrannies. While the mullahs who exercise true power are beyond the reach of the democratic processes, President Ahmadinejad himself was voted for by Iranians in an election widely considered imperfect though generally legitimate. Lower political office-holders in Iran are routinely chosen via the democratic process, and an independent and spirited opposition movement has flourished in that country.
In addition to the partial democratic rights, Iranian society is far more pluralistic than most other Middle Eastern nations. With some minor exceptions (such as a prohibition on becoming Army officers), Jewish Iranians have full rights of citizenship and even have an elected representative in the Iranian Parliament. Many Iranian Jews have relatives in Israel and travel freely between the two countries.
If there is a threat against any synagogue, Iranian security forces protect them. Unees Hammami, a Jewish community leader in Iran, told the BBC in 2006: "Because of our long history here we are tolerated."
Additionally, multiple other non-Islamic religions are practiced openly and freely in Iran. The country is home to several Armenian Orthodox Churches, where congregants worship openly and without restriction.
In addition to diverse religionists, Iranian women enjoy far greater civic rights than in most Middle Eastern and/or Muslim countries. In 2005, sixty percent of university students and thirty-eight percent of government administrators were female. According to Julie Hill of the School of International Relations and Pacific studies, a third of all Iranian physicians are female, and literacy among women improved from 5 percent at the time of the Islamic Revolution to 55 percent today. Women are elected to Parliament, and serve in important appointed positions.
None of this is to suggest that Iran is some sort of beacon of egalitarianism and pluralism or a haven for human rights. As noted, the human rights abuses by its government are pervasive and severe. Women are denied numerous, fundamental rights by law. And much of the rhetoric emanating from some of Iranian leaders is reprehensible.
But, particularly when compared to other countries in that region, including many with whom the U.S. maintains extremely friendly relations, Iran is far from the bastion of Pure Nazi-like Evil it has been depicted to be. Just as those who wished to invade Iraq persuaded Americans to support that war by portraying Saddam as a unique threat and pure evil, the demonization of Iran is being perpetrated in order to mislead Americans into accepting war against that nation. Put simply, the cartoon picture of Iran painted by those -- including the President -- who seek belligerence against Iran is simply false.
Thank you very much for this post! It has been long awaited by people like me. Iran is no more a threat to America than Saudi Arabia is, if even as much of a threat. Take away Iran's oil and the Bush administration would barely recognize the existence of Iran.
We do have a major problem facing us, with the Iran nuclear program. It is not that the nuclear program in Iran is a threat to us, but the Republicans' response to that program is extremely threatening to us. An invasion or even a bombing attack on Iran should have virtually a zero possibility, but with the Republicans in charge, that possibility is very high.
Hoppy in Sacramento
July 2, 2007 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Iran is a threat to Joe Lieberman's sanity. Otherwise, it's not a threat to the US.
July 2, 2007 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
For the moment I will simply state that those most prominent in declaring Iran a dangerous state have also supported and still support the U.S. invasion of Iraq. For this reason alone their voices deserve summary disqualification. Someone who insists today the U.S. invasion of Iraq was wise and legal and then opines on Iran must as a precondition admit their mistake in Iraq and carefully explain why they got it so wrong and still will not admit as such. Without this precondition, it is just the used car dealer who sold you a lemon saying he promises this time that this other car is definitely not a lemon.
July 2, 2007 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's see. 3000 miles away. One fifth the population. One twenty-fifth the GNP.
Nope.
Not a threat.
July 2, 2007 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Glenn's column does beg the question of why the U.S. is not much more concerned about North Korea, which already has nukes and ballistic missile tech and regularly threatens to use it. The only two plausible answers for this inconsistency are oil and Israel. However, nukes are the worst offensive weapon in existence. They cannot be used offensively. This eliminates Israel as a plausible reason for the asymmetric "nuke" concern over Iran. This leaves a desire for permanent U.S. control and hegemony over the Persian Gulf as the only plausible answer, in my mind., for the wildly disproportionate response to Iran vs. North Korea on the subject of nukes.
July 2, 2007 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
The cartoonish depiction of Iran embraced by Bush and his supporters is nothing more than pure fiction, completely removed from reality. The view of the Iranian government as irrational, intractable, single-minded evil-doers bent on threatening the United States and wreaking world destruction stands in stark contrast to their actions over the last several years.
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Oh wow. Everyone knows the Iranians are just little fuzz balls that wouldn't hurt a flea.
http://cpass.georgetown.edu/Articles/Dan's%20testimony.pdf
Testimony to Congress in 2005 by Dr. Daniel Byman, Director, Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University
Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution
Not exactly your right-wing think tank:
Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has been one of the world’s most active sponsors of terrorism. Tehran has armed, trained, financed, inspired, organized, and otherwise supported dozens of violent groups over the years. Iran has backed not only groups in its Persian Gulf neighborhood, but also terrorists and radicals in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Bosnia, the Philippines, and elsewhere.1 This support remains strong even today. It comes as no surprise then, twenty five years after the revolution, the U.S. State Department still considers Iran “the most active state sponsor of terrorism.”2
snip
In addition to giving Iran a way to weaken its neighbors, terrorism allowed Iran to influence events well beyond its borders. Lacking aircraft carriers or other military forces that can deploy thousands of miles away, and with its economy too weak to force far-away countries to heed their demands, Iranian political protests have often gone unheeded. Iran has used support for terrorists to project power, particularly in the Arab-Israeli arena but also against Iraqi targets and in Europe. Up until the early 1990s, Iranian intelligence services also assassinated Iranian dissidents in Europe.
Iran supported terrorist groups not only to weaken adversaries, but also to have a voice in the opposition to a particular regime. For example, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent U.S. and European troop deployments there, Iran chose to undermine the existing Shi’a group, Amal, because it had cooperated with Israel. It is interesting to note that Iran chose to do so even though the organization was well-established and popular. To undermine Amal, Iranian intelligence agents, diplomats and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (as well as Syrian officials) created the Lebanese Hizballah from a motley assortment of small Shiite organizations. Iran helped the fledgling movement train and indoctrinate new members in the Bekaa Valley and developed an entire infrastructure there to support it, including social services and a fundraising network. This effort paid off with the creation of a loyal and effective proxy. As one senior Hizballah official noted in the early 1980s, “Our relation with the Islamic revolution [in Iran] is one of a junior to a senior … of a soldier to his commander.”9
snip
Terrorism, of course, was also a means for Iran to strike the United States and Israel. With Iranian guidance, the Lebanese Hizballah dramatically captured America’s attention with devastating suicide attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, where 63 people died, including 17 Americans, and on the U.S. Marine Barracks in October 1983, where 241 U.S. Marines were killed (a simultaneous attack killed 58
French peacekeepers). These attacks, and the sense that the peacekeepers had little peace to keep, led President Reagan to withdraw U.S. troops in February 1984.
Hizballah also took numerous Westerners hostage in the 1980s, executing several of them. Hizballah, often working through suborganizations with different names, took 17 Americans, 15 Frenchmen, 14 Britons, 7 Swiss, and 7 West Germans hostage, as well as 27 others hostage during the 1980s. In March 1992, Hizballah and Iran worked together to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Argentina, killing 29 and in July 1994 attacked the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, killing 86. Hizballah also aided other groups that shared its agenda. Iran also directed the attack on the U.S. military facility of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 17 American troops.10 In addition to its support for Hizballah, Iran has also supported a wide array of other groups that have attacked Israel. In each of these instances, Tehran was able to compensate for its military inferiority by relying on terrorism.
Terrorism also offered Iran some degree of deniability in this effort. By working through proxies, Iran was able to achieve its own interests against the United States, Israel, or states supporting Iraq without paying the consequences that more direct involvement might entail.
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How do you define threat? Will Iran invade the US? No. If they had a nuke would they launch it against us? Don't think so. Too high a price. Will they continue to attack us assymetrically through proxies and cause us as much trouble as possible? I'd say history since 1979 says yes.
Is Greenwald building a big strawman by saying Iran is no threat to the US or its interests by defining "threat" only as direct military confrontation or something similar? I'd say yes.
July 2, 2007 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
What strikes me more than anything is the way bellicosity is self-reinforcing. Every Big Brother needs a Goldstein. I sometimes wonder if the reason the saber-rattling has shifted from Iraq to Iran is simply because there's an individual who can be pointed to as an embodiment of evil. With Saddam gone, referring to the "insurgency" or even "Al Qaeda" lacks the punch that can be conveyed by referring to Ahmadinejad.
In other words, it matters less to Bush who the object of our hatred is, as long as there's enough hatred to keep the war-cheerleaders supplied.
July 2, 2007 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Most Americans over 40 remember the 1979 hostage situation. That is our one exposure to that country. Then we supported Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war. Then we fought Iraq and finally invaded Iraq.
I think most people in this country are very uninformed about Iran. Most probably don't know the difference between Iran and Iraq.
Your excerpt was great. I knew so little of what the situation really is in Iran and I am an everyday reader of political blogs, etc. Imagine the lack of knowledge of the average citizen in our Foxified country.
