Iran

[Starving Steve]

Re: Iran

"I have met to-day with Heir Hitler, and I have here in my hand an agreement..... We will have peace in our time." ( British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, 1938, upon signing the Munich Agreement and surrendering the Sudatenland back to Germany ) :rolleyes:

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Iran

"I have met to-day with Heir Hitler, and I have here in my hand an agreement..... We will have peace in our time." ( British Prime Minister, Chamberlin, 1939 ) :rolleyes:

And finally, the inevitable Hitler-Chamberlin comparison arrives. ;)

[MulaMan]

If America invades Iran then a second great depression is in the bag.

Iran is on an entire different scale than Iraq. 2X the population and no division as in Iraq where a minority controlled a majority group.

Still tons of Americans believe spending $1 trillion per year to start wars and invade countries is much better for America then spending $200 billion on health care.

Military / pentagon vs. public health care is a perfect reflection of how ignorant Americans have become.

America has not won a war since WWII and will not anytime soon. Just like the U.S.S.R, British Empire, ... you cannot occupy a foreign country forever unless you are willing to murder every citizen.

Now there are some nazi-jews in Israel that want to murder everyone in Palestine.

Iran will announce that they have nukes soon and that will even the middle east political playing field and will result in the greatest advance towards peace in a long time.

[cmalbatros]

Re: Iran

The Chinese have found that the best way to control an invaded country (Burma) is to have about 1 in 5 of its own citizens living there. So who's up to emigrating to Iran after the hostilities die down? Should be plenty of jobs working for Haliburton rebuilding the counties infra structure.

[flintlock]

Re: Iran

I'm against any attack on Iran but some of you are grossly oversimplifying the situation. Iran has not exactly been acting as the passive pansies described. Besides being a life member of the "Support your local Terrorist" club, it is a rare moment when their esteemed leader isn't making some sort of dire threat against Israel. Or is he only talking smack?:rolleyes: Perhaps they have not attacked any other country recently because they lacked the means to win. Having nukes could change the whole situation. It's one thing to tippy tap on a computer keyboard and think you have all the answers. It's another when millions of lives are on the line and your neighbor down the street promises to exterminate you the first chance he gets. It's not like you get a second chance if you are wrong. I'm glad it's not my decision to make.

Nazi-Jews? Oh brother. :rolleyes:

[Starving Steve]

Re: Iran

Well well well - three holes in an argument
Iran is a sovereign state, a moderate state
Iran has wonderful educated populace who have a big voice.
Iran has a right to live in peace and has Never attacked anyone

Steve I highly respect you but on this, you are wrong. This would be a distraction from the corpse rotting elsewhere. They are Innocent on all charges - oh yeah hows that working out in Iraq - got fucked over for nothing found of WoMD as Iran will be - War of any sort hurts. mothers cry over innocent deaths, wives lose husbands and children they love/ husbands lose wives and children they love. Collateral damage my ass. They are people just like you - who love, eat, copulate, kiss, pray, do good deeds, hope, cry, suffer, plan, fail, try, learn, read, laugh, lie, cheat, give and forgive, breathe, bleed and shit - traits you and I share.
Bully Boy nations - small dicks and smaller minds in tall, big muscled bodies just piss me off
I had the "pleasure" in 2006 to see the effects of a conventional 10,000 pound bomb(bunker buster) dropped from a plane to bombing range ground near Nellis AF base in Nevada. At 3 miles distance it made the mountains shed dust and my teeth and bones rattle. It was frightening ,I mean Bowel loosening ,frightening. After that I came to the conclusion that the first country that used a Nuke on another would be a pariah in the World for hundreds of years. Ergo(cogito ergo sum) they are worthless in offence and even less so, in defense.
Talk is cheap - In reality - Really Really Really Cheap if you get my drift. Further to my castigation of your Gung ho approach, I submit that if you want Iran to 'toe the line', the bully boy's only have to ask as an Equal and it would be done. The most amazing things happen when the strong ask for help from the weak and elevate them to the status of equal peers.
I miss Lukester and JF Kennedy - both assassinated for speaking truths
PS: we have our own problems down here - Katrina was a pussy compared to this twisting 2000klm(1500 mile wide) monster - 200 m/hr winds @ 35 nm out from center
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/sohemi/sohe...hirgmscol.html - the worse hurricane (we call em cyclones) in 100 years
I live near the island that pokes out and it is expected to hit at-------------the Island (Fraser Island)
http://forecasts.bsch.au.com/stormca..._850#stormcast
currently rated higher than Beaufort scale which goes to 12+ or on another scale
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic2/r...e/adt/20PP.GIF - is near the most dangerous ever imagined
convert knots to Miles / Hr @ whats shown as average wind speed - the gusts can be 60% higher
Please pray it fucks off or many are going to suffer- badly

