Only a psychotic actually believes that a disinformation effort requires war as an appropriate response. You still don't get the concept of proportion.
Their misinformation effort was in part responsible for a war, numbskull. Of course there should be some form of retaliation – preferably in the form of air strikes to keep Iran from developing atomic weapons.
And you've yet to demonstrate that tactical decisions made during the war were based upon disinformation. Or that Chalabi was still feeding Iranian disinfo after the war began; something which is not established simply by his only falling from grace two months ago.
It’s a logical conclusion, dipshit. If Chalabi was giving us faulty information before the war, what makes you think the Iranian operation would simply cease once it’d begun?
Your Red Herring, actually, and it's getting quite rancid. Nobody's saying Iran didn't feed us disinformation. We are discussing how Bush didn't bother to verify the information coming from a man the CIA had tagged as unreliable before 2002 and cheerfully let himself be led up the garden path.
No, we’re not discussing thatr
at all. It’s merely an attempt by yourself to deflect the subject of Iranian guilt and our necessary response. Chalabi and Iran aren’t any less guilty because of mistakes also made by George W. Bush. According to your argument, it is only the victim who is responsible for his own misfortune. A patently ridiculous point of view, to be certain.
So, by that theory, the United States should be punished every time our intel services engage in disinfo ops against other nations? War is the only response to disinfo from any nation? You don't even see how utterly insane this argument is, do you?
If I were a citizen of another country, I would certainly advocate seeking ways to punish or retaliate against those who conducted misinformation campaigns in the United States. Fortunately for us, the rest of the world is often incapable of doing so without facing inordinate consequences. It’s the result of our superpower, you see.
As for war being the only response, that’s untrue. Of course, in the case where the misinformation campaign was conducted with the express intent of
bringing us to war, and conducted by a nation with a
clear, anti-American agenda, a more drastic response is fully justifiable.
To determine which group of people get fallout dumped on them, asshole?
Red herring. We don’t need emotive bullshit.
Strawman. You're the one who's babbling about not being concerned with Iranian defences as a factor in the difficulties of a mission, and you continue to ignore the point particularly in regards to how limited the mission.
Not at all, actually. I said that Iranian defenses would not inflict unacceptable casualties relative to the benefits of preempting their development of a nuclear weapon, not that those air defenses didn’t exist.
Secondly, Iran’s capability to launch counter-strikes at United States warships and against American targets is fairly limited; our carrier air groups are capable of intercepting Iranian fighters (none of which, including their F-14s, are capable of striking at greater distance than they can be intercepted) as well as dealing with their missiles.
More insane babble. How many nations do you actually imagine we can "punish" without making the United States the world's enemy, or at the least hopelessly damaging any chance at a constructive foreign policy in the Middle East?
And what would you suggest? Pointless “negotiation” with governments that can’t actually deliver on the promises they make as regards groups publicly dedicated to the destruction of the United States of America whether or not we pull out of the Middle East this evening?
The answer is either to force the governments with whom we cannot deal using force (Pakistan) into reigning in on terrorism with our assistance by using diplomatic, political, and economic measures, or, in the cases of Iraq and Iran to use varying degrees of force to do it for them. Saudi Arabia and Syria fall somewhere in the middle; the former is too valuable for its role as a source of oil to the United States at this point in time, and the later beyond our strategic reach. Thus we use the “Pakistani approach” with Riyadh and Damascus when a more aggressive tone would be justified were the strategic situation to change.
In your opinion —which is quite worthless.
So you doubt that Iran has a nuclear weaponization program ongoing alongside its “civilian” nuclear research? Or is it just that you believe we should all live in fuzzy wuzzy neighborliness, and that we shouldn’t worry whether Iran might build a bomb, because if we’re nice, they’ll of course be nice, too?
Only in that demented little brain of yours. A threat is of a whole different character from disinformation; the former requires concrete actions leading to direct imperilment, the latter requires only the stupidity of the intended object of the disinformation.
Bullshit. Feeding us false intelligence through a pawn
was a concrete action.
Which supports your lunatic ravings how, exactly?
Are you fucking kidding me? You have only to look at the Middle East over the past ten years to know that your declaration that Iran poses no threat to its neighbors is a crock of shit.