July 2, 2007 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Their very weakness makes them a threat, because it's easy to misunderestimate them. If they were stronger, they'd be less of a threat. China is militarily more dangerous than Iran, but we granted them trade rights and so on, because they are such nice guys -- ask a Tibetan. Similarly, Russia is not a threat, because they are too strong and have too many nukes at their disposal, plus Bush saw Putin's soul hiding behind their nuclear arsenal, and pronounced him harmless.
Crooked cops, crooked lawyers, crooked judges, crooked politicians, crooked doctors, crooked scientists, crooked clergymen -- but no crooked journalists. An amazing record for an amazing class of people.
July 2, 2007 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Glenn, I thought the one weakness of your book was that you didn't cover the failed and failing nature of our press corps as well as the topic deserved. For example, you attributed their falling prostrate at Bush's feet, to fear of his popularity in the wake of 9/11, yet they are still doing it, particularly with regards to Iraq and Iran (as you yourself are pointing out on your own blog), despite Bush's sub-30% approval ratings. There have to be other reasons for their behavior, but you just didn't say much about it in your book, and you don't hypothesize about it much in your blog either, despite doing an excellent job of covering bad reporting in general. Do you have a broad idea about what is causing it (which seems to be a necessary step in ending it), are you trying to puzzle it out, or do you think it irrelevant?
Crooked cops, crooked lawyers, crooked judges, crooked politicians, crooked doctors, crooked scientists, crooked clergymen -- but no crooked journalists. An amazing record for an amazing class of people.
July 2, 2007 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not a book about the press, so it would be odd to include large discussions of the press. I also didn't include a discussion of global warming or AIDS, even though those are also important topics, because the book isn't about that.
Nonetheless, I did include a lengthy section discussing the media's enabling behavior in the run-up to the Iraq war and -- contrary to your claim -- included a discussion of some of the motives driving the media's conduct. A partial excerpt from the book of that discussion is here (see update).
July 2, 2007 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Then we supported Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war.
This is as much a cartoonish exaggeration as the Neocon's picture of Iran. When Saddam first took over Iraq (while Carter was still president) the US made overtures to attract him as a client. This included money and some outdated weaponry, with promises of more and better to come. The Soviets and even the French made similar proposals. Saddam had no desire to be anyone's lackey and while he took the gifts he spurned everyone, thereby ensuring his eventual isolation. During the Iraq-Iran War the US attitude was pretty much one of "A plague on both houses" and the hope that the combatants would ruin each other for good.
July 2, 2007 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Terrorism" against which countries? What terrorist attacks has Iran" sponsored" against the U.S.?
This is all so conclusory as to be worthless - what examples support these claims? And note that even by this hawkish account, none of the terrorism Iran is allegedly sponsoring is directed against the U.S. Does that matter when deciding if Iran is a threat to the U.S.? How could it not?
Iran clearly supports groups that are hostile to Israel (and to which Israel is hostile). Whether one wants to call those groups "terrorists" or not (and many in Europe, of course, do not), it is still not an example of supporting terrorism against the U.S.
An attack on U.S. troops who were occupying Lebanaon 23 years ago is not exactly proof that Hizbollah is a threat to the U.S. I'd say the opposite, given that there have been no such attacks ever since Ronald Reagan withdrew our troops from that country.
I`d like to see a citation that contains evidence that "Iran directed" the attack on Khobar Towres.
When have they "attacked 'us' asymetrically"? And are we doing anything to them at all - such as occupying two of their neighboring countries and exerting dominion in their region?
July 2, 2007 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry, but that's simply dishonest.
It's offensively dishonest in that it purports to rewrite history despite a mass of evidence to the contrary.
You will recall the famous picture of Don Rumsfeld going to Iraq and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein? What did you think that was about?
The fact is that as of 1983, after Iraq's push into Iran had failed and the Iranian counterattacks were actively threatening the Iraq regime, the United States came on board strongly. While officially 'neutral' the United States intervened on Iraq's behalf in a variety of ways. The United States sold arms and munitions. In particular, the United States provided Iraq with chemical weapons precursors and various sorts of technology, which Iraq promptly used against Iran. The United States also acted to provide diplomatic and political support internationally to Iraq to shield it from international condemnation and pressure for misuse of chemical weapons in war. In particular, the Reagan administration also ran cover for Iraq from the American Congress. The United States also supplied satellite photos and analysis to Iraq to assist them in defending themselves. Finally, the United States intervened to preserve Iraq's economic lifelines in the 'tanker war' phase.
While it is true that during the same period the United States was also playing footsie with Iran, as we know from the Iran-Contra scandal, the official stance was always highly adversarial.
Two examples:
(a) An Iraqi fighter jet took out an American destroyer, sinking a ship of the line and inflicting forty casualties. Reagan said, 'it was an accident, no harm done.'
(b) An American warship destroyed an Iranian passenger plane, killing some three hundred innocent civilians. Bush I said, 'f*ck you.'
One might see a certain inbuilt bias of positions there.
July 2, 2007 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hear the drumbeat for bombing Iran coming from Israel and AIPAC and the neocon-likudniks here as much as any other quarter. Iran is a player in the region and growing stronger thanks to U.S.-Israeli actions (Iraq, lebanon, etc.). It opposes Israel's occupation and supports Hezbolah. It has filled the gap in supporting Hamas as Israel has cut them off. Nukes may be as convenient an excuse for war with Iran in Israel as it is in the U.S.
P.S. It's all part of the Great War on Terror or War of Civilizations. In the en, all of the "terrorists" are conflated (al Qaeda, iraqi insurgents, Hezbollah, etc.) in a war on Islam.
July 2, 2007 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Iran clearly supports groups that are hostile to Israel (and to which Israel is hostile). Whether one wants to call those groups "terrorists" or not (and many in Europe, of course, do not), it is still not an example of supporting terrorism against the U.S.
Terrorism, of course, was also a means for Iran to strike the United States and Israel. With Iranian guidance, the Lebanese Hizballah dramatically captured America’s attention with devastating suicide attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, where 63 people died, including 17 Americans, and on the U.S. Marine Barracks in October 1983, where 241 U.S. Marines were killed (a simultaneous attack killed 58
French peacekeepers). These attacks, and the sense that the peacekeepers had little peace to keep, led President Reagan to withdraw U.S. troops in February 1984.
An attack on U.S. troops who were occupying Lebanaon 23 years ago is not exactly proof that Hizbollah is a threat to the U.S. I'd say the opposite, given that there have been no such attacks ever since Ronald Reagan withdrew our troops from that country.
Iran also directed the attack on the U.S. military facility of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 17 American troops.
I`d like to see a citation that contains evidence that "Iran directed" the attack on Khobar
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Go read it, Glenn. I don't have time to do all your work for you.
July 2, 2007 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
During the Iraq-Iran War the US attitude was pretty much one of "A plague on both houses" and the hope that the combatants would ruin each other for good.
That's ridiculous. There is no question that the Reagan and Bush I administrations tilted heavily toward Iraq, allowing weapons transfers through third countries; providing satellite reconnaissance photography; establishing a direct CIA-Baghdad intelligence relationship; approving computer sales for ballistic missile development; approving a heavy volume of licenses for dual-use technology; running interference in the US Congress and the UN; destroying Iranian gunboats in the Gulf, and more.
July 2, 2007 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who is REALLY threatening to wipe who "off the map"?
"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including his expressed desire for the elimination of Israel..." blah blah blah
This is an old myth that's been BUSTED too many times. (link)
What he really said is:
More on the intentional mistranslation here (link)
On the other hand, Iran has been the victim of repeated and explicit US threats to launch a nuclear holocaust (link) on Iran, which is a violation of international law and a war crime for which Bush ought to be indicted. (link)
SOURCE: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist Sept-Oct 2006July 2, 2007 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that the excerpts that I've read don't talk a lot about Iran's sponsorship of terrorism. But it takes quite a leap from there to conclude: Is Greenwald building a big strawman by saying Iran is no threat to the US or its interests by defining "threat" only as direct military confrontation or something similar? I'd say yes.
I've never seen Greewald say that Iran is not a problem, just that the situation is far more complicated than black and white. Indeed, even in the short excerpt above was this: None of this is to suggest that Iran is some sort of beacon of egalitarianism and pluralism or a haven for human rights. I have not read the book yet, but I'd be surprised if it did not contain several sections commenting on the use of proxies and asymmetrical methods.
Could you be a little more explicit as to what you see as Greenwald's motive - my reading of the post is that it smells of a conservative attack stereotyping (along the lines of liberals hate America). Is the perceived strawman building just a case of projection?
More to the point: what is wrong in pointing out the complexity of Iranian issues; and showing how the administration's framing of the issues are dysfunctional? The post looks like a classic example of good/evil thinking - describe an issue and use it to "prove" Iran is evil, than no further thought it necessary and only complete destruction of the evil enemy is acceptable. Or perhaps I was missing the subtle sarcasm of El Campesino's post?
July 2, 2007 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
The fact is that as of 1983, after Iraq's push into Iran had failed and the Iranian counterattacks were actively threatening the Iraq regime, the United States came on board strongly. While officially 'neutral' the United States intervened on Iraq's behalf in a variety of ways. The United States sold arms and munitions. In particular, the United States provided Iraq with chemical weapons precursors and various sorts of technology, which Iraq promptly used against Iran.