Some comments as follows:

"Iran is a moderate state."

NO. Iran is the sponsor of Hamas, Hesbollah, the Taliban, Al Qaide, and 9/11.

"Iran has a wonderfully educated populace that have a big voice in Iran."

NO. Iran's wonderfully educated populace were arrested and executed in May, June, and July of 2009.

"Iran has never attacked anyone."

NO. Iran invaded American soil in 1978 and broke international law when it took the entire U.S. diplomatic corps hostage. Since then, Iran has been helping terrorists, worldwide. There is now increasing evidence that Iran directed 9/11 which cost the lives of 3000 people in NYC.

The best move the U.S. could make would be to immediately hit and knock-out the Islamist regime in Tehran with a show of U.S. military might. That would be good for humanity and prevent WWIII in the long run.

A few bunker-busters in the 20 KT category via air mail from Diego-Garcia Island are all that it would take. "Nothing is too good for our friends.";)

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Iran

Meh......

It's been my experience(anecdotally speaking) that those that call loudest for war are amongst the least likely to have experienced it themselves.

In regards to Iran, I tip my hat to them as very worthy adversaries.

Their ability to play and manipulate the geopolitical game has been outstanding since the fall of the Shah....Iran has played a significant role in leaving Jimmy Carter as a 1 term Prez, had a good go at Ronald Reagan when Iran Contra was outed, hurt Bush 2 via Iranian supported insurgency in Iraq, and they have been able to divert attention and the spotlight away from themselves and their nuke program via both Iraq and Afghanistan and cosying up to China and Russia.......the Iranians have been chessmasters.

The only thing they have failed is in shining the light onto Israel's undisclosed but obvious nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip or delaying tool.

While Iran possesses it's share of radicals and fundamentalists, Iran is an entirely different beast than Saudi for example.

Iran is not Arab, and should not be stereotyped along the same largely negative(and unfortunately often accurate) lines.

For nearly 60 years Iran has been under the thumb of or in direct opposition to the United States.

From the coup in 1953 until 1979 the US installed and supported a dictator who used the countries natural resource wealth to prop up ailing western economies via cheap energy and massive petro-dollar recycling in the form of weapon systems to such an extent the US and UK have Iran's oil dollars to thank for funding the actual development costs of major name brand weapon systems.

Hell, the US offered Iran(I think through Kissinger) a huge nuclear power deal including the full fuel cycle....basically a turn key duel use system for weapons grade enriched material.

This all came at the expense of the average Iranian....who being quite educated on average....surely would have been incredibly upset.

Upset enough for regime change....replaced by another regime....who knows how long the Iranian people would have supported the new regime....war has a way(as already mentioned in this thread) of rallying people aruond their leaders no matter how much they suck.

Iraq invaded Iran and they spent the better part of a decade murdering each other in a particularly nasty hybrid of World War I trench warfare, WMDs used repeatedly by Iraq against Iran, and mass use of hundreds of billions of dollars(in 1970's & 1980's dollars) of modern weapon systems killing and maiming millions.

