What To Do About Iran
Here are some other people who are thinking about it. Specifically, bombing it.
More here at FreedomsZone.
Topics: Iran
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:37 am Comments (18) on Monday, June 11, 2007
18 Responses to “What To Do About Iran”
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June 11th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
It’s inevitable. Why wait.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Putting aside statement that senior American military officers are backing the President (hoping that this merely reflects the kind of relationship between the military and civilian governments of other countries), AND putting aside the idea that senior officers would chat with the media without having orders to do so, there is one sentence in the JP article that bothers me:
“The officer said that if the US government or the UN Security Council decided on this course of action, the US Navy would most probably not block the Strait of Hormuz – a step that would definitely draw an Iranian military response – but would patrol farther out and turn away tankers on their way to load oil.”
The first thing that bothers me is the idea that we would even consider going to the UN for permission to defend ourselves against a country that is already attacking us on the battlefield in a theater of war. It is bad enough that our military is now micromanaged to a degree that Stalin’s generals would have recognized. Going to the UN security council for anything over Iran killing our own people means that we’ve given up our right to defend ourselves. This is unexceptable and extremely dangerous.
Secondly, we lose people needlessly on a daily basis because we refuse to actually fight a war. We had cause almost 30 years ago to attack Iran. That we would refuse to do anything if it might cause a military response from Iran is on a par with the Carter Non-Response Doctrine of wilting spines and wet pants, not the stated Bush Doctrine (which has turned into something too close to the Carter Non-Response Doctrine). We are supposedly considering action in the first place because we are facing Iranian military activity on the battlefield that is killing our people. All we’re saying, in reality, is that we don’t want to taunt them into wearing their uniforms.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I agree, saltydog. It’s time to end the farce (including dealing with the UN), and stop Iran.
June 11th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
What are we saying to the parents of service people killed by IEDs, EFPs, and other weapons supplied by Iran? “Your offspring was an expendable pawn”. What if a police department did nothing to catch a cop killer knowing who he was? How would that affect moral of the police force and their families?
Every day brings a new act of war by Iran and Syria and no response. NATO AND the US AND Israel should jointly hit their terror bases. Then let’s see a response. We’ll gladly decapitate Syria. Iran is a deck of cards. We have dozens of reason to hit Iran spanning decades. Hell, the French have had bombings and assassinations of Iranian dissidents done on French soil.
Iran has to fall now.
Syria is an overflowing toilet of terror. Assad is infectious human waste.
June 11th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Yet over a million Iraqis have chosen to go and live in Syria rather than stay in the paradise on earth you wingnuts turned Iraq into.
But what do they know, eh, 4″Iraq”?
June 11th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
What are we saying to the parents of service people killed by IEDs, EFPs, and other weapons supplied by Iran?
We’re saying “Sorry, the CIA lawyers wouldn’t let us deal with it”.
Even though similar tricks were used during Vietnam and proved VERY EFFECTIVE in those areas where they were employed.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
I say, bomb strategic sites in Iran, and do it now. What have we got to lose? Who’s going to stop us? Is the Muslim world going to hate us less? Aren’t American lives worth a sternly worded letter of UN disapproval?
June 12th, 2007 at 3:52 am
Ceterum censeo mad mullah esse delendam.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:09 am
“Yet over a million Iraqis have chosen to go and live in Syria rather than stay in the paradise on earth you wingnuts turned Iraq into.”
What an utter moron you are, alphie. Iraqi Baathists take off because they fear !! IRAQI !! payback after all those pleasant years under Saddam. They flee to the only other Baathist regime in existence, Syria, since the other neighboring countries like Jordan don’t want any past of the Baathists and close their borders.
You, being very long on non sequitor but challenged by a toddlers understanding of cause and effect, feel that this somehow makes the US the bad boy for seeing Saddam’s regime out.