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Actually the Iraqis already had chemical weapons and used them from the early days of the war
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In 1980 the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency filed a report stating that Iraq had been actively acquiring chemical weapons capacities for several years, which later proved to be accurate.[15] In November 1980, two months into the Iran-Iraq War, the first reported use of chemical weapons took place when Tehran radio reported a poison gas attack on Susangerd by Iraqi forces.[16] The United Nations reported many similar attacks occurred the following year, leading Iran to develop and deploy a mustard gas capability. By 1984, Iraq was using poison gas with great effectiveness against Iranian "human wave" attacks [2]. Chemical weapons were used extensively against Iran by Iraq.[17
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
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I'd like to see a cite on the arms and ammunition we sold them. All I've ever seen quoted is some hand guns and some dual-use helicopters.
July 2, 2007 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Apparently "...as well as the topic deserved..." wasn't clear enough, so I'll try to make amends for that mistake now.
In your book you state the following:
... Whatever else may be true, the media indisputably failed to disabuse vast majorities of Americans of the myth that Saddam had planned the 9/11 attacks. [emphasis added]
I could go on -- there are, if I recall, similar passages regarding the media's potential role in an Iran war -- but that will do for the present.
Now, this passage strongly implies (it all but states it as fact) that the media, in failing to challenge the Bush peoples' claims regarding Saddam, are in large part responsible for fostering the environment that allowed for the invasion itself. They are, as I (and you in your blog) pointed out, continuing to behave in the same fashion, despite the fact that public opinion has turned against Bush, and so they no longer have anything to fear from him. Considering that the media will be a key player in shaping public opinion towards a putative military attack of Iran, considering the role the media played in the Iraq War, the importance of which you yourself acknowledged, considering even the headline of your post here, it seems to me that we need to understand and deal with what's motivating our media, and that the explanation that you gave in your (otherwise excellent and thought provoking) book is not up to that task. I doubt very many Washingtonians live in fear of being "cast as an ally of Evil" by the now thoroughly discredited G.W. Bush, and yet they are nearly as slavishly devoted to WH narratives and spin as ever, particularly with regards to the Middle East.
Crooked cops, crooked lawyers, crooked judges, crooked politicians, crooked doctors, crooked scientists, crooked clergymen -- but no crooked journalists. An amazing record for an amazing class of people.
July 2, 2007 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I grant your first three and last points. Could you be specific about the approval of computers specifically for ballistic missile development?
Further, the most critical dual-use technology reported by UN inspectors came principally from Russia and France. What did you have in mind? Microbial cultures, incidentally, are the least difficult part of a biological weapons development program.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
July 2, 2007 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
To the extent that Iran has become increasingly hostile to American interests, it is (at least in part) due to the fact that we have treated that nation as an absolute Enemy, which in turn has rendered it rational – one could even argue necessary -- for them to become more hostile. President Bush’s refusal even to negotiate with them -- and his insistence that they are the World’s Great Evil – has left Iran with no choice but to assume that no cooperation with the U.S. is possible.
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Listen to this from Greenwald. If you didn't know anything about US-Iranian relations you would think that we'd been getting along just fine until Bush verbally attacked them in 2001. Look at the Congressional testimony I linked to that summarizes the efforts Iran has made to attack US and US interests around the world since 1979. Greenwald provides none of this context. Iran is "increasingly" hostile to the US according to Greenwald because "we've treated them as an absolute enemy". Obviously THAT has nothing to do with the fact that Iran as treated the US as the "Great Satan" since 1979.
Criticize Bush policy all you want, but Greenwald paints a cartoonish version of reality that things were fine between us until Bush criticized Iran in 2001.
July 2, 2007 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please stop the moronic denial of how the US armed Saddam. Declassified US documents (link) show how the US aided Saddam.
The Reagan administration OFFICIALLY REMOVED SADDAM's REGIME FROM THE LIST OF TERRORIST NATIONS in 1983 in order to speed up the transfer of weapons technology to him. What, did he become not a terrorist suddenly?
The stuff we sent him included anthrax and botulism, and we knew perfectly well what was being done with the chemicals we sent him. U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup
Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds, By Michael Dobbs Washington Post
Monday, December 30, 2002
In fact we also sent him the helicopters that were used to spread the chemicals on the Kurds.
And when Saddam's atrocities in gassing the Kurds became widely known, WE TRIED TO BLAME IT ON THE IRANIANS:
SOURCE: "America Didn't Seem to Mind Poison Gas" by Joost Hilterman, International Herald Tribune Friday, January 17, 2003.And before you repeat the standard Right Wing denial of how the US armed Saddam by claiming that Saddam's purchases were of Soviet made weapons - who do you think FINANCED those purchases? Ever heard of the BNL Scandal, where US Agricultural Credit guarantees were diverted to weapons purchases WITH OUR KNOWLEDGE?
More:
Affidavit of National Security Staff Member Council Howard TeicherAll of this and much more is widely documented and not in any way open to dispute. Read Mark Pythian's "Arming Iraq: How the US and Britain Secretly Built Saddam’s War Machine." (Northeastern University Press: Boston 1997) for a start.
Oh, and just count how many US companies are listed in Iraq's "Full and Final Disclosure" of its WMD programs - a list that the US tried so hard to suppress but which was leaked by a German reporter and printed in Die Tageszeitung.
(Typically, once confronted with irrefutable evidence that the US armed Saddam, the Rightwinger-in-Denial will resort to the following arguments: 1- "Others did it too, so it was ok" or 2-"Arming Iraq served our interest at the time so it was OK" - so let me pop those arguments right now to save some time: 1- no, other's bad deeds are no justification for your bad deeds, and 2- If we are allowed to do bad things because it supposedly serves our interest (did arming Saddam serve our interests?) then on what basis can we complain when others do bad things that serve their interest? Or are we the only ones allowed to do bad things?)
July 2, 2007 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry, but I don't do your homework for you.
July 2, 2007 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I`d like to see a citation that contains evidence that "Iran directed" the attack on Khobar Towres.
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Risen, James, Jane Perlez. "Terrorism and Iran: Washington's Policy Performs a Gingerly Balancing Act", The New York Times, June 23, 2001.
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According to the United States, classfied evidence suggests that the government of Iran was the key sponsor of the incident, and several high ranking members of their military may have been involved.[3] The U.S. government may have been hesitant to more aggressively pursue the offenders within the Iranian military due to the recent rise of a more reformist government and a desire to enhance relations with Iran at the time.
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http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/opinions/2006/2000CV2329-12036-12222006a.pdf
A U.S. federal court has found that the Khobar Towers bombing was authorized by Ali Khamenei, then leader of Iran.[4]
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So the unremittingly hostile Bush administration was diplomatically soft pedaling Iranian involvement in Khobar Towers in an attempt to better relations in the summer before 9/11. That's according to the Republican house organ NY Times. Wasn't Risen the reporter who broke the NSA wiretapping thing?
What do you say Mr. Greenwald - don't you think Risen is a credible reporter? I haven't seen you criticize anything he's written about the NSA affair.
July 2, 2007 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did you even read what I wrote? I provided a link to an exceprt from the book that identifies motives of the media completely separate from the fear of being accused of being unpatriotic, though I think you are wrong that this fear is completely gone (though I grant it has certainly eroded).
I've written endlessly on my blog (see the post to which I linked above as but one example) and some in my book about the cultural, sociological and professional dynamics that have made the establishment press repudiate their adversarial watchdog role. It's fine if you disagree with that analysis, obviously - but why do you keep stating that I never provided any such reasons when I keep pointing you to exactly where I did so?
July 2, 2007 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've already done my homework. Sounds like you haven't done yours.
If this is in reference to my comment to Greenwald, I was irritated that he obviously hadn't really read what I linked to, and just wanted to snark at my comment.
July 2, 2007 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Dual use" helicopters you say? LOL!
Read up on how these "dual use" helicopter were used, WITH OUR FULL KNOWLEDGE:
"The removal of Iraq from the state terrorism list also freed the Reagan administration to aid Iraq militarily in its war with Iran. The first concrete
expression of this new freedom was the decision to sell Iraq sixty Hughes MD-500 Defender helicopters and ten Bell UH-1 helicopters, ostensibly for civilian
purposes. It was a proposal that caused a serious division within the administration.
The sale of 'civilian' helicopters has long been a classic way of providing military support to a favored state or ally in the face of congressional opposition,
and the ploy had been used before by the Reagan administration -- with El Salvador, for example. Although exported as a civilian kit, the weaponization of a civilian helicopter requires only adding armored plating, strapping a frame to support the weapons to be attached, attaching the weapons, and ideally adding
an electronic integration system, all of which takes a matter of hours. Even where they are not weaponized, the helicopters can quickly ferry troops to remote or
inaccessible areas, and as such have an important utility.
"As the MOD's Lt Col Glasebrook told the Scott Inquiry: 'There is basically no difference between a military helicopter and a civilian helicopter except
the color it is painted.' ...