The Iran Iraq War was probably about as under-reported as wars can get.

From the Iranian perspective(as well as Iraqi) it was pretty obvious the Western and Israeli perspective and doctrine was to maximize the carnage by drip feeding support to both sides to ensure neither side achieved a strategic advantage to win the war....thus maximizing the damage to both combatants.

Add to this a slight western preference for Saddam in Iraq after his nuke plant was destroyed by Israel, and before he went rogue in light of the west, largely ignoring Iranian efforts to gain publicity for Iraqi WMD use, and the downing of an Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes that earned the ship's Captain a medal for killing civilians, it's easy to see Iranian anger directed at the US.

It's worth mentioning that Iran is far from innocent in all this.

Iran's inability to project it's conventional military power like the hammer of god as the US is capable of doing led it to the development and use of unconventional and assymmetric power(terror) projection capabilities via it's own covert security forces and via proxies like Hezbullah.....That's not justification for the use of such tactics, but simply an explanation of how it came about.

While I agree that the current Iranian regime doesn't represent the Iranian people, it would probably be foolish to think that the Iranian Green Twitter Protests broadly represent Iranian regime opposition any more than a twitter feed in Berkely California would broadly represent the US.

Any attack on Iran by the US, or by Israel with obvious and necessary US support risks taking a potentially dangerous path with the potential for significant unintended consequences.

I do not wish Iran to acquire a nuclear weapons capability...largely due to it's Revolutionary Guard/Quds Force risk of doing somethign batsh!t crazy.....but if I were Iranian I could easily see the desire to acquire such a DETERRANT(preferably forever unused) because of the last 60 years as well as how North Korea and Pakistan are treated with nukes, compared to how Iran has been treated without them.

My vote(as if I have a vote) would be to dust off the CIA's efforts in the 80's to undermine the Warsaw Pact through the Catholic Church and Poland and destroy it from within.

I'd vote for blank cheque funding to support Iran's moderate imams and any effective opposition to the current regime.

If Iran chops the internet to reduce the threat of social media twitter-enabled protests, smuggle a couple thousand encrypted satellite internet enabled phones and cameras to organize protest, work stoppage, insurrection, and broadcast.

If China doesn't play ball and uses it's security council vote/veto to back Iran then promise fair and open access to Iran's resources post regime change or attack China's fragile economy regardless the cost.

As I posted in another thread, I reckon if Chindia crashes(or the US simply stands by and allows it to happen or actively assists in crashing them), I wonder how much reduced energy demand would affect Iran and Venezuela and accelerate their respective demise?

I enjoy my time in the military, and while we often game scenarios we typically try to use a military solution LAST, rather than FIRST.

I try to look at it from an "economy of effort" standpoint...and carpet bombing Iran is not a scenario that would display economy of effort....way too Jerry Bruckheimer-esque for me.

Just my 0.02c

[Ponce]

Re: Iran

Steve? and what happened with the "US military might" in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan???.........rice farmers in Vietnam defeated the "US military might?, we left billions and billions of dollars in equipment when we left Viet Nam and that's something that you don't hear anything about.

In Iraq we will be for ever, unless, we decided that the Iraqui army can defend themselves against the "terrorists"......but of course 40% of those in the Iraqi army are terrorists themselves. Also, if were to leave Iraq then who would protect the 140,000 US mercs there?

And forget about Afgha, we have the tiger by the tail and we can't let go.

Flintlock? is not Nazi-Jews but rather......Nazi-Zionists / don't confuse one with the other for they are nothing alike.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Iran

I didn't advocate nation-building in Iran, nor anywhere else. Nation-building is a very lovely idea, but it is extremely difficult to do in the real world, especially in the Middle East.

What I advocate is one day of 20 KT bunker-busting in Iran. Then let them stew in their smoking rubble. The risk would be quite small, and the reward could potentially be quite great.