By the way, the official Syrian/NYTimes figure of 1million was revised by the Christian Science Monitor based on Amnesty International reports, the folks with boots of the ground, to under 500,000 some time back, admitting the figure includes Iraqi born Baathists living and thriving in Damascus BEFORE Saddam fell, and that the ‘refugee camps’ that the Syrians were showing off a few years back are more in the way of seasonal nomadic encampments that have backed up because of stricter border control by Iraq AND Syria.
June 12th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
OldManTime says: “By the way, the official Syrian/NYTimes figure of 1million was revised by the Christian Science Monitor based on Amnesty International reports, the folks with boots of the ground, to under 500,000″
Huh? In their latest report on the subject, on April 17, 2007, the Christian Science Monitor reported:
“Most of the estimated 2 million Iraqis who have fled to neighboring countries have settled in Jordan or Syria.” That is on top of the 1.7 million Iraqis displaced within Iraq.
June 12th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
“Yet over a million Iraqis have chosen to go and live in Syria rather than stay in the paradise on earth you wingnuts turned Iraq into.”
Boo Hoo.
As if we’ve been fighting in Iraq for the last 17 years in order to make Iraq paradise on earth…and as if the above leftard quote had anything to do with smashing the mad mullahs (the thread topic is Iran…leftard).
Oh, and btw…
Ceterum censeo mad mullah esse delendam.
June 12th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Like it or not, the bomb Iran crowd is being judged by one standard: the Iraq war.
A failing grade doesn’t get you another try.
June 12th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
“Huh? In their latest report on the subject, on April 17, 2007, the Christian Science Monitor reported:…”
I choose the CSM for the fact that they would normally be in line with the Syrian/NYT official view.
Read the article just a little bit closer. Watch out for careful writing that gives one erroneus impressions about what is actually being said about when, where, and whether totals are cumulative, or current.
I change my oil regularly. Let’s say for the points sake that I’ve put 200 gallons of oil in my car since 2003. Does this mean I drive around today with 200 gallons of oil in my engine?
But I digress.
Then look at the Christian Monitor archives and ask your self just why is an admission of being, well, a little bit mistaken, in one article not quite in line with retreading the same mistakes in a later one.
Point being:
There are many internal refugees in Iraq. Most were driven out of neighborhoods by one of the many groups invested in continued violence. Many are with relatives, many have returned, left again, returned again.
All this get counted up by folks in turn with a vested interest in high numbers. In other words, they count the same guy as many times as can stand walking around the revolving door before he falls down.
There are many Iraqis in Syria. A very respectable percentage have been there before 2003, and many going there after 2003 did so with enough portable wealth to set themselves up quite nicely under a sympathetic regime. These are expatriates, but are counted as ‘refugees’.
The accepted number of true refugees in Syria, alphie’s non-point, is considered to be around 500000 people. Some of whom have a vested interest in staying out of Iraq because of other Iraqis, NOT the US. Others of these ‘refugees’ in Syria flow continually stream back and forth across the border – been in all the news (border control issue) – because in many areas tribal affiliations make the borders meaningless and they are just doing what they’ve done since the Ottomans.
I go with the military numbers and Amnesty International numbers that the CSM finally conceded before allowing another reporter to recycle the SOS Syrian dog and pony show.
June 12th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
OldManTyme,
Please provide the date and source for what you consider “the accepted number of true refugees”. I’m not going to waste my time checking into your facts anymore, because they never turn out to be right. If you have a source, please provide, preferably direct from Amnesty itself, since that’s what you’re quoting. I’ve already looked myself on the Amnesty website and can’t find it.
As to this bit of defensive writing:
“Read the article just a little bit closer. Watch out for careful writing that gives one erroneus impressions about what is actually being said about when, where, and whether totals are cumulative, or current. ”
What are you talking about? Examples, please.
June 12th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
OldMan,
The latest report from the UNHCR, on June 5, states that “The situation in Iraq continues to worsen, with more than 2 million Iraqis now believed to be displaced inside Iraq and another 2.2 million sheltering in neighbouring states.” (check unhcr weekly bulletins.)