"Although it was claimed at the time that the helicopters were needed to spray crops, it has been claimed since that they were used to spray Kurds with chemicals....
(Arming Iraq: How the US and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War Machine, by Mark Phythian p43)
AND . . .
(With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush and Saddam 1982-1999, by Bruce W. Jentleson, p44)
AND . . .
(Spider's Web: The secret history of how the White House illegally armed Iraq by Alan Friedman, p. 85)Note that the above paragraphs are about helicopters that were directly provided to Saddam by th United States. There were also Hueys (and other weapons and financing) provided to Iraq indirectly at the behest
of the Reagan administration, through the Arab and European states that supported Saddam's war of aggression against Iran and are therefore directly complicit in his war crimes.
July 2, 2007 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are the one guilty of misreading. I did NOT say that Ahmadinejad threatened to wipe Israel off the map, nor did I say that he intends to attack Israel.
I am well aware of the controversy over the translation and had it well in mind when I wrote about "his expressed desire for the elimination of Israel."
It is the official position of Iran, along with many other Middle Eastern countries, that Israel has no right to exist and has no right to occupy the land currently designated as "Israel."
That Ahmadinejad believes that is not in dispute, and that is all I attributed to him. You apparently are so eager to run around proving your "mistranslation" point that you see the "Ahmadinejad-wants-to-wipe-Israel-off-the-map" claim even when it isn't made. That's ironic, given that you are sermonizing about the sins of misreading what people say.
July 2, 2007 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Iranians have plenty of reasons to hold a grudge. We have some recent beefs. Who should make the first move? Does an attack or two balance regime change? I'd say we owe them more of an apology than they owe us.
Consider the odds and the payout. Does this pot offer enough reward if we commit by using force? Or should we dial down the rhetoric about nukes and terrorism?
Seems to me Iran is in the better position. We could of course bomb the crap out of them but the cost, to us, in moral prestige would be steep. They can harass us through remote terrorism or interdiction attacks in the Strait and reap status in the eyes of their friends.
The problem in the WH is not only that GWB is a black & white kind of guy, it's that he's not very bright. He may be socially shrewd, but his dullness allows an idea vacuum that gets filled by the faction with the most exciting scenario. Then Bush latches onto one idea and calls himself the Decider, and we're off to the races.
July 2, 2007 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Glenn, I agree with your general position and your conclusion, but it wasn't clear to me either that you were quoting George Bush, since you failed to put his remarks in quotes.
In any case you should provide a source for your contention that President Ahmadinejad wants to eliminate Israel. What he has said, in fact, if you read the references above, is that the regime that occupies Jerusalem should be eliminated.
The United States has itself called for the elimination of many regimes, Iran comes to mind, and it is hardly a basis for claiming, as the recent House bill did, unremarked by you, that Ahmadinejad is advocating genocide.
To see how the media has manipulated the truth go here.
July 2, 2007 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
The truly critical dual-use technology items for BW were fermenters, refrigerated centrifuges, and lyophilizers with capacity in excess of 100 liters (see the US Militarily Critical Technologies List). These came from France and Russia. Interesting. Your cited article does not give a single chemical or its status on the Chemical Weapons Convention. Isopropanol is technically dual use, but is also common rubbing alcohol -- and one of the two ingredients in binary Sarin. Methylphosphonyl difluoride would be quite a different matter, as would sulfur trichloride or thiodiglycol. Again, no details about what was shipped and how critical it was. I do not disagree that there was a tilt toward Iraq, intelligence support, and third-party funds. I have yet to see plausible smoking-gun evidence of critical technology for CW or BW.
Before arguing about WMD, do learn something about the technology involved, or cite sources that actually detail enough that someone with such a background can make an independent evaluation. I repeat: anthrax cultures, without the large-scale preparation equipment, do not a biological warfare program make.
Further, the US and UK both gave up on botulinus toxin as a weapon, other than for assassinations. It's not a viable biological weapon. Other things are.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
July 2, 2007 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pakistan sponsored the Taliban and sponsored quite a few terrorist groups. Its AQ Khan network is the single biggest cause of nuclear proliferation. 9/11 was conceived and executed by Pakistan's allies. Paksitan is therefore as big a threat to Iran. Oh wait, Pakistan is US's most valuable non-NATO ally.
July 2, 2007 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm afraid that 'bombing the crap out of Iran' would cost more than a loss in prestige. Iran has the capabilities to seriously hurt US ground forces in Iraq, either with its own military forces or those of its new Iraqi allies, and also to put a serious hurt on US naval forces using an array of cruise missiles, torpedoes and mines. Iran also has some air defense capability, so it wouldn't necessarily be a cakewalk like our other recent weak targets.
July 2, 2007 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a very confusing statement. I just accepted that assasinations are morally superior to terrorism (I assume that Iran was targeting her assassinations).
Up to a certain date (2001? earlier? later?) we were also in the bussiness of providing arms, money, sometimes training etc. to groups that after 2001 were deemed, by us, terrorist, or that would be deemeed terrorist were they still existed. Muslim radicals in Afghanistan and Bosnia are an obvious example, but there are also Cuban terrorists, Contras, Unita, Hmong fighters in Laos, elements of anti-Saddam opposition that were committing terrorist attacks etc. Some of them committed violent acts in Iran. We are in assassination business NOW. (Then again, this is a morally superior activity.)
So it boils down to "our shit is much more fragrant than your shit".
July 2, 2007 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you choose to be an asshole in public, this is your right and privilege. My right and privilege is to acknowledge your choice in such manner as seems appropriate.
Clear?
As for doing homework, there was nothing in your 'response' that actually contradicted my assertions. The claim that Saddam Hussein possessed and used chemical weapons prior to 1983 does not alter the fact that after 1983 the United States sold Iraq precursors and technology. Indeed, given the fact that Iraq was already using these weapons, it makes the United States policy from 1983 on doubly dubious.
Take the example of a man who has demonstrated a history of shooting his gun in his backyard and threatening his neighbors. Is it justifiable to later sell him bullets, given his past and continuing behaviour?
July 2, 2007 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your reasons -- correct me if I'm leaving one out -- are two: 1) Fear of Bush; and 2) A clubby DC atmosphere. The first is largely gone ("eroded" as you yourself say), and the second -- again, correct me if I'm wrong -- seems to make little sense in the wake of the '06 elections and a new group of insiders, with all signs pointing to a continuation of that trend in '08.
Do you seriously contend that the media establishment is willing to be cavalier about the prospect of war against Iran because Karl Rove is a swell guy to have at parties? Something like pardoning Scooter Libby, yeah, I can see that. But enabling an obviously disastrous war against Iran in the wake of an already disastrous war against Iraq, all because of a mutual love of cocktail weenies, expensive booze, and insider gossip? It doesn't wash.
Crooked cops, crooked lawyers, crooked judges, crooked politicians, crooked doctors, crooked scientists, crooked clergymen -- but no crooked journalists. An amazing record for an amazing class of people.
July 2, 2007 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Summing up the stuff upthread shows there is nothing on the table to justify any contemplation of any military action against Iran. BushCo cannot even credibly attach Iranian fingerprints on anti-U.S. forces in Iraq (they have tried -- with a laughable lack of success).
July 2, 2007 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Iran is clearly "un-friendly", but we have two options:
(*) resort to gross piracy and start Gulf War III, which could have profound ecological advantages, but which could make us much worse for the wear (although more fit too, as walking and bicycling would gain popularity amongst sky-high gasoline prices)
(**) learn to cope and minimize the possible damage.
Before advocating any course of actions in respect to Iran, I suggest the following warm-up exercise:
Premise: Putin detests Georgia, with some reasons, some good, some not so much. Part of the premise is that historically, Russians were always good guys, indefatigable in helping other peoples, possessors of unique "Slavic soul" which makes them like no other nation in the world. Being so good and unique, Russia does not have to care what we think. The answers based on that premise must be based on Russian interest alone.
Q1: what did Russia do?
Q2: what could Russia do (meaning, more)
Q3: what should Russia do.
part of question 3: should Russia be entitled to the preservation of a certain zone of influence, and if not, why not?
July 2, 2007 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agree with you--I was using the words a gung-ho type might. I intended to show that even from Joe Lieberman's point of view the calculus should argue for restraint.
In any force scenario, people get killed. Let's save it for truly desperate situations. There was a time when Rome could throw her weight around. The barbarians didn't have communications, rapid-fire arms, and explosives. The world is becoming increasingly unconquerable, in Jonathan Schell's phrase. Guess we have to learn to live with trouble, or to get along.
July 2, 2007 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are two answers to the question, "does Iran pose a threat to the US?" If the answer is yes, then Bush is a far bigger failure and is far more derelict in his duties than any of us have thought. To allow a pipsqueak country with no resources at all comparable to our own, without the means to develop any advanced weaponry, and with a very small military establishment compared to ours to become a real threat to us, is absolutely unforgivable.
If the answer is no, all of our bluster about attacking Iran is public plotting of a war crime, a crime against humanity, and justification for the world using a preemptive attack on us to stop us.
Take your pick.
Hoppy in Sacramento
July 2, 2007 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amazing how two of the three countries in the "axis of evil" have large, though declining, reserves of oil -- in a post-peak oil environment, huh?