Again, we're not talking about whether Iran's air defences actually pose a threat (and you forgot about the MiG 29s and the missiles) but the fact that we'd be having to launch a general campaign of aggression against a state which has not provided a justifiable threat.
Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. You don’t get much more threatening these days.
Disinfo isn't a crime, asshole; it's counterintelligence. Bush didn't "leave a door open", he believed bullshit because he sought justifications for his fixed decision to go to war.
But we’re not talking about Bush, asshat. We’re talking about the people who manipulated him and helped bring us to war based on misinformation. But, of course, you’ll just blindly dump all the blame on Bush, like a fucking moron, because Iran can do no wrong.
Except the strategic situation is not nor would ever be fitting, and trying to hang a justification for outright aggression against a state which doesn't present a justifiable threat on the basis of standard counterintelligence represents an arrogant stupidity which beggars description.
Iran presents plenty of threat even without the Chalabi incident. They are a state sponsor of terrorism, fucktard.
You mean... like those fake satellite photos Colin Powell put up before the United Nations? Trying to broaden the definition of hostile action to include counterintelligence doesn't cut it, Comical Axi. No matter what the Iranian intel services did, the decisions Bush made were already in line with his determination to go to war with Iraq. Iran sold him just what he wanted to justify his preconceived notions. Like the existence of Saddam's alleged vast WMD arsenal the reality of which was already dubious in the wake of the UNSCOM and UNMOVIC inspections.
What fake photographs?
And how were Iran’s efforts “counter-intelligence” by any stretch of the imagination?
So basically its going after another far weaker nation because supposedly we can. And the prospect of Iranian retaliation almost makes it impossible not to consider the very real possibility of a wider war breaking out.
Well, yes, when one goes to war, the enemy is generally supposed to be capable of being defeated.
And what do you believe the extent of Iranian “retaliation” will be?
Talks are proceeding, or did you simply skip over that bit in the article? What ever do you think negotiation is, asswipe?! Not speculation —elsewise the piece would have said "the possibility of talks before preliminary negotiations" or somesuch. Nice try at moving the goalposts.
The talks are about nuclear issues, not prisoner turn-overs.
No, asshole —FACT. Nothing in the article text speaks to this being speculation. I grow tired of your endless bullshit on this subject.
No, not fact. SPECULATION. It’s an
analysis piece, you fucking moron. It’s
automatically somebody’s
opinion on a given state of affairs.
Wrong, fuckface. The definition of soverignty does not depend upon ironclad control over every action taking place within a nation's borders but exists by definition for any state not under foreign control. Something you'd have learned if you hadn't flunked grade-school social studies.
Ironclad control? No. Control over the arms of one’s own fucking state? Yes. Does Iran have the former? No. Does Iran have the later? No.
In a word, bullshit. I see we're on to yet another of your patently dishonest attempts to redefine words to suit your purposes. A nation's internal political troubles do not invite outside intervention as a matter of course, as even a casual perusal of the UN Charter reveals.
The U.N. Charter isn’t a document outlining the steps necessary to secure the national security of the United States of America.
Soverignty isn't dependent upon 100% internal stability or upon internal stability at all. Nor do we have any clear picture as to the size of any Al-Qaeda network operating within Iran, but evidence that the Iranian government has been arresting and detaining Al-Qaeda operatives. Soverignty is not in question, since no nation has any authority to decide the matter for another nation.
Strawman. I did not say 100% internal stability at any time. I said passable control over the organs of state. Iran doesn’t have that. Tehran can’t reliably control its own Revolutionary Guard commands.
We have evidence that Iran has arrested some al-Qaeda members, but that people like al-Zarqawi operate there, and that they are aided and abetted by significant and powerful factions within Iran’s standing military.
No, I offer negatives to your patently insane "arguments", your dishonest redefinitions, and your half-baked opinions which you continue to believe count as valid evidence of anything. Pakistan has not acted in any sort of hostile character against the United States and, instead, has provided extensive cooperation in our wars in Iraq and Afganistan, has permitted flyovers of their territory upon request, and permits the presence of U.S. bases on its soil and guards those bases with their troops. That is not acting in a hostile manner toward us, and does not meet the definition of a military threat to the United States. And for as long as you keep spewing patent bullshit, I'm going to call you on it.
As a result of their current military dictatorship. Pakistan is otherwise a hotbed of violent resentment against us, and as plagued by conditions on its sovereignty as Iran.