Isreal uses this concept: shock therapy. The IDF went in and trashed Gaza, then left Gaza alone, in peace and in pieces, to think about their Hamas leadership in the ashes of what once was a real strip of cities.

One day of Air Mail from Diego-Garcia, and the Arminishod gang running Iran now would be history. ;) And yes, the BBC would be quite upset and hostile toward the U.S, but who would give a sh*t? ( The BBC loves the radical Islamists; it always has, and everyone knows that fact. )

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Iran

True : "Lukester" and "Symbols" were hated in this forum only because they had a different view and would not join the Party Line.

You ascribe a hatred for non-compliance with a "Party Line" that I do not much observe in this forum. I disagree with your conclusion.

However I prefer not to rehash the details, so my disagreement might carry little weight. So be it .

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Iran

I didn't advocate nation-building in Iran, nor anywhere else. Nation-building is a very lovely idea, but it is extremely difficult to do in the real world, especially in the Middle East.

What I advocate is one day of 20 KT bunker-busting in Iran. Then let them stew in their smoking rubble. The risk would be quite small, and the reward could potentially be quite great.

Isreal uses this concept: shock therapy. The IDF went in and trashed Gaza, then left Gaza alone, in peace and in pieces, to think about their Hamas leadership in the ashes of what once was a real strip of cities.

One day of Air Mail from Diego-Garcia, and the Arminishod gang running Iran now would be history. ;) And yes, the BBC would be quite upset and hostile toward the U.S, but who would give a sh*t? ( The BBC loves the radical Islamists; it always has, and everyone knows that fact. )

Hmm. How would Iran respond? from a recently declassified CIA study:

"We are most concerned about the damage that could be inflicted on oil facilities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Their oil production and export systems are highly concentrated and extremely vulnerable to sabotage or direct military action. Iran already has demonstrated its capability to inflict damage to the facilities. In early October 1981, Iranian F-4 fighters attacked Kuwait's largest gas-oil separation plant at the Raudhatain Oilfield... Kuwait: by far the most critical and vulnerable Kuwaiti petroleum choke points are the offshore and onshore terminal loading facilities at Ahmadi, as well [redacted]... Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are aware of their vulnerability, and have taken countermeasures during the past year to provide early warning and to make it more difficult for Iranian commandos to reach their coastal petroleum facilities. These include an increase in air and naval patrols around potential target areas, the positioning of guards at some offshore oil facilities and tighter controls on access to installations. Despite these measures Tehran could still seriously damage petroleum installations in various Persian Guld countries."

[jheis]

Re: Iran

Nothing would more solidly establish support for Iran's government by its citizens than a U.S. attack on its nuclear facilities. This would be a blunder comparable to the Iraq WMD fiasco.

[aaron]

Re: Iran

Still tons of Americans believe spending $1 trillion per year to start wars and invade countries is much better for America then spending $200 billion on health care.

Military / pentagon vs. public health care is a perfect reflection of how ignorant Americans have become.
.

I think you will find that most Americans do not want war. They also do not want bailouts. And they DO want health care. Unfortunately, our politicians do not listen.

[iyamwutiam]

Re: Iran

This is all about doing Israel's dirty work. They are a useless parasitic nation that bleeds the american nation dry with its incessant robbery of the US taxpayer in the US (funny how almost EVERY year esp. in NY some 'Rabbi' is busted stealing US taxpayer money, as well as many 'Israeli' businessman (too numerous to mention -but let's just stick to Crazy Eddie as an example).

In the meanwhile -our so-called 'bestest' ally in the middle east -has sent less troops than Georgia (for all its bellowing over its 'expertise'. I would first like to see Israel commit a 30K troops to the wars in AF-Pak/Iraq for a start and throw in a couple of hundred million in aid to US soldiers before i (as a US taxpayer) would even consider any further diplomatic or financial alignment to Israel.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Iran

I would first like to see Israel commit a 30K troops to the wars in AF-Pak/Iraq for a start

Wow. That's a strategy I've never heard before.