Amazing also, is how the two of the three "axis of evil" countries - those having a nuclear program - immediately accelerated their efforts and pulled out of negotiated treaties immediately after that stupid, stupid speech.
July 2, 2007 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're absolutely right. When a partisan force like Hesbollah can cripple an enemy (Israel) ship with a cruise missile, and the citizens of a land (Iraq) occupied by the best-trained and best-equipped ground force in history (US) can stalemate that force with crude mines, and the citizens of another poor land (Afghanistan) can first drive out a large foreign force (Russia) and then stalemate the afore-said military force (US) for over five years then it should be a wake-up call to the American Imperialists. Unfortunately they haven't heard it because they have a different value set from the rest of the world, and they want Iran so bad they can taste it, to please their Zionist controllers.
July 2, 2007 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seems like the Khobar Towers incident is more complicated than "Iran Did It":
The citation I copied from the Notes pages.
A quote from that Risen article in the Times:
"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani
July 2, 2007 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
The source I have is Gary Milhollin, of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. Among the claims he makes in this report, between 1985 and 1990, the Commerce Department approved "$2.7 million worth of computers, and testing and tracking equipment for Sa'ad 16, Iraq's leading missile development site."
July 2, 2007 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hoppy -- well said. Cheers.
July 2, 2007 7:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh cut the crap and stop being intentionally obtuse. The anthrax we provided was SENT TO KNOWN WEAPONS LABS in Iraq. Why did we start sending anthrax to Iraq? Was there a sudden anthrax shortage there? Were we suddenly SO worried about the state of "peaceful" anthrax research in Iraq that we felt the absolute urge to remove Saddam's Iraq from the list of terrorist nations so as to ease the way to ship anthrax to him? THis was a regime on the list of terrorist nations and we had no idea what the anthrax was being used for? Give me a break.
Not only did we sent the anthrax to known weapons labs, WE TAUGHT THEM HOW TO WEAPONIZE IT. WE KNEW EXACTLY what we were doing - we had to remove Saddam from the US State Dept list of terrorism supporters in order to permit these transactions.
The chemicals that we sent Saddam WERE KNOWN TO BE USED for weapons. The Iraqis made it clear that the "pesticides" they were buying were to be used against "two-legged pests". It doesn't matter if the chemicals were "technically dual use" because we knew for an absolute fact exactly what use they were being put to.
We provided Saddam with weapons, money, money to buy weapons, intelligence to launch chemical attacks, the chemicals that were used in the chemicals missiles, and the computers that were used to make the missiles. Gee, and we're not responsible for arming Saddam? LOL!
More?
(Hypocrisy Seen in U.S. Stand on Iraqi Arms - Mideast: Officials say American intelligence aided Baghdad’s use of chemical weapons against Iran in ’80s. By ROBIN WRIGHT, Los Angeles Times)Had you bothered to actually read the cites instead of trying spin and lecture me about WMDs, you'd also have read Teichers affidavit about the weapons WE GAVE Saddam, or which we financed.
July 2, 2007 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Regarding the Khobar Towers bombing - leaving aside the question of whether an attack on a military base constitutes "terrorism" (most definitions require civilian victims and exclude attacks on military targets) -
SOURCE: 'Al-Quds al-Arabi', London, in Arabic 27 Nov 96, translated by BBC.First, Osama has taken responsibility:
Second, US Defense Sec William Pery recently stated:
July 2, 2007 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
In light of the "controversy" over the mistranlation then the verbage of "his expressed desire for the elimination of Israel" is too vague and plays directly into the myth. It is up to you to write clearly, not up to me to figure out what you really do or don't mean.
In any case, the bigger point is that it is Iran which has been repeatedly threatend with being 'wiped off the map'
Nor was this some mistatement by Bush. The OFFICIAL US nuclear posture doctrine espouses the first-use of nuclear weapons against even non-nuclear armed countries. Even CHina has foresworn off of the first use of nukes.
So, who is threatening whose "right to exist"?
The whole idea of "Israel's right to exist" is a framing of the issue that favors Israel. What is really meant by a "right to exist" is a right to subjugate Palestinians and take their land. Why should Iran agree to such a 'right'?
However I do applaud you for noticing that when Khatami was trying to reach out to the US, the same Iran hawks were insisting that Iranian presidents were nobodies who should be ignored. But when Ahmadinejad came around, suddenly he's treated as the Absolute Ruler of Iran and the final word on Iran's policies.
July 2, 2007 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Saddest thing about this all is that Iranians like Americans and were the only poeple in the Mideast to spontaneously hold a candle light vigil for the victims of 9-11 - and here's our president talking about nuking them as merely an "option on the table"
Great job, Bush!
July 2, 2007 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hell, I've ordered cultures from ATCC. My undergraduate research used a metabolite of ATCC reference number 10108: P. notatum, Westling strain. The little difference between you and I is that I'm prepared to discuss specifics, something you bluster is "spin" yet show absolutely no evidence that you understand anything besides quoting news articles that may or may not have substance beside some reporter quoting a "former US Intelligence Official".
I have no doubt that Saddam was working on WMD programs. I also have enough familiarity with the technology to know:
- What isn't as soooper seeekrit as you seem to think
- What are published militarily critical technologies that you ignore, both in terms of what they were and who shipped them.
Have you even done something as basic as a Gram stain or sterilized a culture medium such that it would kill B. anthracis? Still can't define weaponization in other than hand-waving terms?Tell me, are you listed in Bergey's Manual?
You're probably cute when you're mad. -- Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
July 2, 2007 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think one hypothesis that has to be taken into account in analyses of media support for the Iraq War is that the media just loves wars in general. Wars are extremely exciting, and they're great for business. If they have a long buildup, viewership and readership keep going up as the suspense increases. And then when the spectacular bombing and really dramatic events start, people are riveted in front of their TV's and buy even more newspapers.
Hurricanes and tsunamis are fun too. But they can't beat a war.
The events of war are gripping. You rarely get a chance to see that kind of thing on TV: people killing and mutilating each other, with extreme prejudice. and with lots of noise and flash and spectacle, right in front of you (sort of)! It's amazing. The Romans had to provide gladiatorial games to satisfy those lusty cravings for warlike carnage among their publics. Our government and media get to transport us to the real thing through the magic of television.
Wars also give correspondents a chance to earn their stripes, so to speak, just as they do with soldiers, and to move up in the organizational food chain. And the embedding system involved a prolonged period of US government briefing and training of war correspondents. As the war approached, news organizations shipped people and equipment to the theater in preparation for coverage of the hostilities. The reporters are trying on and trying out their helmets and flak jackets. They're ready to roll. As a result, by the time the war comes, the media has already made a massive financial and emotional investment in it. Nobody wants to go through all that expense and difficulty without getting the payoff. Nobody wants to just turn all that equipment around and come home. They want their damn war! The media mobilizes just as do the armed forces.
This goes for the public too. A country doesn't go to war in a purely deliberative fashion. A war is an irrational collective experience that involves special rituals, peculiar kinds of bonding and group arousal. Once the the fever and massive impulsive urge has spread and taken hold, it is very hard to shut it down. People aren't in the mood for hard questions and skeptical reservations. The war fever itself is just too enjoyable, too gripping. Attempts to pour cold water on it are met with extreme hostility and resentment. This goes beyond the emotion of patriotism. It is even more primal: the passionate love of group violence itself, whatever its ideological support structures.
I would also add two contributing factors in the particular case of the Iraq War:
1. The first is The Greatest Generation Nostalgia Wave. This began around 1995 with the D-Day anniversary, and lasted into the beginning of this decade with Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, the Brokaw book and all of the other WWII and greatest generation hoopla. And what did we revel in and wallow in? Look at all those ancient heroes to whom the current generation couldn't possibly measure up! How exciting their lives had been! What a sense of purpose and drama! How much better than us they were! How drab, and safe and meaningless our own lives were by comparison! Wouldn't it be something if events that epochal and exciting could happen to us!
2. That factor dovetails nicely with the second special factor: Boomer He-man Envy Syndrome. Soon after 9/11, I recall seeing a news talk program with a prominent 50-something correspondent, and he said something like this: "This conflict is going to give our generation a chance for redemption." And I thought, "Oh boy, here we go again." Those poor college-deferment boomers. No matter how many times their rational minds convince them that they were actually right about Vietnam, there is that little voice in the back of their heads that says "Or maybe I was just a pu**y." And the voice adds, "Dad and Uncle Frank didn't ask a lot of questions about whether their war was right or wrong. They just signed up, cuz that's what a real guy does." What a great opportunity, then, to do some serious armchair generaling and cheerleading, and show the old man - if he's still around - that I too think some wars are really cool.
As a result of these special factors, added into the usual one, you had a whole lot of people who were in no mood at all to either discover or hear that the Enemy might not be what it was cracked up to be. The enemy was mainly 19 guys, who are all dead? Along with a couple of thousand hard cases scattered around the world that we can probably roll up over time without a massive mobilization of military men and hardware? What a downer! The bigger and more widespread the enemy, the more exciting the challenge. Therefore the enemy is the combined forces of KAOS; or the wicked conspiracy of state sponsors of terrorism, which contains all the usual suspects; or it's Global Islamofascism descending like a plague over Asia - and even Europe; or it's Saddam the Merciless and his Minions of Murder; or its the Allied Ayatollahs and Mad Mullahs of Xerxes ... or something along those lines.