There is no hedging or careful writing here as far as I can see. I’d say you’re wrong once again.
June 12th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
OldMan claims: “They flee to the only other Baathist regime in existence, Syria, since the other neighboring countries like Jordan don’t want any past of the Baathists and close their borders.”
On March 12, 2007, the State Department announced that: “During the approximately 45-minute discussion, Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, called on Syria to work with the Iraqi government and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to “provide protection and assistance” for Iraqi refugees in Syria”. (source: State Department bulletins)
OldMan, if the refugees are Saddam-supporting Baathists, then why is the US trying to protect them? Who do you think is the moron now, you or Alphie?
June 13th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Oh, and look at this, OldMan, if Amnesty has “the accepted number of true refugees”, then here is Amnesty’s April 16, 2007 report:
“The Middle East is on the verge of a new humanitarian crisis unless the European Union, the US and other states take urgent measures to assist over three million people forcibly displaced by the conflict in Iraq.
Iraqi refugees have flooded into Syria and Jordan, particularly since the February 2006 attack by armed insurgents on one of Iraq’s holiest shrines, the Samarra’ mosque. That attack sparked an intensive new bout of sectarian bloodletting, with civilians across Iraq’s increasingly divided communities among the principal targets.
“Syria and Jordan, who together now host some two million Iraqis, have borne the brunt of the refugee exodus so far, but there must be a limit to which they can continue to do so in the face of the continuing surge by Iraqis desperate to escape the conflict,” said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North African Programme. “
June 14th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
“I’m not going to waste my time checking into your facts anymore…”
You needn’t. As I told you before when you were claiming like an idiot that despite the record Clinton was never charged with perjury, your reading impairment coupled with the BDS makes your fact checking pointless. (I did misread and make a mistake on the 500000 number. It was Lebanese displaced in the Hiz/Israeli conflct for which I apologize. It seems the ‘true’ number is what the Syrians supply to the UN.)
‘As to this bit of defensive writing:’
Because the article you quote makes no attempt to separate Iraqi expatriates living in Syria before the war from ‘refugees’, and indeed is very careful in it’s language to dodge it. A point I made in the comment you were answering.
“The latest report from the UNHCR, on June 5, states that “The situation in Iraq continues to worsen, with more than 2 million Iraqis now believed to be displaced inside Iraq and another 2.2 million sheltering in neighbouring states.”
You cherrypick an Independent article that cherrypicks a UNCHR report compiled by the UN based on numbers given them by the Syrians. And ‘another 2.2 million sheltering in neighbouring states’ does not say Syria, does not say refugees, and does not agree with the widely disparate numbers you can find in any one of dozens of articles. So, ya, hedging. Or at the least meaningless numbers to take at face value unless one has a vested interest in accepting them as such.
‘OldMan, if the refugees are Saddam-supporting Baathists, then why is the US trying to protect them? Who do you think is the moron now, you or Alphie?’
Since I was very careful to say that not all were Baathists, nor would I assume or accept your assumption that the US would hold that against them like Jordan does, I would say that you and alphie are the reading impaired BDS morons.
Your last comment:
“Syria and Jordan, who together now host some two million Iraqis,…”
Now wait. Where is he getting his number. Are these refugees? Does hosting mean refugees and does it include the well-heeled Baathists who bolted in 2003 and are causing the overload in private schools in Damacus?
A couple of other things:
Find a photo of the refugee camps in Syria. All you’ll get is foreground shots.
Look at the US military estimates of Iraqis in the Syrian camps and how they characterize them. Now I know that you’ll be philosophically inclined consider the US military far less credible than the Syrians, but then again, their vested interest is to have a good handle on the exact numbers, not Syria’s vested interest in inflating any statistic that they feel the gullible fellow travelers in the US – alphie, you, many others – will use to see the US defeated.