July 2, 2007 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, Abdul, there was one other people in the Mideast spontaneously holding candle light vigils for the victims of 9/11 - Israelis. Meanwhile Palestinians were dancing in the streets in celebration of those attacks.
July 2, 2007 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
A little reductio ad absurdum, isn't it? I've followed Mr. Greenwald's conclusions that our leading papers and pundits have bought into the system and become a part of it, rather than the check they're chartered to be, and he makes sound arguments for this. You can go back into his columns a couple of years and find reams of evidence from the likes of Broder or Kurtz or Klein or Miller, and it is pretty overwhelming.
Generally, the national media identifies with and substantiates those in power. As to that other reason, it is a fear of being branded unpatriotic and then adopting that Manichean view of the world, not just a "fear of Bush" and I think that is still evident by, say, the reporting out of Iraq or on I-P or terrorist incidents like this weekend.
Of course, there are other factors: corporate consolidation, profit motives, right wing noise and spin, celebrity and entertainment muddling of news and rejection of the ideal for news media to act in the public interest to name a few. But, in the political arena, the main trend homogenizing the news has been the sticky, seedy affair between those in power and those reporting on them.
July 2, 2007 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Abdul, you seem to have derailed this discussion here in several places. To put it all in context, Mr. Greenwald's book is about how the Bush Administration's world view has affect their work, and ultimately why that world view has failed to produce good results. (Forgive the paraphrase if it isn't accurate, Mr. Greenwald).
Remember that this space isn't for you to air all your grievances. Try to keep it on topic.
July 2, 2007 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gee, Nudnik, do you think that maybe the Palestinians resented losing their lands, homes and crops, and their imprisoned and dead relatives, to the American-supported Israelis who have defied countless UN resolutions and put the surviving Palestinians in virtual concentration camps? And here on 9/11 is some payback to the aggressors, so what should these Palestinians have done, under the circumstances, do you think?
July 2, 2007 9:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Listen to this from Greenwald. If you didn't know anything about US-Iranian relations you would think that we'd been getting along just fine until Bush verbally attacked them in 2001.
I've seen any number of Greenwald's statements about problems with Iraq (including one in the original post above). They may not be as detailed as El Campesino wants, but I take this lack of detail as more of "nothing to add" (it is a common pattern of blogging, and even books, attack them for what they did not write).
Interesting to boil down the statements, here are two quotes from above:
Greenwald (El Campesino's extract): ... and his insistence that they are the World’s Great Evil – has left Iran with no choice but to assume that no cooperation with the U.S. is possible.
El Campesino: Criticize Bush policy all you want, but Greenwald paints a cartoonish version of reality that things were fine between us until Bush criticized Iran in 2001.
Greenwald says the relationship got worse, and El Campesino believes that means "they went from great to horrible" - underlying statement is that the Iran/USA relationship can only be good or bad, not in-between. This is a great example of Greenwald's point about totally good vs. totally evil.
El Campesino seems to have at least a little knowledge about Iran. At first I though El Campesino claimed Iran had become increasingly hostile to the US steadily since 1979, but upon re-reading this view is instead attributed to Greenwald. Either way I don't see how anyone could objectively claim that - by almost all measures Iran had considerably warmed up to the USA prior to 2001.
Elements of Iran (notably the hardliners who had real power) were still working against the "great satan". But most people on the street were friendly to the US, especially the young. They even elected a liberal president who attempted to heal the US/Iranian divide (admittedly their presidents have much less power than ours). Remember the majority of Iranian sentiment just after 9-11 was very pro-American.
All this changed with the axis of evil speech, and deteriorated even more rapidally with the invasion of Iraq. The reformers who said Iran had nothing to fear from the so-called great satan were undercut by our actions, popular sentiment turned against the USA and the Iranians elected a hard-line president instead (who luckily still does not have much power). Somehow El Campesino overlooks all of this nuance; and the direct cause and effect from our actions that work against out presumed desires for Iran (a regieme that is pro-democracy and has friendly relations with the US).
Greenwald does not claim things were fine, and gives (sometimes vague) acknowledgments of troubles. He takes into account multiple groups within Iran, and the increasing/decreasing tensions between Iran and the USA. El Campesino on the other hand waves the "great satan" flag (established since 1979) and implies Iran is evil and can't be dealt with. Tell me again, who is the cartoonist here?
Perhaps that last line was uncalled for, as I think El Campesino's post did have some value in eliciting further nuance from Greenwald on the "sponsoring terrorism" issue (one that I don't wholly agree with BTW). But the value of El Campesino's post is greatly diminished because of it's lack of nuance, which I (perhaps not so gently) point out in the previous paragraphs.
July 2, 2007 11:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
So why didn't Reagan make war on Iran? What makes a war with them so important now? Nothing. The current troika of lies--that Iran is arming the Taliban, training Iraqi insurgents, and supplying IEDs to insurgents--are the most obviuous fabrications since...well, since the last obvious fabrications. You pick. Virtually everything from the US military and the Bush administration is a lie. From the last "we didn't mean it" Iran/IED photo-op in Baghdad all the way back to the WMD bullshit, only a fool would believe a word the US military or government has to say.
July 3, 2007 1:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, you're full of shit. A few kids danced around and it made the news all over the world. As I recall the official response from the Israeli government included a statement to the effect that now the US knows what we go through. A gross and self-serving exaggeration, in that far more people were killed on 9/11 than Israelis have died (including soldiers) during the many years of the Intifada. The Israeli hard-liners weren't any more sympathetic than the Palestinians.
July 3, 2007 1:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your figures for female literacy rate are wrong. UNICEF puts it at 70% for 2000-2004. http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/iran_statistics.html
The "Iran Statistics Centre" (?) puts it at 61% and 22% respectively for urban and rural women in 1979.
http://www.irvl.net/IRAN35.HTM
July 3, 2007 3:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're the one rewriting history for idelogical purposes, and I find that as objectionable as when the Right does it.
I did note that the US briefly paid court to Saddam, as did the Soviets. But Saddam spurned his suitors and that ended the courtship, rather early on in fact. The notion that Iraq was ever an American (or Russian) vassal state is a howling absurdity.
Re: You will recall the famous picture of Don Rumsfeld going to Iraq and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein? What did you think that was about?
I seem to recall a whole series of US presidents shaking hands and making nice with a variety of Soviet rulers. I doubt anyone who claim the US and the Soviets were best buddies, let alone that one was subservient to the whims of the other.
Re: An American warship destroyed an Iranian passenger plane, killing some three hundred innocent civilians
Yep, a very ugly incident (The US did pay reparations though-- we did not say "f*k you" to Iran). But how does that prove Iraq was our client state? As for the rest of your recital its unproven (and rather vague) allegations, resembling in a sort of left-spun mirror image the whole WMD fabrication.
July 3, 2007 3:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: There is no question that the Reagan and Bush I administrations tilted heavily toward Iraq, allowing weapons transfers through third countries
Oh good grief! You leftwingers have the same weird fantasy of American omnipotence as the Right does. Both think that everything that happens is all about America. So third parties (France, I believe, and China) sold arms to Iraq . Therefore they must have done so at the behest of the US! Come on, thinsg happen in this world that have nothing to with the US, and other natiosn take action without first kowtowing to Washington to make sure it's OK there.
Mygo I get tired of hearing history torqued all over the place to fit other people's private agendae.
July 3, 2007 3:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: I think one hypothesis that has to be taken into account in analyses of media support for the Iraq War is that the media just loves wars in general. Wars are extremely exciting, and they're great for business.
I think this explains the "bias" of the media in everything. They are biased tiward making money. Hence they favor the senational, whether its the perils of Paris Hilton or bombs over Baghdad. If tomorrow some juicy sex scandal broke involving George Bush you can bet they'd be all over that too. They don't have an ideological bias at all. It's all about money for them. (And in the end we must blame the public for rewarding such sensationalism and turning down sober but dull analysis of complex topics)
July 3, 2007 3:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
the "Slavic Soul" IS unique, in that it is visible to the naked eye, according to the President
July 3, 2007 5:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
JFP, it's clear you haven't done an ounce of homework on this issue, and simply don't know what you are talking about. There is no question that it was deliberate US policy during the Iran-Iraq war to assist the Iraqis - both through third countries and directly. This is really well-researched ground. They didn't help because Saddam was a "vassal". They helped because the US preferred an Iraqi win, or at least a standoff, to an Iranian victory and was willing to assist one devil in order to defeat another.
And it also has nothing to do with any claims about US "omnipotence". I don't know why you're so exorcised about this.
July 3, 2007 5:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
(And in the end we must blame the public for rewarding such sensationalism and turning down sober but dull analysis of complex topics)
Well, there is something we agree on.
July 3, 2007 5:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
JPF311, let me make it clear that we are not having a dialogue.
You lied. You lied in a clumsy and obvious fashion. I pointed it out, and many other posters here have contradicted your lie in substantial detail. The matter is closed.
From our previous encounter, it appears that your MO is to proceed with clumsy and obvious lies, and then to equivocate. Well, good for you. But whatever your pscychological problems, I feel no need to engage. I consider you a deliberate troll with a pattern of dishonesty, evasion and obfuscation. You are unworthy of discussion.
This is not a debate. From time to time, when you are obviously lying, I may point it out, as I have here. But it is not a discussion.
Good day, sir.
July 3, 2007 5:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, there is a charitable explanation: Iran definitely can aid insurgents in Iran and Afghanistan to a much larger extend than it does, so we can try some intimidation as a matter of precaution, lest they get bolder.
However, Iran is not a pipsqueack
(1) the number of people is about 3 times larger than in Iraq, and the number of people loyal to the regime -- 4-6 times larger
(2) not being subject of an embargo, Iran has decent defensive weapons
(3) Iran basically won a war by proxy in Lebanon. (That war did not make much sense for Hezbollah, but as a demonstration project that Iran may, in need, keep strifing tankers in the Strait of Hormuz in the face of our bombardment and Marine incursions it was priceless)
(4) the country has a confounding maze of deserts and it is easy to defend
(5) Iran has a secure access to Russia that we cannot obstruct, we pissed off Putin so he is inclined to sell decent weapons to Iran, perhaps even during the worst of a possible military conflict
(6) we are vulnerable to the east and west of Iran, where they can operate by proxy
(7) we cannot create a puppet government in Iraq without including Iranian sympatizers
(8) Palestinian cause is a big wedge between ourselves and our Arab allies and potential allies, and Iran would be stupid not to exploit it.
The conclusion that I would make is that both USA and Iran have to review they conflicting priorities/goals and give up those that are not viable in the long run. And I mean BOTH.
July 3, 2007 6:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Howard, you're usually one of the more logical and clear-thinking posters here, but in this case I think you're fighting over a couple of trees in order to avoid conceeding that you're in the middle of a forest.
The anthrax was sent and Saddam's WMD programs were not only widely reported on, but commonly accepted as fact. More importantly, the US did nothing directly or indirectly to hamper such research programs. And it never did anything to hamper the use of chemical weapons, even against the Kurds.
July 3, 2007 6:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Alas, that naked eye feeds information into a naked brain, and even as some persons should probably not expose their corpi (is that the plural of corpus) on the beach for purely aesthetic reasons, said naked brain holder might well try garbing it with reason, in the interests of those whose develop extreme nausea looking at it directly.
aMike
July 3, 2007 7:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, you have said it all, said it extremely well, and your words need to be immortalized, engraved on granite and placed where everyone can read them. I'm just sorry there was no way I could rate your comment with a 100 rating.
You nailed the root cause of the Iraq invasion and the root cause of the blood lust in this country for attacking Iran. Our worst, most evil enemy in the world is ourselves.
Hoppy in Sacramento
July 3, 2007 8:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I asked you in a civil manner to cite some sources and get called nasty names. Sounds like you can learn all about being an asshole in public by looking in a mirror.
Clear?
July 3, 2007 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Howard, this exchange illustrates a common tactic you use when your analysis or conclusion is challenged. If the statements by abdul-hass are correct they remain correct whether he knows personally anything about anthrax or chemicals used to make weapons.
I once had an elbow operation that was observed and assisted by a second doctor who was learning the procedure. I was asked for some feedback but could not see my elbow and did not understand many terms used by the doctors between themselves. I do not know what the anesthetic given me was called and I do not know the various medical names for the parts of the elbow joint yet I am absolutely certain that one person was teaching another person and fairly sure that the second person learned and later put his knowledge to use. I am completely qualified to make that statement. Here is a case when the form and substance of your argument is crap, something more common I believe than does hoosiertransplant, and so it is very possible that when you argue in this way that your conclusion is crap. You often seem most interested in displaying your range of knowledge and speed at accessing Wikipedia than in adding anything useful to the conversation, just often, not always.July 3, 2007 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Eloquently put, as is everything else in this post. If you haven't read "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" by Chris Hodges, put it right at the top of your must read list. I read it and was so moved by it that I bought 15 copies for my colleagues.
Rarely does one find a book which is reviewed positively from so many different political points of view. Here's the Future of Freedom Foundation's Take:
And, from Real Change
Finally, Abraham Verghese reviewed the hard copy edition in the New York Times, under the telling title, Wars are Made, Not Born.
You'll love this book. Guaranteed.
aMike
July 3, 2007 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
I do have that Hedges book. I also have an earlier book of his - whose title escapes me - but it consists entirely of questions and answers about war and what happens in it. It's a big favorite of my son's.
July 3, 2007 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Did you misunderstand something I said? Or have you just decided to waste my time?
July 3, 2007 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, Sir or Madam, for the psychoanalysis, and the information on my sources. I was unaware that Wikipedia was a useful source on biological warfare.
It is my contention that a number of those statements are incorrect, especially in the case of US assistance to Iraq in weaponizing biological agents. Specifically, I speak of of the most critical technologies for weaponization, such as large-capacity sealed fermenters, centrifuges, lyophilizers, and mills. This is hardly from Wikipedia, but one starting reference would be the biological warfare chapter of the US Militarily Critical Technologies List. UN reports identify some of this key equipment coming from West Germany and Russia, not the US.
No evidence is offered that the US assisted Iraq with perhaps the most difficult part of BW: disseminating the organisms without killing them, and determining the aerosol infective dose (ID50).
Let me get this straight. Someone makes a statement about a technology, citing news sources. I offer technical reasons that the article is questionable, and you consider that crap. I apologize, therefore, for confusing the situation with the facts.
In that case, Sir or Madam, I shall print your trenchant analysis, print it on soft paper, and re-read it in the smallest room of this house. At first, it will be in front of me. Soon after, it will be in its appropriate place, behind me.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
July 3, 2007 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
There were Israelis dancing about 9-11 too, Nudnik.
July 3, 2007 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
There were Israelis dancing about 9-11 too, Nudnik.
July 3, 2007 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bite me.
July 3, 2007 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bleagh. Perhaps with lots of tabasco and horseradish.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
July 3, 2007 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whatever floats your boat...
July 3, 2007 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Howard, I love you like a brother. You could practically be a Canadian, hell, you could practically be a Maritime Canadian, that's how much I respect you.
But I think you're pitching your tent on marshland, old friend.
Whatever the details, it strikes me that the naked fact of the matter is that the United States shipped Anthrax to a country actively at war, a country which had started that war, a country which had used chemical weapons, and a country which was interested in perfecting biological weapons.
That would not fall under the heading 'business as usual.'
Under those circumstances, I think the kindest thing anyone could say would be 'Hmmm, spectacularly bad judgement there.'
And frankly, most people wouldn't be saying the kindest thing at all.
So tell you what, let's have no more talk of horseradishes. Come up here on dryer ground, we'll roast marshmallows and sing old fisherman's songs.
Whaddaya say?
July 3, 2007 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
The greater point is that women have, ironically, benefitted.
Heres what The Economist had to say about this 10 years ago:
The new officials, many of them the sons of peasants and small-time shop-keepers, are less in inclined to stand on their dignity than the shah's well-bred townsfolk. They are more likely to go out to the countryside (where about 40% of the population still lives) to find out what needs doing, and try to do it. And they have achieved a lot, often with quite small projects. Even remote villages nowadays have primary schools (separate ones for boys and girls), paved roads and electricity, health and welfare centres, safe drinking water and often telephones.
The young have a better chance of getting educated (never mind for the moment the quality of that education). Above all, prospects for girls have improved. Middle and upper-class women, brought up in Western ways, find the Islamic rules absurd and degrading. But most women from poor or traditional families were already wearing a chador (a cloak, usually black, that goes over the head and has to be clutched, inconveniently, under the chin) and obeyed ancient rules. They are now more likely to go to school and stay there; about 40% of the students in higher education are women, and they are doing better at their studies than men. Iranian women nowadays, despite Islamic customs oppressively enforced by the state, have more chance than they did of getting a job outside the home, competing with men professionally and asserting their rights as individuals in the face of their fathers', brothers' or husbands' prejudices."
July 3, 2007 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously we are not having a dialogue. Your lacvk the manners and the common courtesy for that. You remind me of some True Believers among the Religious Right I have tried to have a civil discussion with. Anyone whose opinion differs one whit from the One Revealed Truth (tm) is denounced as a liar and a fraud and then exorcized with bell, book and candle.
This website used to be a place for civil, rational and intelligent discourse. Perhaps KOS has gotten too busy so that the tin-foil hat types and various leftwing fundalunatics have spilled over here.
And you may want to think about this: if your purist fundamentalism alienates someone like me, a generally liberal leaning indpendent who has not voted for a Republiacn for major office since 1994, you're going to do more damage than Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh combined come 2008 with these puerile rants against those who do not buy into your little world.
July 3, 2007 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: They helped because the US preferred an Iraqi win, or at least a standoff
Actually a standoff is what they wanted, so they played both sides against each other, although the dealings with Iran were a lot murkier and got the administration in a lot more trouble. And in neither case was American assistance particularly crucial. Again, the US is simply not that god-like, and in the old Cold Wars days this was especially true. But the goal was for both sides to slog it out until they were exhausted so that neither woudl emerge as a new regional power.
July 3, 2007 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are wasting my time, and if you keep it up, I'm going to take offense.
I really have no idea what your psychological problem is. I don't really care. All that matters is that it makes discussions with you worthless.
When I happen along and catch you telling an obvious and flagrant untruth, then I may take time out to contradict it. It's not personal. It's like finding a big turd floating in a public toilet that someone has left behind, and giving it a flush.
The fact that I'm occasionally giving you a flush, is a courtesy that I advance to you, without regard as to your personal merit or lack thereof.
But it is certainly not an invitation to engage with you in a dialogue. I see no point to that whatsoever.
Now, for some reason, this upsets you and you've gotten all personal and snippy. I'm sorry you feel that way. My contempt and disinterest should not be taken to heart.
I assure you, it's not personal. You're simply not worth talking to.
Have a nice day.
July 3, 2007 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maritime identity makes more sense than you might realize at the moment. Fairly recently, I've found myself living in fishing areas in New England's Cape Cod, and getting involved in the fishery management electronics that are being required of fisherfolk by Canada, the US, and indeed many countries worldwide. This afternoon, I found some of the best documentation for something I needed to do here on an Australian government fisheries website.
At the former US biological warfare lab at Fort Detrick, there is a structure called the "eight-ball", which has been sterilized and is being kept for historical reasons. This was an enormous tank into which biological aerosols could be introduced and their movement in air understood. If you sprayed anthrax spores and they just clumped and fell to the ground, it wouldn't be much of a weapon. While most BW work has been declassified, some of the areas that are still, properly in my view, properly classified is the way you created an ultrafine powder (or liquid spray) of microorganisms, variously dealing with the problems of heating them and killing them, of neutralizing the surface electrostatic charge so they didn't clump, and determining the right concentration such that you had the minimum density to produce infections in the area of weapons use. Some of these weapons issues are comparable, in technical difficulty, to the actual engineering of the Teller-Ulam theory that makes an H-bomb work.
Now, let's consider a Canadian religious experience, beer. Plenty of Newfies homebrew in their basement, with the bottles occasionally exploding because the fermentation gets a little to vigorous. Now, scale up to a microbrewery, where you have to keep the beer yeast uncontaminated or you get something very unpleasant. Scale this up to the size of the Molson brewery.
Good brewmasters are artists as well as engineers, knowing how to keep the temperatures, pressures, timings, etc., so the beer doesn't go sour. Now, consider something probably intermediate in size between Molson and a microbrewery. I've visited breweries, and the smell is rather pleasant.
The large-scale production of biological agents is, at a first approximation, similar to beer fermentation. If you could smell the anthrax ferment, however, that probably means there's enough leakage that you will soon be unpleasantly dead. As opposed to beer brewing equipment, BW fermentation and bottling has to be absolutely leakproof. You may know that the Soviets had a leak at an anthrax plant in Sverdlovsk, and killed quite a few civilians. As you'll see from the linked documents, there also was a massive coverup.
While the first US weaponized BW, tularemia, was indeed a liquid with about a 48-hour shelf life, not as long as beer, think about the complexity of making dehydrated Molson Blue, such that it can be reconstituted perfectly whenever you need it. That's also like the very precise production equipment needed to produce pure antibiotics. This is very sophisticated dual-use technology that Iraq couldn't easily make, yet they bought from the West. It's far harder to get that stuff than a culture -- which can be a single test tube smuggled out.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
July 3, 2007 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, shall I break out the marshmallows or what?
July 3, 2007 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't believe that Iran is a threat to the US. It may be a threat to our misguided foreign policy and it may be a foreign policy threat to our "ally" Israel. If I was Iranian I would want a nuculear deterrent to protect myself from US and Israeli aggression or maybe Pakistani or Indian threats. I believe that the current push to attack Iran is because the neocons and likudniks think that this is their best chance because they have such "pull" with the sickos in Washington. Israel is not threatened physically, only their illegal occupation of Palestine is threatened and obviously they will do almost anything to hang on to that. I personally think that it wouldn't take more than 10 cruise missles randomly targeted on illegal West Bank settlements to get the rest of them abandoned if it was done with the proper publicity and firmness. It would be a lot cheaper than attacking Iran or Iraq too. Plus we would make a lot of Arab friends (who have a lot of oil to sell).
July 3, 2007 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Calling someone a liar because they disagree with you, and now likening them to an unflushed toilet, is pretty offensive don't you think?
So I am reporting you to the website moderator for abusive behavior.
By the way what are you even doing here? You're a Canadian. This is a website about American politics. Sure everyone's welcome and a foreign perspective can be valuable, but you aren't in a position to pontificate about the small details of American foreign policy that don't and didn't involve your country in any way.
I lived most of my life 20 miles from Canada, admire your country, watched channel 9 (from Windsor) occasionally, visited frequently, have traveled in all the Provinces except Newfoundland, once thought of moving to Canada, my first boyfriend was Canadian, and still read the "News from Canada" section of our Sunday paper. But I would not anoint myself an authority on all things Canadian and sling gutter insults on a Canadian political website at posters who did not kowtow to my god-given wisdom.
Ave atque vale.
July 4, 2007 5:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
JPF311: By the way what are you even doing here? You're a Canadian.
I object to your objection to a Canadian being on this site. Valdron's valuable comments aside, some of my best blogging experiences (on other sites--I'm new here) have been with bloggers from other countries. They often bring a more rational, unbiased viewpoint to any discussion of American policies which affect the whole world, and they are often more aware, because their media is more objective, of American current events than Americans are. I've read a lot of blog comments, of every kind, and I don't like turd-talk any more than you do, and an apology from Valdron would be nice, but I've never seen this sort of xenophobic comment on any blog before and I hope that I don't see it again. Happy Independence Day.
July 4, 2007 9:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
You seem bound and determined to make this into some sort of personal fight. You seem to be going well out of your way to take offense and to bring an unwarranted and unnecessary emotional investment. I will repeat, I have no interest at all in engaging you personally on any level. Occasionally correcting an untruth carries no particular moral judgement, nor is it an invitation to conversation, dialogue, exchange or debate.
You well know that the scatological reference was a metaphor relating to untruth, and not a description of you as a person. If you took it so, this may relate to self image issues, I don't want to go there.
I have no idea why you are pursuing this. Sadly, I feel that in advising you I feel conversation with you is worthless, you use this as an opening to not only cling to an attempt at dialogue, but make entirely inappropriate emotional investments.
I really could care less. It would appear that the appropriate response is simply to cease to address you in any way. I will of course do you the courtesy of correcting your untruths if and as I encounter them, but it isn't as if I hold you in enough regard to make a habit of it.
Have a nice day.
July 4, 2007 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Crucial or not, it constituted providing financing and arms to a mass murder.
July 4, 2007 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually Iran has not pulled out of any nuclear treaties and has not accelerated its nuclear program. Unlike N. Korea, Iran permitted IAEA inspections beyond what it was obligated to allow, suspended its enrichment program for 2 years, and has offered to place strict IAEA monitored limits on its nuclear program to ensure that it cannot be diverted to weapons use - as long as its right to civilian nuclear technology is recognized as with other countries in the world such as Brazil, Japan and Argentina.
Thus far, the US has said no.
July 4, 2007 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brezinski has spoken and written on this and related subjects. I basically agree with his description of the situation (with some reservations) Here are excerpts from his testomony at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 1, 2007.
http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/testimony/2007/BrzezinskiTestimony070201.pdf
Mr. Chairman:
Your hearings come at a critical juncture in the U.S. war of choice in Iraq, and I commend you and Senator Lugar for scheduling them. [Lugar, the ranking republican, recently broke with Bush on Iraq]
It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:
1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity
Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America’s
global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some
abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.
[...].
If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.
A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. [I read Zbig as saying that Bush is likely to fabricate a pretextual causus belli. No senator shouted him down as far as I can determine.]
A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD’s in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the “decisive ideological struggle” of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America’s involvement in World War II.
This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine.
In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran—though gaining in regional influence—is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Deplorably, the Administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East region has lately relied almost entirely on such sloganeering. Vague and inflammatory talk about “a new strategic context” which is based on “clarity” and which prompts “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world. Those in charge of U.S. diplomacy have also adopted a posture of moralistic self-ostracism toward Iran strongly reminiscent of John Foster Dulles’s attitude
of the early 1950’s toward Chinese Communist leaders (resulting among other things in the well-known episode of the refused handshake). It took some two decades and a half before another Republican president was finally able to undo that legacy.
One should note here also that practically no country in the world shares the Manichean delusions that the Administration so passionately articulates.
The result is growing political isolation of, and pervasive popular
antagonism toward the U.S. global posture.
--------------------
I think Zbig nails it pretty well.
July 4, 2007 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
OH YEAH?? WELL, WELL, WELL MY DAD CAN BEAT UP YOUR DAD, SO THERE!
July 5, 2007 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink