Rome, Titus, Zealots and Al Queda

[Patrick Degan]

Bush had his hard-on for a war with Iraq from the day he took office, and that is a fact. But you'll just blindly dump all the blame on Iran because, asshole that you are, you hold against all fact to the contrary that Bush can do no wrong.

This single quotation says it all.

It's impossible to follow this discussion to any conclusion whatsoever if you refuse to stop invoking the, "Bush is stupid!" strawman defense every two seconds.

Not to mention these ridiculous accusations regarding Hitler whenever we discuss foreign policy. Recognizing that the playing field is far from level, and that we make our moves from a point of extreme leverage isn't Hitlerian; it's a fact of life.

Concession accepted.

[Axis Kast]

Concession accepted.

What concession? I didn't conceede; I quit because you can't stop refusing to change the entire fucking subject to something we already agree on. It isn't I who wasn't able to put up a fight here; you're the one who kept changing the nature of the argument. As usual, you weren't arguing on-topic, but rather against some silly fabrication of your own making.

[Patrick Degan]

Concession accepted.

What concession? I didn't conceede; I quit because you can't stop refusing to change the entire fucking subject to something we already agree on. It isn't I who wasn't able to put up a fight here; you're the one who kept changing the nature of the argument. As usual, you weren't arguing on-topic, but rather against some silly fabrication of your own making.

Yeah, sure, right, whatever... It was alllll the fault of the Big Bad Iranians that poor widdle biddle Georgie took us into that nasty war in Iraq, so we have to bomb them. Your arguments for the war with Iraq frankly had more credibility —and they were a big steaming pile of bullshit too. You really had to reach to manufacture this load of crap about a disinformation campaign justifying military retaliation and trying to say it's the whole reason we went to war.

Do us all a favour and go back to arguing the stress psychology of tigers, where you're at least a bit funnier, and leave geopolitics to those competent to discuss the subject rationally.

[Patrick Degan]

Oh, and BTW, Axi:

Linky

excerpt:

The latest about Ahmed Chalabi

May 25

While the latest official line is, that even "US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war" (Guardian), there are also many sceptical voices on this "scapegoat theory".

Bill Gallagher (FOX 2) brings it to the point, that "Feith, who's a Perle acolyte, set up the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, a little group that did its own intelligence-gathering to do end runs around the CIA and the Defense Department's own analysts.

The mission was simple. Find anything that would establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Nothing existed, but Chalabi provided some unfounded claims that Feith would relay to Dick Cheney, who would then brand the lies with "We know with certainty" and go on the talk shows and propagate the crap.

The fact that Chalabi is a convicted bank swindler, notorious liar and raging egomaniac didn't matter. He was telling the boys just what they wanted to hear...

And:

Linky

excerpt:

Is Feith Chalabi's "Source"

Robert Scheer wrote in the May 25, 2004, Los Angeles Times, "We might start investigating which Bush official arranged for this hustler — already on the lam for a decade from major banking fraud convictions in Jordan — to sit behind First Lady Laura Bush during this year's State of the Union 2004 speech. Was the Secret Service watching her purse?

"Too harsh?," Scheer asks. "Not by a long shot. The CIA had stopped using Chalabi as a source in the mid-1990s after his political organization of exiles was accused of deception and incompetence. However, over the last four years, Chalabi was shamelessly resurrected inside the Beltway by neoconservatives, including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and other Bush officials who were leading the campaign to invade Iraq."

The June 1, 2004, New York Daily News reports that an "FBI investigation into who handed government secrets to disgraced Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi is focusing on Feith, the [June 7, 2004 (Issue)] U.S. News & World Report reveals.

"Feith and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz were Chalabi's most ardent supporters, and it was Chalabi who turned over to the U.S. the Iraqis who fed America false information about Iraq's alleged banned weapons program." [11]

Eat it.

[Axis Kast]

Yeah, sure, right, whatever... It was alllll the fault of the Big Bad Iranians that poor widdle biddle Georgie took us into that nasty war in Iraq, so we have to bomb them.

Now here’s a blatant strawman, if ever I saw one.

You know, this might be humorous if it wasn’t so frustrating – especially because I’m not the one who’s attempting to make an argument that only one person is responsible for Iran’s transgressions.

Your arguments for the war with Iraq frankly had more credibility —and they were a big steaming pile of bullshit too. You really had to reach to manufacture this load of crap about a disinformation campaign justifying military retaliation and trying to say it's the whole reason we went to war.

So now you’re blatantly lying, as well? I’ve gone out of my way to remind you that Iran is guilty of far more than misinformation campaigns at least twice now.

Bill Gallagher (FOX 2) brings it to the point, that "Feith, who's a Perle acolyte, set up the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, a little group that did its own intelligence-gathering to do end runs around the CIA and the Defense Department's own analysts.

The mission was simple. Find anything that would establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Nothing existed, but Chalabi provided some unfounded claims that Feith would relay to Dick Cheney, who would then brand the lies with "We know with certainty" and go on the talk shows and propagate the crap.

The fact that Chalabi is a convicted bank swindler, notorious liar and raging egomaniac didn't matter. He was telling the boys just what they wanted to hear...

That’s a nice, unfounded accusation. I wonder if the article ever provides any proof to back up its own allegations? You do realize that just because it’s published somewhere doesn’t mean it’s immediately valid, correct? Which of these “lies,” exactly, did Vice President Cheney “relay” to others under a false classification of “absolute truth?”

"Too harsh?," Scheer asks. "Not by a long shot. The CIA had stopped using Chalabi as a source in the mid-1990s after his political organization of exiles was accused of deception and incompetence. However, over the last four years, Chalabi was shamelessly resurrected inside the Beltway by neoconservatives, including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and other Bush officials who were leading the campaign to invade Iraq."

More attempts at diversion, I see. You just don’t give up, do you?

For the ninth time in the past week: we can agree that George Bush made a monumental error in listening to Ahmed Chalabi. Of course, that doesn’t exonerate Iran. The way you make it sound, Deegan, a swindler deserves no punishment, if only he can pull off the lie. That's patently ridiculous.

[Patrick Degan]

Yeah, sure, right, whatever... It was alllll the fault of the Big Bad Iranians that poor widdle biddle Georgie took us into that nasty war in Iraq, so we have to bomb them.

Now here’s a blatant strawman, if ever I saw one.

You know, this might be humorous if it wasn’t so frustrating – especially because I’m not the one who’s attempting to make an argument that only one person is responsible for Iran’s transgressions.

The strawman is entirely your own —Iran is to blame for Bush's decisions. Sorry, but it's not Iran's fault that this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

Your arguments for the war with Iraq frankly had more credibility —and they were a big steaming pile of bullshit too. You really had to reach to manufacture this load of crap about a disinformation campaign justifying military retaliation and trying to say it's the whole reason we went to war.

So now you’re blatantly lying, as well?

No, I leave that sort of thing entirely to you, Comical Axi.

I’ve gone out of my way

—to obsfucate...

...to remind you that Iran is guilty of far more than misinformation campaigns at least twice now.

Iran is not guilty of the fact that this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

Bill Gallagher (FOX 2) brings it to the point, that "Feith, who's a Perle acolyte, set up the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, a little group that did its own intelligence-gathering to do end runs around the CIA and the Defense Department's own analysts.

The mission was simple. Find anything that would establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Nothing existed, but Chalabi provided some unfounded claims that Feith would relay to Dick Cheney, who would then brand the lies with "We know with certainty" and go on the talk shows and propagate the crap.

The fact that Chalabi is a convicted bank swindler, notorious liar and raging egomaniac didn't matter. He was telling the boys just what they wanted to hear...

That’s a nice, unfounded accusation. I wonder if the article ever provides any proof to back up its own allegations? You do realize that just because it’s published somewhere doesn’t mean it’s immediately valid, correct?

No, asshole, it's the TRUTH. Chalabi was convicted in absentia in Jordan for bank fraud:

Linky

excerpt:

One of the key Shia institutions in Lebanon was MEBCO in Beirut, which by the 1980s had become a banker for the Shia Amal militia. Amal and Hezbollah were the principal private armies in Lebanon tied to the regime in Iran. Chalabi was placing Petra depositors' money with MEBCO in those years; by the time Petra collapsed in 1989, bank auditors found, the equivalent of $41 million in transactions with MEBCO were on the books. "All the Lebanese banks were divided between political parties and factions," says Hassan Abdul Aziz, a former director at Petra Bank. "MEBCO bank was no different. All the Shia were close to Iran emotionally or otherwise." A former CIA case officer in Lebanon has a less sympathetic view. "This was basically funding a civil war, which meant murders, assassinations, and blowing up Israelis. MEBCO was putting their chips on every square." Iran and the Shite militias were not the only violent elements destabilizing Lebanon in the '70s and '80s, of course. The bloody Israeli invasions of Lebanon, along with later punitive expeditions, inflamed the Shia and other Lebanese.

But Lebanon was not the only venue for the Chalabi family's flexible and innovative approach to international finance. This may come as a surprise to some of Ahmed Chalabi's newer friends, but he helped finance Saddam Hussein's trade with Jordan during the 1980s. Specifically, Chalabi helped organize a special trading account for Iraq at the Jordanian central bank. Due to the problems created by the war with Iran, Saddam Hussein was unable to obtain credit on normal terms. The special account with the Jordanians allowed him to swap oil for necessary imports -- at least Saddam thought they were necessary -- without going through the international credit system. As Hassan Abdul Aziz explains, "Petra was the first to give letters of credit to Iraq, which they did for 23 months before Banco del Lavoro did in 1984. (The Banco del Lavoro scandal involved the provision of U.S. government commodities loans to buy arms for Saddam Hussein.) By 1986 Jordan had $1 billion in annual trade with Iraq this way, and Petra Bank had 50% of the market." It makes the neocons' insistence that Saddam was behind Petra's fall -- and Chalabi's conviction for embezzling and fraud -- even less credible.

After Petra was seized by the Jordanian authorities in August 1989, Chalabi fled Jordan in the trunk of Crown Prince Hassan's car. Chalabi and his family were still wealthy, despite the collapse of their banking empire, but his career in Middle East banking was over. He was now a double exile, from Jordan as well as Iraq, comfortably ensconced in London. Just a year after his fall, though, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. When the subsequent Gulf War weakened but did not topple Saddam, a new possibility beckoned: the return of the Chalabi family to power in Iraq.

And:

Linky

excerpt:

In 1989, however, Chalabi’s comfortable life collapsed amid allegations of criminality. Jordan’s Central Bank, facing a liquidity crisis, demanded that the country’s banks place thirty per cent of their foreign currency in its accounts. Petra balked, prompting an emergency audit. Chalabi betrayed little outward concern about this sudden turn. Patrick Theros, a former Ambassador to Qatar, who was then stationed in Jordan, had dinner at Chalabi’s home during this period. “He was completely charming, particularly to the ladies—he could talk about any subject,” Theros recalled. Two days later, Chalabi, who had apparently been tipped off about his impending arrest, fled. He forfeited many of his family’s assets, and resettled with his wife, Leila, and their four children in London.

On April 9, 1992, a military tribunal in Jordan delivered a two-hundred-and-twenty-three-page verdict, which concluded that Chalabi was guilty of thirty-one charges, including embezzlement, theft, forgery, currency speculation, making false statements, and making bad loans to himself, to his friends, and to his family’s other financial enterprises, in Lebanon and Switzerland. The Jordanian docket shows that Chalabi was sentenced to serve twenty-two years of hard labor, and to pay back two hundred and thirty million dollars in embezzled funds. An Arthur Andersen audit commissioned by Jordanian authorities found that the bank had overstated its assets by more than three hundred million dollars. In addition, a hundred and fifty-eight million dollars had disappeared from its accounts, apparently as a result of transactions involving people linked to the former management. (Swiss documents obtained by the Newsweek correspondent Mark Hosenball show that Socofi, an investment firm in Switzerland run by the Chalabi family, also collapsed under suspicious circumstances, leading to pleas of no contest by two of Chalabi’s brothers, Jawad and Hazam, in 2000.)

—and the CIA found that he was unreliable and incompetent along with his entire organisation in 1996. Those are facts, despite which this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

Which of these “lies,” exactly, did Vice President Cheney “relay” to others under a false classification of “absolute truth?”

The mythical Iraq/al-Qaeda alliance, and that hoary and very discredited Atta-in-Prague story which he is still flogging on occasion Oh, and the mythical mobile bioweapon trucks as well. Is it really necessary for me to quote Cheney's bullshit to you yet again?!

"Too harsh?," Scheer asks. "Not by a long shot. The CIA had stopped using Chalabi as a source in the mid-1990s after his political organization of exiles was accused of deception and incompetence. However, over the last four years, Chalabi was shamelessly resurrected inside the Beltway by neoconservatives, including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and other Bush officials who were leading the campaign to invade Iraq."

More attempts at diversion, I see. You just don’t give up, do you?

Not a "diversion" but inconveinent fact —for you, that is. All your empty bluster does not erase the reality that this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

For the ninth time in the past week: we can agree that George Bush made a monumental error in listening to Ahmed Chalabi. Of course, that doesn’t exonerate Iran.

Iran is not guilty of this White House ignoring the CIA and putting its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler. And you can stop trying to flog the very unreasonable argument that counterintelligence is an akin to an act of war —a theory which has zero precedence anywhere in any time.

The way you make it sound, Deegan, a swindler deserves no punishment, if only he can pull off the lie. That's patently ridiculous.

The only thing which is patently ridiculous is your attempt to paint this White House as a collection of wholly innocent victims who had no idea that the person they had placed all their faith in was an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler. They had plenty of warning from the CIA that nothing Chalabi said should be believed, but they went ahead with their own very politically-correct Office of Special Plans and Chalabi's INC to dredge up any excuse whatsoever to justify the case for war with Iraq which they were determined to wage from 21 January 2001. To quote again from The New Yorker article linked above:

excerpt:

When the Bush Administration took office, in 2001, neoconservatives such as Wolfowitz and Perle were restored to power. Brooke told me that in February of that year Wolfowitz called him late one night and promised that this time Saddam would be deposed. Brooke said that Wolfowitz told him he was so committed to this goal that he would resign if he couldn’t accomplish it. (Wolfowitz called this account “nonsense.”)

After the attacks of September 11th, many in the Administration began to consider a preëmptive strike against Saddam’s regime, and they eagerly received Chalabi’s intelligence briefings. In 2002, an Information Collection Program for I.N.C. intelligence, which had been funded by the State Department, was transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency, a division of the Pentagon. “Chalabi was the crutch the neocons leaned on to justify their intervention,” Zinni said. “He twisted the intelligence that they based it on, and provided a picture so rosy and unrealistic they thought it would be easy.”

The C.I.A. remained skeptical of the defectors that the I.N.C. was promoting, and insisted on examining them independently. President Bush was informed of the C.I.A.’s view of Chalabi soon after taking office, but he ultimately sided with Vice-President Cheney and the neocons. In the months before the invasion of Iraq, Bush and Cheney both referred in public addresses to Saddam’s mobile weapons laboratories. Six weeks before the U.S. invasion, in a February 5, 2003, address to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell—who had initially found the intelligence on W.M.D.s inconclusive—spoke of unnamed eyewitnesses, one of whom had supplied “firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and rails.” It was, he testified, “one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq.”

Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, of the Los Angeles Times, recently reported that the source of this intelligence was an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, who is allegedly the brother of one of Chalabi’s aides. (Chalabi says that the defector is not related to anyone in his organization.) Curveball is said to have approached German intelligence officials and provided them with detailed maps and descriptions of mobile weapons labs. Curveball neglected to tell German officials that before fleeing Iraq he had been jailed for embezzlement. Moreover, U.S. and U.N. experts searched every corner of Iraq for the mobile labs; all they found were two trucks, whose function is still in dispute. Last January, Cheney cited those trucks as conclusive proof that Iraq had mobile weapons labs, but experts have said that they more likely contained equipment for weather balloons.

Iran's disinformation campaign had nothing whatsoever to do with those decisions —all made by a White House which had put its trust —with eyes open— in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

[Axis Kast]

The strawman is entirely your own —Iran is to blame for Bush's decisions. Sorry, but it's not Iran's fault that this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

Are you a fucking retard, or do you just enjoy making an ass of yourself through constant repetition?

We’re not debating whether Bush was wrong; we’re debating whether the United States of America was part of a misinformation campaign launched by Iran. And you claim that these people want to “improve” relations.

Iran is not guilty of the fact that this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

Just as employees of Symbol technology are not responsible for the losses of their own financial savings? After all, it happened to Enron. Why didn’t others see it coming? But that’s not correct, now is it? No. Of course not. Because the swindler is always responsible in some way for the final decision of the victim. Failure to punish or pursue this issue with Iran will only generate contempt.

No, asshole, it's the TRUTH. Chalabi was convicted in absentia in Jordan for bank fraud:

I’m not even talking about that, dipshit. I’m referring to the information the article alleges that Feith passed to Cheney, who then presented it to the American public as fact. There aren’t any examples.

The mythical Iraq/al-Qaeda alliance, and that hoary and very discredited Atta-in-Prague story which he is still flogging on occasion Oh, and the mythical mobile bioweapon trucks as well. Is it really necessary for me to quote Cheney's bullshit to you yet again?!

The “Atta-in-Prague” story is still valid, according to Czech intelligence. Indeed, the best the 9/11 Commission could do was to report that a single phonecall had been logged from Atta’s telephone while he was allegedly in Europe. Too bad for the naysayers that the phone would have been useless overseas anyway. It’s not at all out of the realm of possibility that Atta would leave the phone behind.

Not a "diversion" but inconveinent fact —for you, that is. All your empty bluster does not erase the reality that this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

More red herrings, I see. We’ve been over this before, Deegan. George Bush deserves plenty of blame for being a victim, but waving away Iran’s guilt while trying to pin it obsessively on somebody else is simply ludicrous. Iran targeted the United States with a misinformation campaign. Period. That isn’t evidence of a desire for a friendly, cooperative relationship. It’s evidence of a desire to do harm.

Iran is not guilty of this White House ignoring the CIA and putting its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler. And you can stop trying to flog the very unreasonable argument that counterintelligence is an akin to an act of war —a theory which has zero precedence anywhere in any time.

Iran launched a counter-intelligence initiative aimed at embroiling the United States in a war. That is the mark of hostile intent. It doesn’t get much more obvious unless they’re firing missiles at us, retard.

Iran's disinformation campaign had nothing whatsoever to do with those decisions —all made by a White House which had put its trust —with eyes open— in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

Just because the Iranians didn’t provide Chalabi with every story he spun doesn’t mean they provided him with nothing that was passed on to us, asshat. And here you are claiming we need to give these people a chance to possess atomic weapons.

[Patrick Degan]

The strawman is entirely your own —Iran is to blame for Bush's decisions. Sorry, but it's not Iran's fault that this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

Are you a fucking retard, or do you just enjoy making an ass of yourself through constant repetition?

That's a question you really should be asking yourself.

We’re not debating whether Bush was wrong; we’re debating whether the United States of America was part of a misinformation campaign launched by Iran. And you claim that these people want to “improve” relations.

No, we're not debating that either, no matter how much you wish we were. The crux of the matter is how this White House sought any excuse whatsoever to justify their drive for war and how it was told exactly what it wanted to hear from an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler —character defects which seemed utterly unimportant to Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz et. al. That Iran supplied Chalabi with his material is secondary to the fact that Bush and co. not only never bothered to verify the accuracy of the "evidence" they were pinning their case for war upon, they didn't want to bother with the effort at all.

Iran is not guilty of the fact that this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

Just as employees of Symbol technology are not responsible for the losses of their own financial savings? After all, it happened to Enron. Why didn’t others see it coming? But that’s not correct, now is it? No. Of course not. Because the swindler is always responsible in some way for the final decision of the victim.

You don't even see how ludicrous your attempted parallel to ordinary criminal fraud is, do you?

Failure to punish or pursue this issue with Iran will only generate contempt.

How like a deranged child you are. Constantly yammering on about punishment, bombing, and war. Nobody pursues matters like this in the Real World, numbskull, except to plug the leaks in their own security. Nobody ever even considers military retaliation for espionage and counterintelligence. Because every nation does it and also because it's not really possible to justify making war on another nation and killing its citizens in the course of that action on nothing more than avenging dirty tricks.

No, asshole, it's the TRUTH. Chalabi was convicted in absentia in Jordan for bank fraud:

I’m not even talking about that, dipshit. I’m referring to the information the article alleges that Feith passed to Cheney, who then presented it to the American public as fact. There aren’t any examples.

Except for what's written in the news articles cited. Denial does not a rebuttal make, nor does your endless hairsplitting bullshit either. Even for you, this is pathetic.

The mythical Iraq/al-Qaeda alliance, and that hoary and very discredited Atta-in-Prague story which he is still flogging on occasion Oh, and the mythical mobile bioweapon trucks as well. Is it really necessary for me to quote Cheney's bullshit to you yet again?!

The “Atta-in-Prague” story is still valid, according to Czech intelligence.

Lie —Czech intelligence backed down on the Atta report two years ago.

Indeed, the best the 9/11 Commission could do was to report that a single phonecall had been logged from Atta’s telephone while he was allegedly in Europe. Too bad for the naysayers that the phone would have been useless overseas anyway. It’s not at all out of the realm of possibility that Atta would leave the phone behind.

Oh, really? You actually imagine I don't save my files:

Linky

Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism specialist, said that Cheney's "willingness to use speculation and conjecture as facts in public presentations is appalling. It's astounding."

In particular, current intelligence officials reiterated yesterday that a reported Prague visit in April 2001 between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent had been discounted by the CIA, which sent former agency Director James R. Woolsey to investigate the claim. Woolsey did not find any evidence to confirm the report, officials said, and President Bush did not include it in the case for war in his State of the Union address last January.

But Cheney, on NBC's "Meet the Press," cited the report of the meeting as possible evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link and said it was neither confirmed nor discredited, saying: "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know."

Multiple intelligence officials said that the Prague meeting, purported to be between Atta and senior Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, was dismissed almost immediately after it was reported by Czech officials in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and has since been discredited further.

The CIA reported to Congress last year that it could not substantiate the claim, while American records indicate Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time, the officials said yesterday. Indeed, two intelligence officials said yesterday that Ani himself, now in US custody, has also refuted the report. The Czech government has also distanced itself from its original claim.

A senior defense official with access to high-level intelligence reports expressed confusion yesterday over the vice president's decision to reair charges that have been dropped by almost everyone else. "There isn't any new intelligence that would precipitate anything like this," the official said.

This also has been gone over endlessly in multiple threads, you've been called on it repeatedly, and here you are still flogging this baloney. Either you simply are too stupid to understand when something has been discredited, or you are fundamentally dishonest.

Not a "diversion" but inconveinent fact —for you, that is. All your empty bluster does not erase the reality that this White House decided to put its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

More red herrings, I see. We’ve been over this before, Deegan. George Bush deserves plenty of blame for being a victim, but waving away Iran’s guilt while trying to pin it obsessively on somebody else is simply ludicrous. Iran targeted the United States with a misinformation campaign. Period. That isn’t evidence of a desire for a friendly, cooperative relationship. It’s evidence of a desire to do harm.

Do really enjoy making yourself look like a retard with your endless repetition?

Iran is not guilty of this White House ignoring the CIA and putting its trust in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler. And you can stop trying to flog the very unreasonable argument that counterintelligence is an akin to an act of war —a theory which has zero precedence anywhere in any time.

Iran launched a counter-intelligence initiative aimed at embroiling the United States in a war. That is the mark of hostile intent. It doesn’t get much more obvious unless they’re firing missiles at us, retard.

Wrong, asshole. The issue is not whatever Iran intended, but this White House's determination to use whatever excuse or 'ginned up case it could to justify a war they had already decided to wage. They relied upon a man who the CIA had warned them as unreliable and incompetent; even while they were demanding any link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda and 9/11 to pin their war justifications on in September 2001, as Richard Clark has stated publicly. They ignored all information contrary to their predetermined decision. War was never the last option for this White House, it was its sole option. Nor was there any imperative for war with Iraq either. Your attempted equation that disinformation equals a military attack is frankly idiotic on its face.

Iran's disinformation campaign had nothing whatsoever to do with those decisions —all made by a White House which had put its trust —with eyes open— in an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler.

Just because the Iranians didn’t provide Chalabi with every story he spun doesn’t mean they provided him with nothing that was passed on to us, asshat. And here you are claiming we need to give these people a chance to possess atomic weapons.

Man of Straw.

[Axis Kast]

No, we're not debating that either, no matter how much you wish we were. The crux of the matter is how this White House sought any excuse whatsoever to justify their drive for war and how it was told exactly what it wanted to hear from an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler —character defects which seemed utterly unimportant to Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz et. al. That Iran supplied Chalabi with his material is secondary to the fact that Bush and co. not only never bothered to verify the accuracy of the "evidence" they were pinning their case for war upon, they didn't want to bother with the effort at all.

Are you fucking sick in the mind? We are not at all debating the evolution of logic (or, in your opinion, illogic) that brought this country to war with Iraq. Rather, we are debating the implications of and necessary response to Iran’s misinformation campaign – which was clearly aimed to draw the United States into a war.

You don't even see how ludicrous your attempted parallel to ordinary criminal fraud is, do you?

You have already assigned all blame to George W. Bush – representative of the victim in this situation –, have you not? You have accused him of being swindled by something he should have seen coming, have you not? That’s exoneration of the perpetrator for the errors of the victim.

How like a deranged child you are. Constantly yammering on about punishment, bombing, and war. Nobody pursues matters like this in the Real World, numbskull, except to plug the leaks in their own security. Nobody ever even considers military retaliation for espionage and counterintelligence. Because every nation does it and also because it's not really possible to justify making war on another nation and killing its citizens in the course of that action on nothing more than avenging dirty tricks.

Bullshit. Clinton bombed Iraq for a failed assassination plot against former President George W. Bush. We must respond in some way to Iran’s attempt to draw us into a war on faulty intelligence, be it by creating more problems for them with the IAEA and UN, or – more preferably – by launching an air bombardment campaign to eliminate as much of their nuclear infrastructure as practical.

Except for what's written in the news articles cited. Denial does not a rebuttal make, nor does your endless hairsplitting bullshit either. Even for you, this is pathetic.

Prove it. Cite examples of Cheney’s specific briefs to specific persons. I certainly didn’t see any.

Lie —Czech intelligence backed down on the Atta report two years ago.

Prove this, too, while you’re at it, since that’s nothing like what I’ve heard at all.

The CIA reported to Congress last year that it could not substantiate the claim, while American records indicate Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time, the officials said yesterday. Indeed, two intelligence officials said yesterday that Ani himself, now in US custody, has also refuted the report. The Czech government has also distanced itself from its original claim.

A distancing of government officials from a claim their allies are wary of accepting is not an admission of Czech intelligence’s own repudiation whatsoever. To cite a similar situation, a new report including information on the Nigerian yellowcake issue is scheduled for release in the United Kingdom this week – and will reportedly include absolution for Tony Blair’s administration in the form of concurrence that the intelligence provided by British services on the subject was supportable.

Do really enjoy making yourself look like a retard with your endless repetition?

I’m not the one who can’t stop pulling, “George Bush is evil!” out of his ass every five seconds.

Wrong, asshole. The issue is not whatever Iran intended, but this White House's determination to use whatever excuse or 'ginned up case it could to justify a war they had already decided to wage. They relied upon a man who the CIA had warned them as unreliable and incompetent; even while they were demanding any link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda and 9/11 to pin their war justifications on in September 2001, as Richard Clark has stated publicly. They ignored all information contrary to their predetermined decision. War was never the last option for this White House, it was its sole option. Nor was there any imperative for war with Iraq either. Your attempted equation that disinformation equals a military attack is frankly idiotic on its face.

A misinformation campaign designed to bring this country to war is a blatantly hostile action. If you wish to ignore this latest in Iranian outrages and bluster about the potential for “improved relations” (as long as one white-washes the past, ignorant of what happened mere months ago), that’s not my problem. Iran has plenty to be held accountable for. Their proven anti-American agenda and activities bear out pre-emptive action, be it ever so humble.

Man of Straw.

Now you lie. Only a few posts ago, you argued that Iran was attempting to reconcile its differences with the United States. You argued that we permit them the benefit of the doubt, an allowance which would allow them to build nuclear weapons with their current infrastructure, uncontested.

[Patrick Degan]

No, we're not debating that either, no matter how much you wish we were. The crux of the matter is how this White House sought any excuse whatsoever to justify their drive for war and how it was told exactly what it wanted to hear from an internationally known liar, bank fraud, and convicted swindler —character defects which seemed utterly unimportant to Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz et. al. That Iran supplied Chalabi with his material is secondary to the fact that Bush and co. not only never bothered to verify the accuracy of the "evidence" they were pinning their case for war upon, they didn't want to bother with the effort at all.

Are you fucking sick in the mind?

Surely a question you should be asking yourself.

We are not at all debating the evolution of logic (or, in your opinion, illogic) that brought this country to war with Iraq. Rather, we are debating the implications of and necessary response to Iran’s misinformation campaign – which was clearly aimed to draw the United States into a war.

No, this is more you insisting that Iran is wholly to blame for Bush making a decision to go to war he had already made, and your making the even more idiotic argument that a disinformation campaign is akin to an act of war requiring military retaliation.

You don't even see how ludicrous your attempted parallel to ordinary criminal fraud is, do you?

You have already assigned all blame to George W. Bush – representative of the victim in this situation –, have you not? You have accused him of being swindled by something he should have seen coming, have you not? That’s exoneration of the perpetrator for the errors of the victim.

I put the blame where it belongs, asshole —on the guy who was bound and determined to have his war and sought any excuse he could put up to justify a decision he had already made. BTW, interesting twist you put on the Nuremburg Defence for Bushy-boy: "It's not my fault, I was only giving orders. Besides, how was I supposed to know that when the CIA told me my good buddy Ahmad Chalabi was a liar and an incompetent that I couldn't believe a word he said?"

How like a deranged child you are. Constantly yammering on about punishment, bombing, and war. Nobody pursues matters like this in the Real World, numbskull, except to plug the leaks in their own security. Nobody ever even considers military retaliation for espionage and counterintelligence. Because every nation does it and also because it's not really possible to justify making war on another nation and killing its citizens in the course of that action on nothing more than avenging dirty tricks.

Bullshit. Clinton bombed Iraq for a failed assassination plot against former President George W. Bush.

Which is not even remotely the same thing, but spew on:

We must respond in some way to Iran’s attempt to draw us into a war on faulty intelligence, be it by creating more problems for them with the IAEA and UN, or – more preferably – by launching an air bombardment campaign to eliminate as much of their nuclear infrastructure as practical.

Except there was no imperative for war, there was plenty of contradictory information which disputed the case that Iraq posed the menace it was alleged to be posing, and despite all this, Bush decided to go with those who were telling him everything he wanted to hear to justify his war. No matter what Iranian intelligence did, the rest was wholly in Bush's hands.

And your ideas about an appropriate response range from the counterproductive to the psychotic. I really do think you need to go have a lie-down.

Except for what's written in the news articles cited. Denial does not a rebuttal make, nor does your endless hairsplitting bullshit either. Even for you, this is pathetic.

Prove it. Cite examples of Cheney’s specific briefs to specific persons. I certainly didn’t see any.

I have Cheney's bullshit being spewed on Meet The Press and every news show and public speech he appeared on as my evidence, asshole —which has been quoted in several threads now and can easily be found by a search of the thread archive here at SD.net just for a start.

Lie —Czech intelligence backed down on the Atta report two years ago.

Prove this, too, while you’re at it, since that’s nothing like what I’ve heard at all.

Um, ahem:

Linky

Iraq link to Sept 11 attack and anthrax is ruled out
By Peter Green in Prague
(Filed: 18/12/2001)

THE case for widening the war on terrorism against Iraq suffered a major setback yesterday when a vital piece of evidence allegedly linking Baghdad to the September 11 attacks appeared unfounded.
Jacob's Creek

Czech police said yesterday they had no evidence that the ringleader of the suicide attacks, Mohammed Atta, met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague earlier this year. Administration hardliners in Washington had cited the alleged meeting in support of their argument that Saddam Hussein's regime had been backing terrorism.

The story emerged as the White House announced that the anthrax attacks that swept America probably originated from a domestic source. It had been suggested that the bacillus had originated in an Iraqi biological weapons lab.

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said: "There is nothing that has been final, that has been concluded. But the evidence is increasingly looking like it was a domestic source."

The story of Atta's possible link to Iraq first surfaced in Czech and US newspapers and later appeared to be confirmed by the interior minister, Stanislav Gross. In a briefing to journalists two months ago, Mr Gross said the Czech counter-intelligence service, the BIS, had evidence of a meeting in April this year between Atta and an Iraqi spy, Ahmed al-Ani, who was working as consul at the Prague embassy.

But yesterday Jiri Kolar, the police chief, said there were no documents showing that Atta visited Prague at any time this year, although he had visited twice in 2000.

Atta could have entered the country using false papers, but Mr Gross questioned why Atta would do so when he was not a wanted man. "I don't see any reason for him to visit under a false name," he said. "He was 'legal' when he was in Germany."

The true story of any Prague connection appears to be much less definite than Mr Gross first suggested. The Czech president, Vaclav Havel, who has access to papers of the counter-intelligence service, said earlier this month that it was only "70 per cent" certain that Atta had met the Iraqi spy in Prague.

It had been assumed that the information on the April meeting came from BIS agents trailing an Iraqi spy, something that is common in Nato states such as the Czech Republic. But Mr Havel said the report of the meeting came "from an informer who followed this Iraqi spy", rather than a BIS staff member.

Other Nato states, including Britain - which is known to be lukewarm about the idea of attacking Iraq during the next round of the war on terrorism - have questioned accounts of Baghdad's possible involvement in the September 11 attacks.

On a visit to Prague last month, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, said there was no proof of Iraqi involvement in the attacks. "I must emphasise that we do not have any proof of Baghdad's participation in the attacks on New York and Washington," he told a Czech newspaper.

In recent days, there have been suggestions in the Czech press that another Mohammed Atta had visited Prague this year. A man of the same name did arrive in the Czech capital in 2001, an intelligence source told a Czech newspaper, but it was not the Egyptian terrorist.

"He didn't have the same identity card number, there was a great difference in their ages, their nationalities didn't match, basically nothing. It was someone else," an unidentified interior ministry official told the newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes.

A police spokesman, Major Ivana Zelenakova, said Atta the hijacker had been in Prague, but a year before the alleged meeting with al-Ani. Atta's two confirmed visits in 2000 took place a few days apart, in May and June. On both occasions, Atta's entry was logged by Czech police. "What exactly he did here during that time, we do not know," she said.

According to the FBI, Atta left the US for several days in early April this year for Europe. Credit card records indicate that he bought a knife at Zurich airport and show him returning to Florida a few days later.

His alleged contact, the Iraqi consul al-Ani, was expelled from Prague soon after the alleged Atta meeting for "conduct incompatible with his diplomatic duties". The Czechs suspected that al-Ani was a spy because he was noticeably absent from all diplomatic functions. "He was paid for performing some duties, and he had no diplomatic duties, so we checked, we found and we acted," said a senior Czech official.

One long-time member of Prague's Arab community, a businessman who prefers to be known only as Hassan, said that he was a close friend of the Iraqi and that he believed the Czechs had mistaken another man for Atta.

Hassan said a man he knew only as Saleh, a used car dealer from Nuremburg, often came to Prague to meet al-Ani and sold him at least one car. "I have sat with the two of them at least twice. The double is an Iraqi who has met with the consul. If someone saw a photo of Atta he might easily mistake the two," Hassan said.

And:

Linky

Czechs Retract Iraq Terror Link

NewsMax Wires
Monday, Oct. 21, 2002

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Czech intelligence officials have knocked down one of the few clear links between al-Qaeda terrorists and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, UPI has learned.

Senior Czech intelligence officials have told their American counterparts that they now have "no confidence" in their earlier report of direct meetings in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers and an Iraqi diplomat stationed in Prague who has since been expelled for "activities inconsistent with his diplomatic status."

"Quite simply, we think the source for this story may have invented the meeting that he reported. We can find no corroborative evidence for the meeting and the source has real credibility problems," a high-ranking source close to Czech intelligence told UPI Sunday.

The initial report of the meeting in June 2000 claimed that Atta had met Ahmad al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence official based in Prague under diplomatic cover, whose movements were being routinely monitored by BIS, the Czech intelligence service. The report also suggested that the Iraqi was probably the source of $100,000 that Atta suddenly obtained to finance the U.S. leg of the terror mission.

The report went on to claim that Atta returned to Prague on April 9 last year on a three-day mission to see al-Ani once more, just two weeks before the majority of the hijack team left Saudi Arabia for the United States. The report was then publicly confirmed by Czech Interior Minister Stanislas Gross, on the basis of the initial assessment of the BIS.

The nearest to a smoking gun connecting Iraq to al-Qaeda, the Czech report was taken very seriously in Washington, in the face of growing skepticism at the Central Intelligence Agency.

But other influential figures in Washington, including former CIA Director James Woolsey and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle pursued their own inquiries using their own sources, and have now also been told by high-ranking Czech sources that they no longer stand by the initial report.

Perle, in Prague this weekend for a meeting of the Trilateral Commission, was told in person Sunday that the BIS now doubts that any such meeting between Atta and al-Ani in fact took place.

The question of the Czech meeting, and whether it ever happened, is just one aspect of a growing dispute within the George W. Bush administration, with officials close to the White House leaping to conclusions while the CIA remains skeptical. There is a separate argument over Iraq's attempt to smuggle a consignment of specialized aluminium tubes, cited by President Bush as a sign that Iraq was building a gas centrifuge systém to create weapons-grade uranium.

CIA experts doubt whether the tubes in question were suitable for the supposed task, and believe they were intended instead for use in missile engines, still a clear violation of Iraqi commitments to the United Nations, but not necessarily proof of nuclear intent.

"One of the most dangerous things in this business is to start believing a report simply because it fits with your preconceptions and confirms what you always wanted to believe," a Czech intelligence source told UPI.

Copyright 2002 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

Eat it.

The CIA reported to Congress last year that it could not substantiate the claim, while American records indicate Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time, the officials said yesterday. Indeed, two intelligence officials said yesterday that Ani himself, now in US custody, has also refuted the report. The Czech government has also distanced itself from its original claim.

A distancing of government officials from a claim their allies are wary of accepting is not an admission of Czech intelligence’s own repudiation whatsoever. To cite a similar situation, a new report including information on the Nigerian yellowcake issue is scheduled for release in the United Kingdom this week – and will reportedly include absolution for Tony Blair’s administration in the form of concurrence that the intelligence provided by British services on the subject was supportable.

Excuse me, but BWAHAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Only you could see in evidence that refutes you any support for your bullshit. I really do believe you are losing it. And as for whatever whitewash may be in the offing to try to save Blair's ass (and for which you again offer no supporting evidence beyond your say-so), Joseph Wilson's discoveries showed that the Niger Yellowcake myth was exactly that.

Do really enjoy making yourself look like a retard with your endless repetition?

I’m not the one who can’t stop pulling, “George Bush is evil!” out of his ass every five seconds.

No, you're only the one who keeps repeating the same pathetic sophistries and lies post after post, thread after thread.

Wrong, asshole. The issue is not whatever Iran intended, but this White House's determination to use whatever excuse or 'ginned up case it could to justify a war they had already decided to wage. They relied upon a man who the CIA had warned them as unreliable and incompetent; even while they were demanding any link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda and 9/11 to pin their war justifications on in September 2001, as Richard Clark has stated publicly. They ignored all information contrary to their predetermined decision. War was never the last option for this White House, it was its sole option. Nor was there any imperative for war with Iraq either. Your attempted equation that disinformation equals a military attack is frankly idiotic on its face.

A misinformation campaign designed to bring this country to war is a blatantly hostile action. If you wish to ignore this latest in Iranian outrages and bluster about the potential for “improved relations” (as long as one white-washes the past, ignorant of what happened mere months ago), that’s not my problem. Iran has plenty to be held accountable for. Their proven anti-American agenda and activities bear out pre-emptive action, be it ever so humble.

Only in the Realm of Pure Sophistry and not in any real world.

Now you lie. Only a few posts ago, you argued that Iran was attempting to reconcile its differences with the United States. You argued that we permit them the benefit of the doubt, an allowance which would allow them to build nuclear weapons with their current infrastructure, uncontested.

I argued no such thing, liar. I said that the first, tenative steps toward a rapproachment were being made and certainly did not characterise this as a thaw in relations, and I argued that there was no evidence that Iran was engaged in a clandestine nuclear weapons effort. You have brought forth zero evidence to the contrary. And until such evidence is brought forth, there is no credible case for military action to destroy a programme which is permissable under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, which is taking place under Russian technical guidance and IAEA monitoring. And I am certainly not responsible for whatever delusional beliefs you hold to the contrary.

[Axis Kast]

No, this is more you insisting that Iran is wholly to blame for Bush making a decision to go to war he had already made, and your making the even more idiotic argument that a disinformation campaign is akin to an act of war requiring military retaliation.

You lie again. I have never suggested that it was only Iranian intelligence on which Bush based his rationale for war. Rather, I have argued that Iranian misinformation served to corroborate other accusations.

And let us be perfectly clear: a misinformation campaign designed to embroil the United States in a war with a foreign nation is a hostile action worthy of military retaliation. To ignore Iran’s actions – or, worse, to imagine that they are now on the cusp of a political turn-around – would be to invite future deceptions.

I put the blame where it belongs, asshole —on the guy who was bound and determined to have his war and sought any excuse he could put up to justify a decision he had already made. BTW, interesting twist you put on the Nuremburg Defence for Bushy-boy: "It's not my fault, I was only giving orders. Besides, how was I supposed to know that when the CIA told me my good buddy Ahmad Chalabi was a liar and an incompetent that I couldn't believe a word he said?"

Um, no. This is not at all a defense of George W. Bush’s decision to go to war. Instead, it is an affirmation that an Iranian misinformation campaign was launched against the United States of America. Regardless of the other circumstances surrounding the War in Iraq, it is clear that Iranian lies were among the justifications. Iran must be punished for attempting to mislead the United States.

Except there was no imperative for war, there was plenty of contradictory information which disputed the case that Iraq posed the menace it was alleged to be posing, and despite all this, Bush decided to go with those who were telling him everything he wanted to hear to justify his war. No matter what Iranian intelligence did, the rest was wholly in Bush's hands.

And your ideas about an appropriate response range from the counterproductive to the psychotic. I really do think you need to go have a lie-down.

And yours range from the pitiful to the criminally negligent. The last things the Iranians deserve is “a chance to make things right,” and yet here you are, insisting that they have been attempting some form of dramatic rethinking.

I have Cheney's bullshit being spewed on Meet The Press and every news show and public speech he appeared on as my evidence, asshole —which has been quoted in several threads now and can easily be found by a search of the thread archive here at SD.net just for a start.

I’ll say it again, since obviously, you have trouble understanding me. In order to validate your point, you must provide the precise information which was passed to Cheney and then recycled as “absolute intelligence” without further corroboration.

Eat it.

You have the point.

I really do believe you are losing it. And as for whatever whitewash may be in the offing to try to save Blair's ass (and for which you again offer no supporting evidence beyond your say-so), Joseph Wilson's discoveries showed that the Niger Yellowcake myth was exactly that.

Really? Sounds like you’ll be eating crow come July 14th.

Only in the Realm of Pure Sophistry and not in any real world.

Oh, yes, because nations that attempt to embroil the United States in a war are really just misunderstood.

I argued no such thing, liar. I said that the first, tenative steps toward a rapproachment were being made and certainly did not characterise this as a thaw in relations, and I argued that there was no evidence that Iran was engaged in a clandestine nuclear weapons effort. You have brought forth zero evidence to the contrary. And until such evidence is brought forth, there is no credible case for military action to destroy a programme which is permissable under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, which is taking place under Russian technical guidance and IAEA monitoring. And I am certainly not responsible for whatever delusional beliefs you hold to the contrary.

Iranian rapprochement is bullshit in light of their misinformation campaign. A nation seeking to have a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States does not attempt to lead it into war.

As for Iran’s nuclear program, you have already backed giving them the benefit of the doubt by making the assumption that the sum of their efforts is nothing more than power generation. Thereby, you automatically invite their circumventing of the Non-Proliferation Agreement and developing of nuclear weapons on the basis of unfounded confidence. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. Iran has launched misinformation campaigns against the United States. Iran is controlled by a fundamentalist government determined to crush and eliminate domestic resistance – and doing so quite capably at this point in time. It doesn’t get much more ominous without the mushroom cloud itself.

[Patrick Degan]

No, this is more you insisting that Iran is wholly to blame for Bush making a decision to go to war he had already made, and your making the even more idiotic argument that a disinformation campaign is akin to an act of war requiring military retaliation.

You lie again. I have never suggested that it was only Iranian intelligence on which Bush based his rationale for war. Rather, I have argued that Iranian misinformation served to corroborate other accusations.

Bullshit. YOU are the one stating flatly that the Iranians "led us into the war" while trying to handwave away this White House's clear intent to take us into that war no matter what.

And let us be perfectly clear

How Nixonian of you.

a misinformation campaign designed to embroil the United States in a war with a foreign nation is a hostile action worthy of military retaliation.

Only in that psychotic little brain of yours and not in any real world.

To ignore Iran’s actions – or, worse, to imagine that they are now on the cusp of a political turn-around – would be to invite future deceptions.

Nice little storybook view of the world you have there. Nations engage in deception constantly. There is no such thing as totally honest dealings between nations, and the intelligence/counterintelligence game is nothing but deception and protection of one's secrets.

I put the blame where it belongs, asshole —on the guy who was bound and determined to have his war and sought any excuse he could put up to justify a decision he had already made. BTW, interesting twist you put on the Nuremburg Defence for Bushy-boy: "It's not my fault, I was only giving orders. Besides, how was I supposed to know that when the CIA told me my good buddy Ahmad Chalabi was a liar and an incompetent that I couldn't believe a word he said?"

Um, no. This is not at all a defense of George W. Bush’s decision to go to war. Instead, it is an affirmation that an Iranian misinformation campaign was launched against the United States of America. Regardless of the other circumstances surrounding the War in Iraq, it is clear that Iranian lies were among the justifications. Iran must be punished for attempting to mislead the United States.

It is too your attempt to whitewash away Bush's responsibility by attributing his decisions are mere "mistakes" he made because the Big Bad Iranians misled him; nevermind that he had his intention to take this country into war against Iraq from the first day of taking office and tried to get the intelligence services here to pin the blame for 9/11 on Iraq the day after the attacks occurred to justify retaliation there instead of Afganistan. Get it, dumbfuck —WAR WITH IRAQ WAS THE BUSH PLAN FROM THE GET-GO. The Iranians didn't "lead us" anywhere. Chalabi, internationally-known liar, supplied this White House with "politically correct" intel which helped them justify a decision they had alrady made all on their own, and they weren't interested in hearing any contradictory fact which diminished the case for war. Killing Iranians for the fuckups of this White House isn't going to alter that fact. It will, however, complicate our diplomatic and security problems in the Middle East tenfold by adding to our enemies there and not diminishing them as well as "proving" everything Al-Qaeda is saying about the United States conducting an anti-Islamic crusade.

Except there was no imperative for war, there was plenty of contradictory information which disputed the case that Iraq posed the menace it was alleged to be posing, and despite all this, Bush decided to go with those who were telling him everything he wanted to hear to justify his war. No matter what Iranian intelligence did, the rest was wholly in Bush's hands.

And your ideas about an appropriate response range from the counterproductive to the psychotic. I really do think you need to go have a lie-down.

And yours range from the pitiful to the criminally negligent. The last things the Iranians deserve is “a chance to make things right,” and yet here you are, insisting that they have been attempting some form of dramatic rethinking.

No, asshole, my argument is that it's not a good idea to start a new war in the area while we're already engaged in two other wars and have troops in the midst of large and potentially hostile populations whose passions are already inflamed against us as it is. Can you wrap your feeble little brain around that concept?

I have Cheney's bullshit being spewed on Meet The Press and every news show and public speech he appeared on as my evidence, asshole —which has been quoted in several threads now and can easily be found by a search of the thread archive here at SD.net just for a start.

I’ll say it again, since obviously, you have trouble understanding me. In order to validate your point, you must provide the precise information which was passed to Cheney and then recycled as “absolute intelligence” without further corroboration.

Moving the Goalposts, as well as a Burden of Proof Fallacy. The intel Cheney relied upon was publicly restated by him on every venue he could appear on. Do I really have to quote Dick Cheney back to you yet again after having done so in the "Saddam Was Bluffing Theory" thread?

I really do believe you are losing it. And as for whatever whitewash may be in the offing to try to save Blair's ass (and for which you again offer no supporting evidence beyond your say-so), Joseph Wilson's discoveries showed that the Niger Yellowcake myth was exactly that.

Really? Sounds like you’ll be eating crow come July 14th.

No, somehow I don't think so. The historical record of all these alleged "proofs" and "validations" which subsequently turned to ash upon close examination makes me doubt any such thing.

Only in the Realm of Pure Sophistry and not in any real world.

Oh, yes, because nations that attempt to embroil the United States in a war are really just misunderstood.

A point that makes no point has no point.

I argued no such thing, liar. I said that the first, tenative steps toward a rapproachment were being made and certainly did not characterise this as a thaw in relations, and I argued that there was no evidence that Iran was engaged in a clandestine nuclear weapons effort. You have brought forth zero evidence to the contrary. And until such evidence is brought forth, there is no credible case for military action to destroy a programme which is permissable under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, which is taking place under Russian technical guidance and IAEA monitoring. And I am certainly not responsible for whatever delusional beliefs you hold to the contrary.

Iranian rapprochement is bullshit in light of their misinformation campaign. A nation seeking to have a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States does not attempt to lead it into war.

They didn't "lead us" anywhere, no matter how much you insist they did, and once again, I did not characterise the tenative steps toward a rapproachment as a full thaw of relations. But we'll just catalogue that as yet another of your bullshit distortions.

As for Iran’s nuclear program, you have already backed giving them the benefit of the doubt by making the assumption that the sum of their efforts is nothing more than power generation.

Lie. I stated that there isn't any evidence to the contrary.

Thereby, you automatically invite their circumventing of the Non-Proliferation Agreement and developing of nuclear weapons on the basis of unfounded confidence.

Lie. I said no such thing at all.

Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. Iran has launched misinformation campaigns against the United States. Iran is controlled by a fundamentalist government determined to crush and eliminate domestic resistance – and doing so quite capably at this point in time. It doesn’t get much more ominous without the mushroom cloud itself.

Is this the same "mushroom cloud" George Bush invoked in his speech before Congress to scaremonger the American people into that misbegotten little war we just fought against Iraq? We've had to deal with nations who were belligerent with the United States before, which were ruled by dictatorships and sponsored not just terrorists but subversive movements in other countries, and which engaged their intel services in all manner of spying and deception against us and we managed quite capably without the resort to war in the process. There are wider imperatives which will not be served by bombing more Muslims; chief among which is to extract ourselves from the current mess we're in, and next after that is to not be the force that tips currently-friendly but shaky regimes in the region into revolutionary chaos. Can you wrap your feeble little brain around those concepts?

[Axis Kast]

Bullshit. YOU are the one stating flatly that the Iranians "led us into the war" while trying to handwave away this White House's clear intent to take us into that war no matter what.

Well, there’s a pile of horse shit, if ever I saw one. Only in your retarded little fantasy world would holding Iran responsible for a misinformation campaign – that is, placing blame where blame is so very due – constitute letting Bush “off the hook.”

FACT: Iran attempted to embroil us in a war by launching a misinformation campaign aimed at the United States.

FACT: Iranian misinformation was used to corroborate other data and accessions already thought important as the United States first mulled the decision to go to, and then prosecuted, the War in Iraq.

Nice little storybook view of the world you have there. Nations engage in deception constantly. There is no such thing as totally honest dealings between nations, and the intelligence/counterintelligence game is nothing but deception and protection of one's secrets.

And when nations are caught, international scandals and crises develop. There are negative reactions from the victims. At no time, however, does Washington simply look the other way, congratulate the other guy on a job well done, and blame its own analysts for everything that went wrong.

Get it through your fucking skull: George W. Bush’s opinions before, after, and during the run-up to the War in Iraq mean nothing in assigning Iran deserved guilt.

It is too your attempt to whitewash away Bush's responsibility by attributing his decisions are mere "mistakes" he made because the Big Bad Iranians misled him; nevermind that he had his intention to take this country into war against Iraq from the first day of taking office and tried to get the intelligence services here to pin the blame for 9/11 on Iraq the day after the attacks occurred to justify retaliation there instead of Afganistan. Get it, dumbfuck —WAR WITH IRAQ WAS THE BUSH PLAN FROM THE GET-GO. The Iranians didn't "lead us" anywhere. Chalabi, internationally-known liar, supplied this White House with "politically correct" intel which helped them justify a decision they had alrady made all on their own, and they weren't interested in hearing any contradictory fact which diminished the case for war.

How many times must it be repeated for you? Bush’s responsibility for the War in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with Iranian guilt in the case of this deception. Regardless of what George Bush did or did not intend – and I fully agree with your opinion that this administration sought war with Iraq since day one –, Iran committed a hostile action against the United States of America. Period.

Killing Iranians for the fuckups of this White House isn't going to alter that fact.

Red herring. We’d be destroying key elements of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, not engaging in a frivolous slaughter to avenge the mistakes of George W. Bush.

It will, however, complicate our diplomatic and security problems in the Middle East tenfold by adding to our enemies there and not diminishing them as well as "proving" everything Al-Qaeda is saying about the United States conducting an anti-Islamic crusade.

Most Muslims in the Middle East already believe that the United States is conducting an anti-Islamic crusade. They have since Afghanistan. You can’t let the cat out of the bag more than once.

No, asshole, my argument is that it's not a good idea to start a new war in the area while we're already engaged in two other wars and have troops in the midst of large and potentially hostile populations whose passions are already inflamed against us as it is. Can you wrap your feeble little brain around that concept?

There will be no wider war. Iran would be unable to afford it, and we would be in an excellent position to emasculate a drive against Iraq in any case. We’re talking about limited air strikes, not an invasion.

Moving the Goalposts, as well as a Burden of Proof Fallacy. The intel Cheney relied upon was publicly restated by him on every venue he could appear on. Do I really have to quote Dick Cheney back to you yet again after having done so in the "Saddam Was Bluffing Theory" thread?

For the third time: if you have specific evidence of specific intelligence which Cheney took directly from Chalabi and passed on to others as “absolute fact” without secondary opinions or corroboration with other sources, prove it.

A point that makes no point has no point.

You mean like your point regarding Iran’s desire for positive change?

They didn't "lead us" anywhere, no matter how much you insist they did, and once again, I did not characterise the tenative steps toward a rapproachment as a full thaw of relations. But we'll just catalogue that as yet another of your bullshit distortions.

They attempted to lead us to war, you fucking moron.

And as for your characterization of “rapproachment,” I believe we’ve already been down this road – and that it was I who stood by the moderate nature of the term while you blathered on about how Iran meant us no discernable harm.

Lie. I stated that there isn't any evidence to the contrary.

Incorrect. It is absolute fact: letting Iran continue its nuclear energy program without moving against its infrastructure will permit them to undertake a deception similar to that in North Korea, if they so chose.

Is this the same "mushroom cloud" George Bush invoked in his speech before Congress to scaremonger the American people into that misbegotten little war we just fought against Iraq? We've had to deal with nations who were belligerent with the United States before, which were ruled by dictatorships and sponsored not just terrorists but subversive movements in other countries, and which engaged their intel services in all manner of spying and deception against us and we managed quite capably without the resort to war in the process. There are wider imperatives which will not be served by bombing more Muslims; chief among which is to extract ourselves from the current mess we're in, and next after that is to not be the force that tips currently-friendly but shaky regimes in the region into revolutionary chaos. Can you wrap your feeble little brain around those concepts?

When we dealt with those contentious nations, they were generally not nuclear powers. And even in the case of countries such as Cuba, we met their thrusts with our own – all the while attempting to kill their leaders and sabotage their internal workings. The Congo. Angola. Grenada. Need I say more? In this case, we have the chance to forestall the potential entrenchment of a second North Korea. Given Iran’s track record – in both the short and long term –, preemptive action is more than justified. They pay the people to fire the shots, and then try to bring us to war with them. It’s time for preemption.

As for your argument about restraint in the Muslim world, we’re past that now. After Afghanistan, there was fear and resentment. After Iraq, there was only the opinion that America was on a crusade. We wouldn’t be turning any new heads now, Deegan.

[Patrick Degan]

Bullshit. YOU are the one stating flatly that the Iranians "led us into the war" while trying to handwave away this White House's clear intent to take us into that war no matter what.

Well, there’s a pile of horse shit, if ever I saw one.

I couldn't have described your arguments any better.

FACT: Iran attempted to embroil us in a war by launching a misinformation campaign aimed at the United States.

FACT —Bush decided to ignore every contradictory item of information which didn't conform to his predetermined course of action, and relied on a man who is an internationally-known liar and whose contacts with Tehran were also known by the CIA and his paymasters in the Pentagon.

FACT: Iranian misinformation was used to corroborate other data and accessions already thought important as the United States first mulled the decision to go to, and then prosecuted, the War in Iraq.

FACT —war was never imperative, and the Bush White House dismissed every last call to give inspections carried out by UNMOVIC and the IAEA the chance to run their course and verify the case one way or the other.

Nice little storybook view of the world you have there. Nations engage in deception constantly. There is no such thing as totally honest dealings between nations, and the intelligence/counterintelligence game is nothing but deception and protection of one's secrets.

And when nations are caught, international scandals and crises develop. There are negative reactions from the victims. At no time, however, does Washington simply look the other way, congratulate the other guy on a job well done, and blame its own analysts for everything that went wrong.

Neither has Washington ever gone to the lunatic extreme of arguing that a case for war exists on the basis of another nation's counterintelligence operations, nor has any other nation in history.

Get it through your fucking skull: George W. Bush’s opinions before, after, and during the run-up to the War in Iraq mean nothing in assigning Iran deserved guilt.

Wrong way around, stupid —Iran's disinformation campaign means nothing in assigning responsibility to a White House which was hell-bent upon its war course and refused to consider any other option or to verify the facts where clear conflicts in data existed.

It is too your attempt to whitewash away Bush's responsibility by attributing his decisions are mere "mistakes" he made because the Big Bad Iranians misled him; nevermind that he had his intention to take this country into war against Iraq from the first day of taking office and tried to get the intelligence services here to pin the blame for 9/11 on Iraq the day after the attacks occurred to justify retaliation there instead of Afganistan. Get it, dumbfuck —WAR WITH IRAQ WAS THE BUSH PLAN FROM THE GET-GO. The Iranians didn't "lead us" anywhere. Chalabi, internationally-known liar, supplied this White House with "politically correct" intel which helped them justify a decision they had alrady made all on their own, and they weren't interested in hearing any contradictory fact which diminished the case for war.

How many times must it be repeated for you? Bush’s responsibility for the War in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with Iranian guilt in the case of this deception. Regardless of what George Bush did or did not intend – and I fully agree with your opinion that this administration sought war with Iraq since day one –, Iran committed a hostile action against the United States of America. Period.

No, Iran committed counterintelligence against America. Nobody but you imagines that this is akin to anything like an act of war.

Killing Iranians for the fuckups of this White House isn't going to alter that fact.

Red herring. We’d be destroying key elements of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, not engaging in a frivolous slaughter to avenge the mistakes of George W. Bush.

Not a Red Herring. YOU are the one arguing that the mere act of Iran's counterintelligence operation merits a military retaliation and are trying desperately to merge that excuse with the case that Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme justifies preepmtion, despite the fact that no credible case that Iran is actually pursuing such a programme has been made.

It will, however, complicate our diplomatic and security problems in the Middle East tenfold by adding to our enemies there and not diminishing them as well as "proving" everything Al-Qaeda is saying about the United States conducting an anti-Islamic crusade.

Most Muslims in the Middle East already believe that the United States is conducting an anti-Islamic crusade. They have since Afghanistan. You can’t let the cat out of the bag more than once.

Wrong, asshole —even the Iranians understood our going after Afganistan in the wake of 9/11. The anti-American sentiment roiling in the Middle East has brewed since the late war with Iraq.

No, asshole, my argument is that it's not a good idea to start a new war in the area while we're already engaged in two other wars and have troops in the midst of large and potentially hostile populations whose passions are already inflamed against us as it is. Can you wrap your feeble little brain around that concept?

There will be no wider war. Iran would be unable to afford it, and we would be in an excellent position to emasculate a drive against Iraq in any case. We’re talking about limited air strikes, not an invasion.

Airstrikes we have no guarantee of being able to limit to a select few targets and which has the potential to indeed widen into a general war; if not immediately than in the near future.

Moving the Goalposts, as well as a Burden of Proof Fallacy. The intel Cheney relied upon was publicly restated by him on every venue he could appear on. Do I really have to quote Dick Cheney back to you yet again after having done so in the "Saddam Was Bluffing Theory" thread?

For the third time: if you have specific evidence of specific intelligence which Cheney took directly from Chalabi and passed on to others as “absolute fact” without secondary opinions or corroboration with other sources, prove it.

I already have, you lying little fuck. I grow tired of your endless bullshit:

Linky

excerpt:

That Sunday, Card’s new-product introduction moved into high gear when Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press to brandish Saddam’s supposed nuclear threat. Prompted by a helpful Tim Russert, Cheney cited the aluminum tubes story in that morning’s New York Times — a story leaked by Cheney’s White House colleagues. Russert: “Aluminum tubes.” Cheney: “Specifically aluminum tubes.” This gave the “six months away” canard a certain ring of independent confirmation: “There’s a story in The New York Times this morning,” said Cheney. “And I want to attribute the Times.”

And:

Linky

excerpt:

The Iraqi National Congress letter said it fed information to Arab and Western news media and to two officials in the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the leading invasion advocates.

The articles made numerous assertions that so far have not been substantiated 11 months after Baghdad fell, including charges that:

• Saddam collaborated for years with bin Laden and was complicit in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials said there is no evidence of operational ties between Iraq and Al-Qaida, and no evidence of an Iraqi hand in the attacks.

• Iraq trained Islamists in the same hijacking techniques used in the Sept. 11 strikes and prepared them for operations against Iraq's neighbors and possibly the United States. Two senior U.S. officials said no evidence has been found to substantiate the charge.

• Iraq had mobile biological warfare facilities disguised as yogurt and milk trucks and hid banned weapons production and storage facilities beneath a hospital, fake lead-lined wells and Saddam's palaces. No such facilities or vehicles have been found.

• Iraq held 80 Kuwaitis captured in the 1991 Persian Gulf War in a secret underground prison in 2000. No Kuwaiti prisoners have been found.

• Iraq could launch toxin-armed Scud missiles at Israel that could kill 100,000 people and was aggressively developing nuclear weapons. No Iraq Scud missiles have been found.

• Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, missing since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, was seen alive in Baghdad in 1998. The case remains unresolved, but the Navy last week said there was no evidence that Speicher was ever held in captivity.

And:

Linky

excerpt:

Whopper No. 3: A month earlier, Cheney claimed they had found conclusive proof of an illicit Iraqi bioweapons program in the form of two old trailers rusting in the desert.

In a Sept. 14, 2003, interview with NBC's Tim Russert, he called them "mobile biological facilities" that can be used to produce deadly germ agents for terrorist attack.

Only, Kay said he couldn't "corroborate" that. The trailers, which came back negative for traces of warfare agents like anthrax, were more than likely used to fill hydrogen weather balloons.

In fact, Iraq may not have had any mobile bioweapons labs at all. Turns out another unreliable Iraqi defector tied to Ahmed Chalabi was the source of that prewar intelligence. The exile failed a lie detector test by the Defense Intelligence Agency and was labeled a "fabricator" before the war, yet the White House used him anyway to help build its case for invasion.

A point that makes no point has no point.

You mean like your point regarding Iran’s desire for positive change?

A hint for the future, Comical Axi: when you make another of your pitiful attemts at cleverness, try to lead it with something more credible than one of your pathetic strawmen.

They didn't "lead us" anywhere, no matter how much you insist they did, and once again, I did not characterise the tenative steps toward a rapproachment as a full thaw of relations. But we'll just catalogue that as yet another of your bullshit distortions.

They attempted to lead us to war, you fucking moron.

No, this White House led itself to war, asshole. Deny it as much as you like.

And as for your characterization of “rapproachment,” I believe we’ve already been down this road – and that it was I who stood by the moderate nature of the term while you blathered on about how Iran meant us no discernable harm.

Your delusions mean nothing to any realistic construction of the facts. And it is you who blathers about the Great Iranian Menace just as you were going on and on and on and on and on about the Great Iraqi Menace last year. The plain facts are that the Iranians are not posing a military threat to the United States and there is no credible evidence that they are about to in the near future. At no point have I argued for wholesale trust of the mullahs or that relations are thawing, but have cited tenative steps at rapproachment between Washington and Tehran and any characterisation of my words to the contrary is simply a flat-out lie on your part.

Lie. I stated that there isn't any evidence to the contrary.

Incorrect. It is absolute fact: letting Iran continue its nuclear energy program without moving against its infrastructure will permit them to undertake a deception similar to that in North Korea, if they so chose.

That is not "absolute fact" at all. You are the one leaping to that conclusion and as usual present no concrete evidence to back the assertion.

Is this the same "mushroom cloud" George Bush invoked in his speech before Congress to scaremonger the American people into that misbegotten little war we just fought against Iraq? We've had to deal with nations who were belligerent with the United States before, which were ruled by dictatorships and sponsored not just terrorists but subversive movements in other countries, and which engaged their intel services in all manner of spying and deception against us and we managed quite capably without the resort to war in the process. There are wider imperatives which will not be served by bombing more Muslims; chief among which is to extract ourselves from the current mess we're in, and next after that is to not be the force that tips currently-friendly but shaky regimes in the region into revolutionary chaos. Can you wrap your feeble little brain around those concepts?

When we dealt with those contentious nations, they were generally not nuclear powers.

Um, ahem: the USSR. The People's Republic of China. Israel.

And even in the case of countries such as Cuba, we met their thrusts with our own – all the while attempting to kill their leaders and sabotage their internal workings. The Congo. Angola. Grenada. Need I say more?

Yes, we've sponsored subversion attempts against other sovereign nations (and ones which do not fit the category of the nations I was speaking of in my argument). Funny but you seem to be arguing that we're as guilty of the very activities you are presently charging Iran with.

In this case, we have the chance to forestall the potential entrenchment of a second North Korea. Given Iran’s track record – in both the short and long term –, preemptive action is more than justified. They pay the people to fire the shots, and then try to bring us to war with them. It’s time for preemption.

Insane babble.

As for your argument about restraint in the Muslim world, we’re past that now. After Afghanistan, there was fear and resentment. After Iraq, there was only the opinion that America was on a crusade. We wouldn’t be turning any new heads now, Deegan.

No, it was after Iraq that there was fear and resentment. And nothing is served by whacking the hornet's nest repeatedly and then whacking the ones next to it. Something a rational mind understands and is very evidently beyond the grasp of your own.

[Elfdart]

I have a question, Kast.

You seem to think that preemptive attacks on other countries can not only be justified, but should be one of the cornerstones of US foreign policy. If this is so, shouldn't we give Hideki Tojo a posthumus pardon for crimes against peace -if only for consistency's sake? Tojo had more legitimate concern over the Pacific Fleet than you have over Iran's spy operation.

[Axis Kast]

FACT —Bush decided to ignore every contradictory item of information which didn't conform to his predetermined course of action, and relied on a man who is an internationally-known liar and whose contacts with Tehran were also known by the CIA and his paymasters in the Pentagon.

Red herring. Iran is guilty of attempting to misdirect the United States regardless of whether or not the Iraq War was inevitable for other reasons.

FACT —war was never imperative, and the Bush White House dismissed every last call to give inspections carried out by UNMOVIC and the IAEA the chance to run their course and verify the case one way or the other.

Another red herring, worthless for the same reasons as cited above.

Neither has Washington ever gone to the lunatic extreme of arguing that a case for war exists on the basis of another nation's counterintelligence operations, nor has any other nation in history.

Because there has never been an example of like circumstances, moron.

Wrong way around, stupid —Iran's disinformation campaign means nothing in assigning responsibility to a White House which was hell-bent upon its war course and refused to consider any other option or to verify the facts where clear conflicts in data existed.

A third red herring – and irrelevant, to boot. Holding Iran responsible for its activities has absolutely nothing to do with intending to hold George W. Bush responsible for his errors. The two issues are utterly independent of one another.

No, Iran committed counterintelligence against America.

Semantics. The distinction is utterly unimportant; Iran’s efforts were channeled externally regardless.

Nobody but you imagines that this is akin to anything like an act of war.

The agreement of others is not a prerequisite of being correct oneself.

Not a Red Herring. YOU are the one arguing that the mere act of Iran's counterintelligence operation merits a military retaliation and are trying desperately to merge that excuse with the case that Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme justifies preepmtion, despite the fact that no credible case that Iran is actually pursuing such a programme has been made.

Absolutely a red herring. You even went so far as to use the emotive language characteristic of a wild, sensational claim designed to draw attention from the actual matter at hand by obfuscating it with flowery bullshit.

Taken altogether, Iran’s recent activities are an unacceptable affront to the national security of the United States of America.

FACT: Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. Iran was long a home away from home for a current figurehead in the Iraqi resistance, al-Zarqawi.

FACT: The Iranian central government no longer exercises effective control over significant portions of its own armed forces – particularly the Revolutionary Guard, its premier fighting force. These factions are known to be sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and represent a danger equal to that of “rogue” military forces in Pakistan.

FACT: The Iranian government’s nuclear energy program represents the first attempt in that nation’s lengthy history to abandon petroleum-based electrical generation, ostensibly to preserve more oil for export. It is thus an unusual departure in Iran’s traditional approaches to infrastructure development.

FACT: Leaving Iran’s nuclear energy program unhindered means that any deviation from stated intentions will certainly result in the development of nuclear weapons within a relatively short period of time.

FACT: The Iranian government recently rejected liberal representatives from the halls of power.

FACT: The Iranian government recently launched a misinformation campaign designed to help bring the United States to war with neighboring Iraq.

This is a clearly hostile nation with the potential to secure a nuclear weapon sometime in the very near future. Iran is a textbook example of a case in which preemption is both justified by previous and current politics.

Wrong, asshole —even the Iranians understood our going after Afganistan in the wake of 9/11. The anti-American sentiment roiling in the Middle East has brewed since the late war with Iraq.

Incorrect. There were major protests and demonstrations of support for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda just after September 11th and throughout our campaign in Afghanistan, despite what formalities might have been issued by governments that cannot be considered representatives of public opinion within their own territories.

Airstrikes we have no guarantee of being able to limit to a select few targets and which has the potential to indeed widen into a general war; if not immediately than in the near future.

Kindly offer a balanced scenario in which “general war” erupts and is somehow pursued by Iran. And do try to remember that the United States Navy and Air Force have more than enough firepower to strike dozens of sites throughout Iran in successive waves, ravaging their air defense infrastructure in the process.

I already have, you lying little fuck. I grow tired of your endless bullshit:

You have proven that Ahmed Chalabi provided data to Dick Cheney. You have not, however, proved what you were asked to prove – that Cheney ran with Chalabi’s statements as if they were fact without first consulting any other intelligence dossier or seeking collaboration from any other source. Not to mention that your attempt to pass off an INC briefing as evidence accepted entirely on its own and without further confirmation is nothing less than an attempt at misleading.

Your delusions mean nothing to any realistic construction of the facts. And it is you who blathers about the Great Iranian Menace just as you were going on and on and on and on and on about the Great Iraqi Menace last year. The plain facts are that the Iranians are not posing a military threat to the United States and there is no credible evidence that they are about to in the near future. At no point have I argued for wholesale trust of the mullahs or that relations are thawing, but have cited tenative steps at rapproachment between Washington and Tehran and any characterisation of my words to the contrary is simply a flat-out lie on your part.

The Iranians represent a conventional military threat to Iran, as well as a potential nuclear threat if left alone. We already know they possess chemical and biological weapons. We know that the Iranian government is no longer fully sovereign, as realists define the term – absolutely irrespective of outside intervention. Finally, we know that Iran has supported both terrorism and intelligence efforts of its own aimed at the United States in the recent past. To say that they represent no threat to the United States is to engage in the worst kind of hysterical blindness and willful ignorance.

At no point have I argued for wholesale trust of the mullahs or that relations are thawing, but have cited tenative steps at rapproachment between Washington and Tehran and any characterisation of my words to the contrary is simply a flat-out lie on your part.

No; you’ve cited what could as easily be pragmatic concessions to the United States and the United Nations as could be genuine efforts to regain American trust.

That is not "absolute fact" at all. You are the one leaping to that conclusion and as usual present no concrete evidence to back the assertion.

It is indeed. If we let Iran’s program continue without intervening, they will certainly have the capability to develop nuclear weapons unhindered, if they so chose.

Um, ahem: the USSR. The People's Republic of China. Israel.

That’s three out of dozens. Two of those were beyond reproach because of their nuclear capabilities (although it’s worth nothing that the infiltration of Chinese spies into the United States was accompanied by a rocky period in Sino-American relations and a strong backlash against trade negotiations). In Israel’s case, we made the decision that their intelligence activities were to be ignored because of their greater strategic benefit to the United States.

No, it was after Iraq that there was fear and resentment. And nothing is served by whacking the hornet's nest repeatedly and then whacking the ones next to it. Something a rational mind understands and is very evidently beyond the grasp of your own.

Too late. All the hornets have already pledged to continue stinging and hoarding, no matter whether we leave or abstain from honey.

You seem to think that preemptive attacks on other countries can not only be justified, but should be one of the cornerstones of US foreign policy. If this is so, shouldn't we give Hideki Tojo a posthumus pardon for crimes against peace -if only for consistency's sake? Tojo had more legitimate concern over the Pacific Fleet than you have over Iran's spy operation.

“Consistency” is no reason to abandon a functional double standard.

[Patrick Degan]

FACT —Bush decided to ignore every contradictory item of information which didn't conform to his predetermined course of action, and relied on a man who is an internationally-known liar and whose contacts with Tehran were also known by the CIA and his paymasters in the Pentagon.

Red herring. Iran is guilty of attempting to misdirect the United States regardless of whether or not the Iraq War was inevitable for other reasons.

Which means exactly dick —counterintelligence is SOP among nations in their covert dealings with one another and it is more than clear that Iranian actions had little to no influence in regards to "forcing us into war" as you've been arguing.

FACT —war was never imperative, and the Bush White House dismissed every last call to give inspections carried out by UNMOVIC and the IAEA the chance to run their course and verify the case one way or the other.

Another red herring, worthless for the same reasons as cited above.

NOT a Red Herring for the same reasons cited in rebuttal.

Neither has Washington ever gone to the lunatic extreme of arguing that a case for war exists on the basis of another nation's counterintelligence operations, nor has any other nation in history.

Because there has never been an example of like circumstances, moron.

No, asshole, there've been WORSE examples than this. You simply do not know what the fuck you're talking about.

Wrong way around, stupid —Iran's disinformation campaign means nothing in assigning responsibility to a White House which was hell-bent upon its war course and refused to consider any other option or to verify the facts where clear conflicts in data existed.

A third red herring – and irrelevant, to boot. Holding Iran responsible for its activities has absolutely nothing to do with intending to hold George W. Bush responsible for his errors. The two issues are utterly independent of one another.

Not a Red Herring and by no means irrelevant, no matter how much you wish it was. The fact that this White House refused to verify facts which conflicted with their views undermines your position that Iranian actions "forced us into war".

No, Iran committed counterintelligence against America.

Semantics. The distinction is utterly unimportant; Iran’s efforts were channeled externally regardless.

Wrong again —your entire attempt to redefine Iran's disinformation efforts as akin to an act of war is idiotic on its face. And as all disinformation efforts aimed at other nations are "channeled externally", you again make no point whatsoever.

Nobody but you imagines that this is akin to anything like an act of war.

The agreement of others is not a prerequisite of being correct oneself.

By all means continue to nurse your delusions of adequacy. Definitions do not change because you really really really really really really really want them to fit your conveinence.

Not a Red Herring. YOU are the one arguing that the mere act of Iran's counterintelligence operation merits a military retaliation and are trying desperately to merge that excuse with the case that Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme justifies preepmtion, despite the fact that no credible case that Iran is actually pursuing such a programme has been made.

Absolutely a red herring. You even went so far as to use the emotive language characteristic of a wild, sensational claim designed to draw attention from the actual matter at hand by obfuscating it with flowery bullshit.

It is you who is spewing the wild, sensational claims with no evidentary backing or anything remotely resembling logic to support them.

Taken altogether, Iran’s recent activities are an unacceptable affront to the national security of the United States of America.

Oh really? How is the national security of the United States imperiled by yet another fifth-rate power unable to project its force beyond its immediate regional sphere?

FACT: Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. Iran was long a home away from home for a current figurehead in the Iraqi resistance, al-Zarqawi.

FACT —terrorism is a weapon of the weak, and is defeatable through counterintelligence and covert operations. It is not a threat which requires a general war as the sole option and certainly not one which can imperil the existence of the United States.

FACT: The Iranian central government no longer exercises effective control over significant portions of its own armed forces – particularly the Revolutionary Guard, its premier fighting force. These factions are known to be sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and represent a danger equal to that of “rogue” military forces in Pakistan.

Pity you have zero evidence for the assertion that Iran has lost control of its military forces to any appreciable degree, but this is de-rigeur for you.

FACT: The Iranian government’s nuclear energy program represents the first attempt in that nation’s lengthy history to abandon petroleum-based electrical generation, ostensibly to preserve more oil for export. It is thus an unusual departure in Iran’s traditional approaches to infrastructure development.

FACT —this has no bearing whatsoever as to whether Iran presents a military threat. By this specious reasoning, Canada represents a source of peril to the United States.

FACT: Leaving Iran’s nuclear energy program unhindered means that any deviation from stated intentions will certainly result in the development of nuclear weapons within a relatively short period of time.

Yes, we can just argue anything when we play the "what if" game instead of the "examining the actual evidence" game. Speculation is not fact, no matter how much you think it is.

FACT: The Iranian government recently rejected liberal representatives from the halls of power.

So has the Peoples' Republic of China. Again, you make no point.

FACT: The Iranian government recently launched a misinformation campaign designed to help bring the United States to war with neighboring Iraq.

And the United States has had to deal with foreign counterintelligence and disinformation in the past and did so without the resort to war. Furthermore, Iran's efforts had little to no bearing upon this White House already having decided to ram us into war and ignoring every bit of information which didn't support its wild claims. Again, you make no point.

This is a clearly hostile nation with the potential to secure a nuclear weapon sometime in the very near future. Iran is a textbook example of a case in which preemption is both justified by previous and current politics.

Potentiality is not actuality. Iran is unfriendly, but the only textbook example presented by this twaddle is that of neocon paranoia. Yours, specifically.

Wrong, asshole —even the Iranians understood our going after Afganistan in the wake of 9/11. The anti-American sentiment roiling in the Middle East has brewed since the late war with Iraq.

Incorrect. There were major protests and demonstrations of support for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda just after September 11th and throughout our campaign in Afghanistan, despite what formalities might have been issued by governments that cannot be considered representatives of public opinion within their own territories.

The issue is whether the governments of the region as an act of national policy supported our position or at the least took a position of neutrality towards our attack of Afganistan. Pakistan supported us. Iran was neutral. It certainly did not attempt to hinder our efforts. In addition, there is no support for the assertion that any pro-Al Qaeda demonstrations in the wake of 9/11 were representative of the majority Muslim opinion. Again, you make no point.

Airstrikes we have no guarantee of being able to limit to a select few targets and which has the potential to indeed widen into a general war; if not immediately than in the near future.

Kindly offer a balanced scenario in which “general war” erupts and is somehow pursued by Iran. And do try to remember that the United States Navy and Air Force have more than enough firepower to strike dozens of sites throughout Iran in successive waves, ravaging their air defense infrastructure in the process.

Nice theory. It presupposes that America can bring the overwhelming preponderance of its power upon Iran without diminishing our strength elsewhere, and given the strain upon our military resources maintaining control of Iraq and Afganistan as it is in addition to the military committments we already carry elsewhere in the world, this is not at all a given. Iran, by contrast, can bring its full resources to bear for defence; and in any situation where a stronger attacking nation can only devote a fraction of its strength to the mission while the defending nation can call upon its entire force, the scenario favours the defender.

I already have, you lying little fuck. I grow tired of your endless bullshit:

You have proven that Ahmed Chalabi provided data to Dick Cheney. You have not, however, proved what you were asked to prove – that Cheney ran with Chalabi’s statements as if they were fact without first consulting any other intelligence dossier or seeking collaboration from any other source. Not to mention that your attempt to pass off an INC briefing as evidence accepted entirely on its own and without further confirmation is nothing less than an attempt at misleading.

We have very clear evidence that Cheney used Chalabi's bullshit as fact both before and after the war, and the timeline of events has demonstrated this White House ignoring wholesale the results of UNMOVIC and IAEA inspections in Iraq which contradicted its position. Cease your efforts at moving the goalposts.

The Iranians represent a conventional military threat to Iran, as well as a potential nuclear threat if left alone.

Iran threatens itself?! That's the funniest thing you've yet said. And you're still trying to pass off opinion as fact.

We already know they possess chemical and biological weapons.

We certainly know they have chemical weapons. Bioweapons are the more uncertain.

We know that the Iranian government is no longer fully sovereign, as realists define the term – absolutely irrespective of outside intervention. [/quote]

We "know" NO SUCH FUCKING THING. You have presented no evidence that Iran's government cannot control its military forces or that it is in danger of revolutionary overthrow or a military coup. So stop presenting your bullshit opinion as fact.

Finally, we know that Iran has supported both terrorism and intelligence efforts of its own aimed at the United States in the recent past. To say that they represent no threat to the United States is to engage in the worst kind of hysterical blindness and willful ignorance.

No, it is your argument which is hysterical blindness and willful paranoia. Only somebody who's totally lost his head can credit this drivel as even remotely serious.

At no point have I argued for wholesale trust of the mullahs or that relations are thawing, but have cited tenative steps at rapproachment between Washington and Tehran and any characterisation of my words to the contrary is simply a flat-out lie on your part.

No; you’ve cited what could as easily be pragmatic concessions to the United States and the United Nations as could be genuine efforts to regain American trust.

Which supports your position... how, exactly?

That is not "absolute fact" at all. You are the one leaping to that conclusion and as usual present no concrete evidence to back the assertion.

It is indeed. If we let Iran’s program continue without intervening, they will certainly have the capability to develop nuclear weapons unhindered, if they so chose.

No, this is not fact. This is opinion. Your confusion of the two basic concepts continues.

Um, ahem: the USSR. The People's Republic of China. Israel.

That’s three out of dozens. Two of those were beyond reproach because of their nuclear capabilities (although it’s worth nothing that the infiltration of Chinese spies into the United States was accompanied by a rocky period in Sino-American relations and a strong backlash against trade negotiations). In Israel’s case, we made the decision that their intelligence activities were to be ignored because of their greater strategic benefit to the United States.

Which has no bearing upon the point being argued.

No, it was after Iraq that there was fear and resentment. And nothing is served by whacking the hornet's nest repeatedly and then whacking the ones next to it. Something a rational mind understands and is very evidently beyond the grasp of your own.

Too late. All the hornets have already pledged to continue stinging and hoarding, no matter whether we leave or abstain from honey.

Wrong again, shitwit. At present, neutral and pro-U.S. governments still hold the reins of power in the region, and our occupation forces in Iraq and Afganistan are facing only a relatively small and divided opposition instead of a far larger, general guerilla war. This state of affairs is not at all guaranteed to endure if we start bombing more Muslims. Strategic prudence dictates not making a bad situation far worse than it already is.

[Axis Kast]

Which means exactly dick —counterintelligence is SOP among nations in their covert dealings with one another

Irrelevant. One does not suspend or withhold punishment merely because the guilty party was acting on what he or she had seen done by another in the past.

and it is more than clear that Iranian actions had little to no influence in regards to "forcing us into war" as you've been arguing.

Equally irrelevant. Iran’s attempt to help initiate a war in Iraq based on false information may still be considered a consciously hostile action, regardless of whether or not war was inevitable for other reasons.

NOT a Red Herring for the same reasons cited in rebuttal.

Absolutely a red herring for the same reasons cited in rebuttal.

No, asshole, there've been WORSE examples than this. You simply do not know what the fuck you're talking about.

Is that so? Last I checked, I wasn’t the one trying to deny a reasonable assessment of Iran’s hostility by shouting, “George W. Bush is the devil incarnate” seventy times over.

Not a Red Herring and by no means irrelevant, no matter how much you wish it was. The fact that this White House refused to verify facts which conflicted with their views undermines your position that Iranian actions "forced us into war".

Strawman. I have never said that Iran “forced us into war;” I argued that they attempted to do so, and were in some respects successful in using Chalabi as a source of misinformation to falsely support other rationales for war.

Wrong again —your entire attempt to redefine Iran's disinformation efforts as akin to an act of war is idiotic on its face.

Only to someone stubbornly blind to the threats before them. When somebody tries to push me into a hole, I don’t ignore their actions only until they achieve success.

And as all disinformation efforts aimed at other nations are "channeled externally", you again make no point whatsoever.

It’s a point of semantics whether Iran’s activities represented counter-intelligence, because either way, they were targeting the United States, not occurring within Iran itself.

Definitions do not change because you really really really really really really really want them to fit your conveinence.

Coming from you, that’s absolute gold.

It is you who is spewing the wild, sensational claims with no evidentary backing or anything remotely resembling logic to support them.

I’m not the one who tried to claim that the bombing of Iran would be an intended and carried out as an exercise designed solely to slaughter civilians.

Oh really? How is the national security of the United States imperiled by yet another fifth-rate power unable to project its force beyond its immediate regional sphere?

Because we have interests in that immediate regional sphere, ding dong. Interests including the security of the neighboring countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, to whose occupation Iran is publicly opposed. Because Iran is obviously capable of conducting successful intelligence activities against the United States, and has done so in the recent past. Because Iran supports terrorists that do attack American targets overseas. As much as you’d like to change the goalposts for this argument alone, the threat doesn’t begin only when Iranian Centurions fire on their American counterparts. But then, you already know this.

FACT —terrorism is a weapon of the weak, and is defeatable through counterintelligence and covert operations. It is not a threat which requires a general war as the sole option and certainly not one which can imperil the existence of the United States.

And when terrorism is backed by nation-states, those nation-states must be held accountable, or the ability of terrorists to defy the means and reach of police activities is too great. Stopping terrorism does indeed demand the flexibility to go to war with its major sources of funding, manpower, and material support. That is the lesson we learned on September 11th. Combating terrorists cannot be a purely defensive activity.

Pity you have zero evidence for the assertion that Iran has lost control of its military forces to any appreciable degree, but this is de-rigeur for you.

Except for the fact that the Revolutionary Guards routinely offer their own parallel public statements alongside those of the central government – and that the two regularly clash, as they did when the British sailors were taken prisoner only weeks ago. Or that elements in Iran’s military, as in Pakistan’s, are known sympathizers and collaborators. If Iran is truly interested in curbing these activities, why have they not done so?

FACT —this has no bearing whatsoever as to whether Iran presents a military threat. By this specious reasoning, Canada represents a source of peril to the United States.

Idiocy. Canada does not have a lengthy history of supporting terrorists and launching efforts to provoke the United States into war with other countries. Come now; don’t let the desperation show. It’s demeaning.

Yes, we can just argue anything when we play the "what if" game instead of the "examining the actual evidence" game. Speculation is not fact, no matter how much you think it is.

But it is an important part of preparing for the future. Arguing that simply because we cannot know the future, we should not act on the lessons of the past – which dictate that Iran is hostile – is the height of blind stupidity.

So has the Peoples' Republic of China. Again, you make no point.

Which means the forces for change you insist we would be retarding by launching an attack against Iran aren’t going to make a difference in the first place, dimwit.

And the United States has had to deal with foreign counterintelligence and disinformation in the past and did so without the resort to war. Furthermore, Iran's efforts had little to no bearing upon this White House already having decided to ram us into war and ignoring every bit of information which didn't support its wild claims. Again, you make no point.

And which of those past disinformation campaigns was intended to take us to war? Which came alongside support for international terrorism?

I am making a perfectly obvious point; you’re simply grasping at every possible Red Herring out there, regardless of how stupid it’s making you look.

Potentiality is not actuality. Iran is unfriendly, but the only textbook example presented by this twaddle is that of neocon paranoia. Yours, specifically.

Iran is more than unfriendly. They are outright hostile. But then, you know this, too. You’re merely trying to avoid having to admit the truth because you so badly want to win a false point.

The issue is whether the governments of the region as an act of national policy supported our position or at the least took a position of neutrality towards our attack of Afganistan. Pakistan supported us. Iran was neutral. It certainly did not attempt to hinder our efforts. In addition, there is no support for the assertion that any pro-Al Qaeda demonstrations in the wake of 9/11 were representative of the majority Muslim opinion. Again, you make no point.

The nations of the region were neutral because they could not interfere with any hope of success. You do realize that neutrality can come equally as readily from impotence as from partial agreement, correct?

Furthermore, our campaigns against Iraq and Afghanistan have already ignited the Arab Muslim community. Terrorist groups now active in Iraq have sworn to continue their war against the United States whether or not we withdraw and adopt isolationist policies. There is no longer a chance for deescalation.

Nice theory. It presupposes that America can bring the overwhelming preponderance of its power upon Iran without diminishing our strength elsewhere, and given the strain upon our military resources maintaining control of Iraq and Afganistan as it is in addition to the military committments we already carry elsewhere in the world, this is not at all a given. Iran, by contrast, can bring its full resources to bear for defence; and in any situation where a stronger attacking nation can only devote a fraction of its strength to the mission while the defending nation can call upon its entire force, the scenario favours the defender.

Your assessment is faulty. First of all, the preponderance of Iran’s strength lies with its ground-based forces, the vast majority of which will be irrelevant in any air campaign. It is also doubtful that Iran would launch a general drive into Iraq as a response to American air strikes – we’d naturally have forces on stand-by to prevent this anyway. Hence the major portion of our attention must be focused on the Iranian Air Force and air defense networks, the first of which is composed largely of older aircraft. Against two hundred American warplanes flying multiple and simultaneous sorties, the Iranians can actually offer up what is at best a mediocre defense that will decline substantially as time passes.

We have very clear evidence that Cheney used Chalabi's bullshit as fact both before and after the war, and the timeline of events has demonstrated this White House ignoring wholesale the results of UNMOVIC and IAEA inspections in Iraq which contradicted its position. Cease your efforts at moving the goalposts.

My efforts at “moving the goalposts?” I’m not the one who just backpedaled to go and talk about UNMOVIC and the IAEA. Concession accepted, fool.

Iran threatens itself?! That's the funniest thing you've yet said. And you're still trying to pass off opinion as fact.

It’s called a typo, genius. I meant Iraq. And whether or not a country is a threat is always an opinion. Not to mention that if you’ve already decided that Iran represents no potential threat to Iraq via any vector, you’re already delusional.

We certainly know they have chemical weapons. Bioweapons are the more uncertain.

We know that the Iranian government is no longer fully sovereign, as realists define the term – absolutely irrespective of outside intervention.

We "know" NO SUCH FUCKING THING. You have presented no evidence that Iran's government cannot control its military forces or that it is in danger of revolutionary overthrow or a military coup. So stop presenting your bullshit opinion as fact.[/quote]

http://msnbc.com/news/979921.asp?0dm=C23FN

Now you eat it, moron.

No, it is your argument which is hysterical blindness and willful paranoia. Only somebody who's totally lost his head can credit this drivel as even remotely serious.

Did you just use a, “No, you are!” retort without actually addressing the issues?!

Which supports your position... how, exactly?

Which means your assessment is baseless.

No, this is not fact. This is opinion. Your confusion of the two basic concepts continues.

Obviously, you have difficulty reading. I’ll say it again: leaving Iran’s atomic energy program unmolested and giving them latitude in developing their “civilian” energy program will facilitate attempts at building a working nuclear bomb. This is fact. If Iran desires to do so, our acceptance of their existing programs will make it that much easier.

Which has no bearing upon the point being argued.

Bullshit. There are consequences for manipulation. Others have faced them in the past. We have found your vaunted “precedent.”

Wrong again, shitwit. At present, neutral and pro-U.S. governments still hold the reins of power in the region, and our occupation forces in Iraq and Afganistan are facing only a relatively small and divided opposition instead of a far larger, general guerilla war. This state of affairs is not at all guaranteed to endure if we start bombing more Muslims. Strategic prudence dictates not making a bad situation far worse than it already is.

And stopping Iran from acquiring the bomb is worth the potential increase in terrorism, much of which we already know is coming anyway. It doesn’t get much worse from this point on out; those “neutral” and “pro-American” governments you speak of are often ineffective at countering terrorism in any case; they’re only there because we either can’t remove them at all or because we can’t remove them yet. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia? They're still major sources of our problems.

[Andrew J.]

We would have gone into Iraq regardless of what Iran did; therefore, what Iran did is unimportant and inconsequential. Do you really want us to go into the stands to beat up a heckler when we're busy with two opponents (two fronts, anyway; it's not a perfect metaphor) already?

[Axis Kast]

We would have gone into Iraq regardless of what Iran did; therefore, what Iran did is unimportant and inconsequential.

Incorrect. Iran committed a hostile action that cannot go unpunished. Regardless of the situation in or over Iraq. We cannot let an offense like this stand.

Do you really want us to go into the stands to beat up a heckler when we're busy with two opponents (two fronts, anyway; it's not a perfect metaphor) already?

Actually, it's more like throwing a fast-ball at the guy in the stands when you know you're definately going to hit him (it's just a matter of where). And there being plenty of yellow-coated security officials around to stop him from storming the field after the fact.

[Patrick Degan]

Which means exactly dick —counterintelligence is SOP among nations in their covert dealings with one another

Irrelevant. One does not suspend or withhold punishment merely because the guilty party was acting on what he or she had seen done by another in the past.

Utter tripe. Counterintel operations don't rise to the level of an action meriting military retaliation on any rational plane of thought.

and it is more than clear that Iranian actions had little to no influence in regards to "forcing us into war" as you've been arguing.

Equally irrelevant. Iran’s attempt to help initiate a war in Iraq based on false information may still be considered a consciously hostile action, regardless of whether or not war was inevitable for other reasons.

More bullshit. A disinformation campaign is in no wise akin to an act of war no matter how much you try to redefine it as such. Particularly in this instance as this White House wasn't duped or led into anything.

NOT a Red Herring for the same reasons cited in rebuttal.

Absolutely a red herring for the same reasons cited in rebuttal.

Non-responsive bullshit and therefore pointless.

No, asshole, there've been WORSE examples than this. You simply do not know what the fuck you're talking about.

Is that so? Last I checked, I wasn’t the one trying to deny a reasonable assessment of Iran’s hostility by shouting, “George W. Bush is the devil incarnate” seventy times over.

An especially obvious and pathetic STRAWMAN. Pointing out the responsibility held by the Bush White House is a citation of fact, no matter how many times you shout "Iran is the DEVIL". Sorry if fact doesn't suit you.

Not a Red Herring and by no means irrelevant, no matter how much you wish it was. The fact that this White House refused to verify facts which conflicted with their views undermines your position that Iranian actions "forced us into war".

Strawman. I have never said that Iran “forced us into war;” I argued that they attempted to do so, and were in some respects successful in using Chalabi as a source of misinformation to falsely support other rationales for war.

Semantical hairsplitting does not erase the sense of the argument you've been so desperately flogging here for the last several days, which is indeed as I've characterised it. Not a strawman, but a representation of your own position.

Wrong again —your entire attempt to redefine Iran's disinformation efforts as akin to an act of war is idiotic on its face.

Only to someone stubbornly blind to the threats before them. When somebody tries to push me into a hole, I don’t ignore their actions only until they achieve success.

And do you smack somebody with a brick because you see them standing near you and merely "assume" they "might" push you into a hole? I see threats, but I do not leap to wild conclusions on the basis of blind paranoia.

And as all disinformation efforts aimed at other nations are "channeled externally", you again make no point whatsoever.

It’s a point of semantics whether Iran’s activities represented counter-intelligence, because either way, they were targeting the United States, not occurring within Iran itself.

Talk about trying to pick gnatshit out of pepper. Kindly do not waste bandwidth with these pointless locutions of yours.

Definitions do not change because you really really really really really really really want them to fit your conveinence.

Coming from you, that’s absolute gold.

Nowhere near as much as your myriad idiocies spread across five threads now and counting. Particularly the one where you made your infamous attempt to redefine the word "lie" to suit your purposes.

It is you who is spewing the wild, sensational claims with no evidentary backing or anything remotely resembling logic to support them.

I’m not the one who tried to claim that the bombing of Iran would be an intended and carried out as an exercise designed solely to slaughter civilians.

I never made any such claim, so we'll just chart this one as another of your more pathetic lies.

Oh really? How is the national security of the United States imperiled by yet another fifth-rate power unable to project its force beyond its immediate regional sphere?

Because we have interests in that immediate regional sphere, ding dong. Interests including the security of the neighboring countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, to whose occupation Iran is publicly opposed. Because Iran is obviously capable of conducting successful intelligence activities against the United States, and has done so in the recent past. Because Iran supports terrorists that do attack American targets overseas. As much as you’d like to change the goalposts for this argument alone, the threat doesn’t begin only when Iranian Centurions fire on their American counterparts. But then, you already know this.

U.S. national survival is not at stake by any action Iran is capable of, nor are they capable of pushing us out of the region by direct force. That elements of the Iranian military back terrorist groups does not translate into wholesale support by the Iranian government as national policy —as indicated by their arrest and detention of Al-Qaeda operatives as enemy aliens. The only person moving goalposts around here is yourself, and it is getting quite tedious.

FACT —terrorism is a weapon of the weak, and is defeatable through counterintelligence and covert operations. It is not a threat which requires a general war as the sole option and certainly not one which can imperil the existence of the United States.

And when terrorism is backed by nation-states, those nation-states must be held accountable, or the ability of terrorists to defy the means and reach of police activities is too great. Stopping terrorism does indeed demand the flexibility to go to war with its major sources of funding, manpower, and material support. That is the lesson we learned on September 11th. Combating terrorists cannot be a purely defensive activity.

I knew it was only a matter of time before you started chanting the September 11th Mantra. Unfortunately, since terrorism is an abstraction, it is not amenable to brute military force. Neither our war in Afganistan nor our Iraq misadventure have done anything substantive toward putting Al-Qaeda out of business and has instead multiplied the problem. Israel has been trying to bomb its way to victory against terrorism for twenty years and has failed to achieve its objective. This suggests a fundamental flaw with the entire War on Terror Theory as presently promulgated. Nor was I talking of "police activity" but counterintel and covert ops which fall into the purview of intelligence and special military services.

Pity you have zero evidence for the assertion that Iran has lost control of its military forces to any appreciable degree, but this is de-rigeur for you.

Except for the fact that the Revolutionary Guards routinely offer their own parallel public statements alongside those of the central government – and that the two regularly clash, as they did when the British sailors were taken prisoner only weeks ago. Or that elements in Iran’s military, as in Pakistan’s, are known sympathizers and collaborators. If Iran is truly interested in curbing these activities, why have they not done so?

Except there is no indication that the Revolutionary Guards are dictating policy to the government, is there? Nor that there is a present danger of a wholesale mutiny of the army or military coup?

FACT —this has no bearing whatsoever as to whether Iran presents a military threat. By this specious reasoning, Canada represents a source of peril to the United States.

Idiocy. Canada does not have a lengthy history of supporting terrorists and launching efforts to provoke the United States into war with other countries. Come now; don’t let the desperation show. It’s demeaning.

You should try taking your own advice. And not be so obvious with quoting somebody out of context. To wit:

The Iranian government’s nuclear energy program represents the first attempt in that nation’s lengthy history to abandon petroleum-based electrical generation, ostensibly to preserve more oil for export. It is thus an unusual departure in Iran’s traditional approaches to infrastructure development.

THAT was the nonsensical argument of yours my rebuttal addressed, in which you make the implicit and ludicrous assertion that the mere existence of a nuclear power programme in and of itself represents a threat. Concealing the original context of the argument you attempt to rebut with a strawman is one of the more obvious of dishonest debate tactics.

Yes, we can just argue anything when we play the "what if" game instead of the "examining the actual evidence" game. Speculation is not fact, no matter how much you think it is.

But it is an important part of preparing for the future. Arguing that simply because we cannot know the future, we should not act on the lessons of the past – which dictate that Iran is hostile – is the height of blind stupidity.

No, it is leaping to unfounded conclusions based upon leaps of paranoid speculation and no reliable evidence which is the height of blind stupidity. Leads to al sorts of trouble; the late war in Iraq being one telling example.

So has the Peoples' Republic of China. Again, you make no point.

Which means the forces for change you insist we would be retarding by launching an attack against Iran aren’t going to make a difference in the first place, dimwit.

Radicalising the entire population by an unprovoked attack upon their country will kill any impulse toward outward reform and that is what will make the difference, numbskull.

And the United States has had to deal with foreign counterintelligence and disinformation in the past and did so without the resort to war. Furthermore, Iran's efforts had little to no bearing upon this White House already having decided to ram us into war and ignoring every bit of information which didn't support its wild claims. Again, you make no point.

And which of those past disinformation campaigns was intended to take us to war? Which came alongside support for international terrorism?

During the height of the Cold War, Cuba was sending armies of foreign mercenaries around the world. And Soviet counterintelligence and disinformation ops were aimed at crippling directly the effectiveness of the CIA, Defence and State Departments and thereby compromising national security at its core by neutralising intelligence gathering and wrecking effective measures to protect our own secrets and thus imperiling the very capacity to deter a Soviet attack. Actions of a far larger scale and far more serious than VEVAK writing Ahmad Chalabi's material for him.

I am making a perfectly obvious point; you’re simply grasping at every possible Red Herring out there, regardless of how stupid it’s making you look.

A textbook example of Projection: attributing one's own character defects upon others.

Potentiality is not actuality. Iran is unfriendly, but the only textbook example presented by this twaddle is that of neocon paranoia. Yours, specifically.

Iran is more than unfriendly. They are outright hostile. But then, you know this, too. You’re merely trying to avoid having to admit the truth because you so badly want to win a false point.

It is you who spews false points by the bucketful. Iran has not invaded its neighbours nor interfered with the open intercourse of the Persian Gulf. They have not fired missiles at our planes, such as Iraq has, nor did they attack one of our frigates in the Gulf, as Iraq did in 1987. They did not retaliate against us in the wake of our accidentally shooting down one of their passenger jets in 1987. Iran did not attempt to interfere in either our war in Afganistan nor either campaign against Iraq. They did agree to rescue downed American fliers coming within their territory during the Afganistan conflict and have arrested and detained Al-Qaeda operatives wanted by U.S. and regional authorities. They have shown far less hostility than Iraq had in fifteen years. The fact that some elements of their military support terrorist organisations shows no greater propensity toward anti-American hostility than those elements in the Pakistani military who similarly support Al-Qaeda elements. Iran is not an ally, but they are not yet the outright enemy you keep trying to inflate them into.

The issue is whether the governments of the region as an act of national policy supported our position or at the least took a position of neutrality towards our attack of Afganistan. Pakistan supported us. Iran was neutral. It certainly did not attempt to hinder our efforts. In addition, there is no support for the assertion that any pro-Al Qaeda demonstrations in the wake of 9/11 were representative of the majority Muslim opinion. Again, you make no point.

The nations of the region were neutral because they could not interfere with any hope of success. You do realize that neutrality can come equally as readily from impotence as from partial agreement, correct?

Immaterial. Iran could have but did not mount any sort of diplomatic opposition against our actions, because they had a parallel interest in seeing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein removed. You continue to make no point of any substance.

Furthermore, our campaigns against Iraq and Afghanistan have already ignited the Arab Muslim community. Terrorist groups now active in Iraq have sworn to continue their war against the United States whether or not we withdraw and adopt isolationist policies. There is no longer a chance for deescalation.

And your support for this assertion is... Oh yes —pulled out of your own ass as usual.

Nice theory. It presupposes that America can bring the overwhelming preponderance of its power upon Iran without diminishing our strength elsewhere, and given the strain upon our military resources maintaining control of Iraq and Afganistan as it is in addition to the military committments we already carry elsewhere in the world, this is not at all a given. Iran, by contrast, can bring its full resources to bear for defence; and in any situation where a stronger attacking nation can only devote a fraction of its strength to the mission while the defending nation can call upon its entire force, the scenario favours the defender.

Your assessment is faulty. First of all, the preponderance of Iran’s strength lies with its ground-based forces, the vast majority of which will be irrelevant in any air campaign. It is also doubtful that Iran would launch a general drive into Iraq as a response to American air strikes – we’d naturally have forces on stand-by to prevent this anyway. Hence the major portion of our attention must be focused on the Iranian Air Force and air defense networks, the first of which is composed largely of older aircraft. Against two hundred American warplanes flying multiple and simultaneous sorties, the Iranians can actually offer up what is at best a mediocre defense that will decline substantially as time passes.

They don't have to launch a general drive into Iraq, numbskull. Nor are they going to simply leave their airforce out to be destroyed at our convenience and would likely disperse forces to obviate against any Pearl Harbour-type strike on their militar capability. They could certainly strike at our lines of supply, disrupt operations at Basra, launch a Silkworm barrage at shipping in the Gulf, and mine the sealanes. Our own troops are spread out in-country and dependent upon long supply lines stretching from Baghdad to Basra. And Kosovo has certainly demonstrated that a campaign cannot be won entirely by airpower; in fact not at all. This doesn't even begin to touch upon the diplomatic and political effects of this little mastubatory fantasy you've spun out; which simply assumes that Iran is nothing but a big, inviting target.

If an attack upon Iran spins out into a ground war, they have a larger army than we can bring to bear in the immediate phase of the conflict, and that is where they have the advantage. The only way out of such a quagmire would be to conquer and occupy the country, and we're already stretched thin maintaining the occupation of Iraq as it is. And there won't be a Coalition of the Bribed to aid us in Iran; not even the British will assist us in such lunacy. There is no advantage to be gained in an attack upon Iran, but a lot of potential for disaster of military and political scope —particularly the latter.

We have very clear evidence that Cheney used Chalabi's bullshit as fact both before and after the war, and the timeline of events has demonstrated this White House ignoring wholesale the results of UNMOVIC and IAEA inspections in Iraq which contradicted its position. Cease your efforts at moving the goalposts.

My efforts at “moving the goalposts?” I’m not the one who just backpedaled to go and talk about UNMOVIC and the IAEA. Concession accepted, fool.

I've mentioned UNMOVIC and IAEA throughout the course of this particular discussion, and Cheney's public repetition of INC bullshit as fact speaks for itself as to his not verifying its accuracy with any other source of intel. So take your "concession accepted" pronouncement and shove it up your ass.

Iran threatens itself?! That's the funniest thing you've yet said. And you're still trying to pass off opinion as fact.

It’s called a typo, genius. I meant Iraq. And whether or not a country is a threat is always an opinion. Not to mention that if you’ve already decided that Iran represents no potential threat to Iraq via any vector, you’re already delusional.

No, that's called a jibe, moron . And Iran's disupte was with Saddam Hussein, who actually invaded their country —which sort of justified their hostiity towards Iraq. Their relations with the new government are yet to be determined. Rather, it is your automatic assumption that Iran will threaten Iraq post-Saddam is what is delusional here.

We know that the Iranian government is no longer fully sovereign, as realists define the term – absolutely irrespective of outside intervention.

We "know" NO SUCH FUCKING THING. You have presented no evidence that Iran's government cannot control its military forces or that it is in danger of revolutionary overthrow or a military coup. So stop presenting your bullshit opinion as fact.

http://msnbc.com/news/979921.asp?0dm=C23FN

Now you eat it, moron.[/quote]

I can almost see you whipping your skippy in ecstacy, imagining you had the GOTCHA on me at long last. Sorry to burst your balloon, but the facts in the MSNBC article were already cited in one of the articles I posted in this thread. To reiterate:

Linky

According to the leaks to the Post, Saad bin Laden is being protected by the elite unit among the five branches of Iran's Revolutionary Guards - the Jerusalem force (al-Quds) - which completely eludes "control from the central government".

Analysts question this possibility. Such a unit could well elude President Mohammad Khatami, but certainly not the Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to whom all security services are subordinated. And for all practical purposes, "central government" means Khamenei, not Khatami.

US intelligence is persuaded that the Jerusalem force has trained more than three dozen "foreign Islamic militant groups in paramilitary, guerrilla and terrorism" tactics, Sunni and Shi'ite alike, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine. That sounds like an Israeli Mossad mish-mash - once again throwing all cats into the same bag, as the agendas of Hezbollah and Palestinian liberation groups are totally different.

Although for some European intelligence sources the Jerusalem force is "a state within a state, able to offer protection to al-Qaeda", there's great skepticism towards its supposed, effective internationalist role. "Saddam Hussein also had a Jerusalem Liberation Army. It proved to be invisible, just a propaganda coup," adds another European counter-terrorist operative.

The Jerusalem Force was covered in the Asia Times article as well as the OCNUS analysis piece also cited. Furthermore, the article you cite says no more than has already been hashed over in this thread or in the other articles cited, and still does not speak to the point I've been arguing, which is whether or not Iran's government is facing overthrow from its own military forces or even its Revolutionary Guard. No, I'm not gong to be eating anything today. So take your GOTCHA and cram that up your ass as well.

No, it is your argument which is hysterical blindness and willful paranoia. Only somebody who's totally lost his head can credit this drivel as even remotely serious.

Did you just use a, “No, you are!” retort without actually addressing the issues?!

Since the entire previous posting was addressing the issue at hand, we'll just put this down as yet another of your strawmen.

Which supports your position... how, exactly?

Which means your assessment is baseless.

Non-sequitor.

No, this is not fact. This is opinion. Your confusion of the two basic concepts continues.

Obviously, you have difficulty reading. I’ll say it again: leaving Iran’s atomic energy program unmolested and giving them latitude in developing their “civilian” energy program will facilitate attempts at building a working nuclear bomb. This is fact. If Iran desires to do so, our acceptance of their existing programs will make it that much easier.

That is not FACT, that is OPINION. The two terms are not interchangeable despite your ongoing effort to make them so. Nor has there been any attempt to argue for an Iranian atomic energy programme taking place with no monitoring from the IAEA. You've been asked repeatedly to present evidence that the Iranians are in fact aiming for a bomb and you continue to put forth opinion and wild speculation in its place. I can only assume you are too stupid to understand what the definition of the world "evidence" actually is.

Which has no bearing upon the point being argued.

Bullshit. There are consequences for manipulation. Others have faced them in the past. We have found your vaunted “precedent.”

What others? What consequences? What "precedent"? Try actually citing something instead of making blind assertions.

Wrong again, shitwit. At present, neutral and pro-U.S. governments still hold the reins of power in the region, and our occupation forces in Iraq and Afganistan are facing only a relatively small and divided opposition instead of a far larger, general guerilla war. This state of affairs is not at all guaranteed to endure if we start bombing more Muslims. Strategic prudence dictates not making a bad situation far worse than it already is.

And stopping Iran from acquiring the bomb is worth the potential increase in terrorism, much of which we already know is coming anyway. It doesn’t get much worse from this point on out; those “neutral” and “pro-American” governments you speak of are often ineffective at countering terrorism in any case; they’re only there because we either can’t remove them at all or because we can’t remove them yet. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia? They're still major sources of our problems.

As Darth Wong said several pages ago, I can almost hear the "fap fap" sounds from here.

[Andrew J.]

Incorrect. Iran committed a hostile action that cannot go unpunished. Regardless of the situation in or over Iraq. We cannot let an offense like this stand.

We can and we will.

Actually, it's more like throwing a fast-ball at the guy in the stands when you know you're definately going to hit him (it's just a matter of where). And there being plenty of yellow-coated security officials around to stop him from storming the field after the fact.

Yeah, that'll really endear you to the crowd.

[Thanas]

The Roman solution was to have the son of Vespasian, Titus march the legions into Judea and destroy the temple, and kill a ton of people on his way out. Pretty effective considering that the Jewish faith was based around the temple - completely decentralized the Jewish religion and halted the revolt.

So would the ultimate solution to Islamic- Fasicist groups like Al Queda be a modern day Titus? Or is Islam already to decentralized in practice, for the "Roman" solution to work?

Whow... first post here.


Ok, heres my argument:

Not considering the other objections already made, i have to say that the roman solution, while it did manage to stop a single (albeit bloody) revolt, was not a solution at all.

First, you have to acknowledge that the fighting in Judea was not stopped by the destruction of the temple, i.e. Massada.

Second, did the roman "solution" achieve peace? No. First, there was an uprising under the emperor Trajan.
(115)

"For in Alexandria and the rest of Egypt and above all in Cyrene, ....they broke into fractious strife.....the (Jews) from Cyrene continued to devestate the countryside of Egypt and to destroy teh nome districts in it under their leader lucas. The emperor sent Marcius Turbo against them with an infantry and naval force as well as cavalry.
In many batles and over a considerable stretch of time he prosecuted the war against them, killing many thousands of jews, not only form cyrene but also those from Egypt....the emperor suspected that the jews in Mesopotamia would attack the people there, and he ordered Lucius Quietus to clean them out of that province." - Eusebius, 4.2

And a little time later, the jews revolted again - this time because of the decree against circumscisiun (SP?). The Bar Kochba revolt in the reign of Hadrian:

"...Rufus, the governor of Judea, with the military forces sent to him by the emperor, marched out to the attack agianst their madness without mercy, destroying tens of thousand of men, women and children and in the law of warfare enslaving their lands." - Eusebius, 4.6


"Then, indeed, Hadrian sent against them his best generals. First of these was Julius Severus.....fifty of their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. Thus nearly the whole of Judea was made desolate...." Dio, 69.13.2-14.1


This was a method that worked for the next hundred years, however, the romans lost a lot of soldiers. And not to forget the best objection against such a method:

There already was one genocide. Should the US commit another one and act like Hitler?

There can only be one answer. No.

[Crown]

Some interesting views by Steven Pressfield (author of Gates of Fire) taken from an interview of his upcoming book centred on Alexander's conquest of Persia, which apply here.

Interview with the Author, on his homepage

PB: A significant chunk of Alexander's thrust went into his campaign to conquer Persia, an empire that contained what we now call Iraq. This is screaming for some comparison of the motives and objectives of Alexander's conquests with America's Iraqi wars under the two Bush presidents. Do you see any parallels here?
SP: I see more differences than parallels. First, Islam didn't exist in Alexander's day, and certainly not militant Islam as it is today--a powerful religious/military/political force. Alexander didn't have to contend with that. Second, the place we call Iraq (which was then the province of Babylonia within the empire of Persia) was not a nation with its own pride and autonomy; it was a subject state that had been under the thumb of Persia for two hundred years.

For centuries, the region of Mesopotamia had passed from the hands of one overlord to another. It had been the kingdoms of Ur, Sumer, Akkad; the empires of Chaldea, Assyria, Babylonia; its rulers had included Semiramis, Sargon, Sennacherib, Hammurabi, Nebuchadnezzar, Ashurbanipal. The populace was so accustomed to being subjected to foreign rule that it meant very little to them when one alien monarch, in this case Darius of Persia, was kicked out and another, Alexander of Macedon, came in. It was "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Except Alexander was canny enough not to be the old boss.

He went out of his way to pacify the population by making gestures, some extremely significant, that would improve their lot. For instance, the Persians when they ruled Babylon had destroyed the great temple of Baal, the heart and soul of the Babylonian and Chaldean religion. Alexander, almost as soon as he entered the city, ordered the temple rebuilt, and on an even grander scale (it didn't actually get rebuilt, but that was for other reasons). He restored the ancient religion, and went out of his way to show respect for it. Thus he could pronounce with some legitimacy that he was "liberating" Babylon from the Persian yoke. He was smart. He disarmed the potential animosity of the people, who feared that he would turn their world upside-down, by not only not doing that, but by restoring ancient customs and laws that had been taken away by previous conquerors.

Of course Alexander didn't do it because he was a nice guy. He wanted to pacify the place quickly, so he could move on. Because his objective was not Iraq/Babylon but Persia and its captial Persepolis (and of course he had objectives beyond that.) To do this, he left in place many of the same governors and magistrates who had ruled under Darius, so that the continuity of daily life for the people was not upset. Clearly this was not an option for our own American commanders. They couldn't leave Saddam or the Baathists in power; the whole purpose of the invasion was to unseat them. In other words, Alexander had it a lot easier politically.

PB: What about the styles of generalship that each commander-in-chief (Alexander and the George Bushes) employs to motivate and lead his respective troops into battle?
SP: Another thing that Alexander had going for him that America's contemporary leaders don't, in terms of ability to affect events and influence the responses of the vanquished people, was that he was a legitimate conqueror, present on-site in the flesh. To get to Iraq/Babylon, Alexander had fought three monumental battles (not to mention two major sieges and innumerable lesser scrapes), battles in which he rode himself at the head of his Companion Cavalry, leading in person from the front. He bled; he risked his life. Here's a passage from Arrian, History of Alexander, translated by P.A. Brunt.

Come then," [Alexander confronts the soldiers of his own army, on an occasion when victory had made them arrogant and unruly] "let any of you strip and display his own wounds, and I will display mine in turn. In my case, there is no part of my body, or none in front [where wounds of honor were received], that has been left unwounded, and there is no weapon of close combat, no missile whose scars I do not bear on my person, but I have been wounded by the sword hand to hand, shot by arrows and struck by a catapult, [all] for your interest, your glory, and your riches ... "

In other words, Alexander was the Man and everybody knew it. His enemies might have hated him and wished not to find themselves under his thumb, but they had to admit that he had won the day fair and square and had hazarded his own life over and over to do so. He possessed immense prestige because of this and could convert it to political capital.

Then there's God and Fate. In those simpler ancient (and extremely religious) times, it was not difficult for a population, observing his victories, to believe that the Divine Will had anointed Alexander. Otherwise why did he keep winning? And, believing that it was heaven's will that Alexander conquer, such populations might be more ready to accept his rule. Alexander's presence appeared so superhuman in those days that he wound up in the Bible for Pete's sake! (The Book of Daniel, where he's the apocalyptic "third Beast"). He's in the Koran too, as the "Two-Horned One," which meant, to Greek and Egyptian hearers, the son of Ammon, i.e. Zeus. This is something George W. Bush doesn't have going for him.

Remember, too, the conquered people in those days didn't have AK-47s under their mattresses. They didn't have militant clerics to fire them up or Al Jazeera to provide news and propaganda. They were unarmed and untrained. They just wanted normalcy to return so they could raise their kids and bring in the harvest. Alexander understood this. And he had his own agenda, which was to move on. Winning hearts and minds was on his list, but it wasn't priority Number One, nor was exploiting the subjugated region's natural resources. He just wanted the gold in the Royal Treasury and whatever tribute the province had formerly delivered to Persia, so he could pay his army and keep moving east.

PB: What you're saying is that Alexander possessed a legitimacy that our contemporary coalition in Iraq doesn't?
SP: Legitimacy, as it was understood in those days. There's a very interesting quote from Xenophon's Education of Cyrus. Xenophon says it of his imagined version of Cyrus the Great, the original founder of the Persian empire (whom Xenophon admired) but it might apply equally to Alexander:

He ruled over these nations, even though they did not speak the same language as he, nor one nation the same as another; for all that, he was able to cover so vast a region with the fear which he inspired, that he struck all men with terror and no one tried to withstand him; and he was able to awaken in all so lively a desire to please him, that they always wished to be guided by his will. (Translated by Walter Miller.)

What's interesting, I think, is the direct correlation between "being able to inspire fear" and "awakening a desire to please him ... to be guided by his will." In other words, the conqueror possessed legitimacy simply because he had conquered. In those days, conquest was legitimate. The vanquished people accepted it. They accepted that that was the way kings did things.

That's not true today. Today U.S. forces may hold the power in Iraq, but the population cedes them no legitimacy. The Americans are there, in the Iraqi view, in violation of international law (and probably, in their view, of divine law as well). The fact that the Yanks possess power cuts no ice in Iraqi eyes; it just means they're usurpers and illegitimate invaders.

Such a concept was inconceivable in Alexander's day. If Alexander was in your backyard with his army, that was it. He was the boss. There was no appeal to "world opinion" or "international law." Alexander was world opinion; he was international law.

Actually world opinion did exist in Alexander's day (and Alexander did cater to it, particularly to Athenian opinion) but it was so weak and so distant as to be effectively negligible. No CNN, no satellite phones, no Jacques Chirac. It took months for people in Athens even to learn of the fall of Babylon, let alone to be able to do anything about it, which they couldn't because Alexander had conquered them too and held them, gently but firmly, beneath a garrison force in Greece equal in size to the army he had with him in Persia.

P.S. Can't wait for the book!

[Axis Kast]

Utter tripe. Counterintel operations don't rise to the level of an action meriting military retaliation on any rational plane of thought.

So that’s why you keep using the word “counterintel.” You want us to believe that Iran was conducting an everyday affair here. Something equivalent to, say, hiding the latest evolution of one’s missile program from the prying eyes of an enemy. But, of course, that wasn’t the case at all, and instead of launching a campaign of misinformation designed to conceal domestic activities, Iran instead sought to lead the United States into a shooting war.

More bullshit. A disinformation campaign is in no wise akin to an act of war no matter how much you try to redefine it as such. Particularly in this instance as this White House wasn't duped or led into anything.

Once again, your attempts to water down and re-imagine Iran’s treachery by pegging their attempt to bring this country to war alongside something like routine concealement are absolutely stunning.

An especially obvious and pathetic STRAWMAN. Pointing out the responsibility held by the Bush White House is a citation of fact, no matter how many times you shout "Iran is the DEVIL". Sorry if fact doesn't suit you.

A citation of fact that has absolutely no relevance to the argument at hand, other than to serve as a spectacular distraction.

Semantical hairsplitting does not erase the sense of the argument you've been so desperately flogging here for the last several days, which is indeed as I've characterised it. Not a strawman, but a representation of your own position.

Worthless semantic hairsplitting like, say, attempting to argue that a misinformation campaign designed to lead one’s target into military conflict is the same as hiding a missile base or letting leak false data on troop movements?

And do you smack somebody with a brick because you see them standing near you and merely "assume" they "might" push you into a hole? I see threats, but I do not leap to wild conclusions on the basis of blind paranoia.

Now this, this is the utter tripe. We’re beyond assumptions, you blithering idiot. Iran’s passed the point of pushing. No more “mights” or “maybes.” Now, we have a clear and present danger on our hands. There is no “next step” beyond trying to bring the United States to war through subterfuge and trying to destroy American targets with terrorists. When we pick up the brick now, it’s in self-defense.

I never made any such claim, so we'll just chart this one as another of your more pathetic lies.

Your words, shithead: “Killing Iranians for the fuckups of this White House isn't going to alter that fact.”

U.S. national survival is not at stake by any action Iran is capable of, nor are they capable of pushing us out of the region by direct force.

The United States is not existentially threatened by Osama bin Laden, either. Does that mean we should not have sought to punish him for his actions against us? “National survival” is a big term that somebody like you ought not to be throwing around as a definite term.

That elements of the Iranian military back terrorist groups does not translate into wholesale support by the Iranian government as national policy —as indicated by their arrest and detention of Al-Qaeda operatives as enemy aliens. The only person moving goalposts around here is yourself, and it is getting quite tedious.

The government’s position is now worthless as long as they remain demonstrably impotent. Arresting a handful of al-Qaeda members while letting men like al-Zarqawi slip through their fingers and failing to put the muzzle on a significant number of active al-Qaeda sympathizers within their own ranks is far from an effective response.

I knew it was only a matter of time before you started chanting the September 11th Mantra. Unfortunately, since terrorism is an abstraction, it is not amenable to brute military force. Neither our war in Afganistan nor our Iraq misadventure have done anything substantive toward putting Al-Qaeda out of business and has instead multiplied the problem.

An interesting position to be sure, considering the lack of significant terrorist attacks against the mainland United States of America since September 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda is now under duress, for all the sympathy our action in Iraq has generated. An attack is now much more difficult – and much more uncertain – today than it was only two or three years ago.

Israel has been trying to bomb its way to victory against terrorism for twenty years and has failed to achieve its objective. This suggests a fundamental flaw with the entire War on Terror Theory as presently promulgated. Nor was I talking of "police activity" but counterintel and covert ops which fall into the purview of intelligence and special military services.

Holding nation-states responsible for their support of terrorism does not mean allowing counter-intelligence and covert operations by limited teams of special operatives to fall by the wayside, so you can drop the strawman right now.

Except there is no indication that the Revolutionary Guards are dictating policy to the government, is there? Nor that there is a present danger of a wholesale mutiny of the army or military coup?

Utterly irrelevant to the fact that the Revolutionary Guards still funnel resources to al-Qaeda outside the realm of retribution. Just because Tehran won’t fall tomorrow doesn’t mean that subversive elements among it military apparatus aren’t deserving of immediate containment.

THAT was the nonsensical argument of yours my rebuttal addressed, in which you make the implicit and ludicrous assertion that the mere existence of a nuclear power programme in and of itself represents a threat. Concealing the original context of the argument you attempt to rebut with a strawman is one of the more obvious of dishonest debate tactics.

Of course it’s a fucking threat in the first place.

What makes it a threat worth acting against, however, is Iran’s long history of negative action against the United States – one which extends to the present day, no less.

No, it is leaping to unfounded conclusions based upon leaps of paranoid speculation and no reliable evidence which is the height of blind stupidity. Leads to al sorts of trouble; the late war in Iraq being one telling example.

Oh, that’s right. Because after Iran attempts to draw us into a war, we’d be over-speculating to say that they probably don’t like us. Fucking moron.

Radicalising the entire population by an unprovoked attack upon their country will kill any impulse toward outward reform and that is what will make the difference, numbskull.

Outward reform is a lost cause at this point in time; the Tehran government isn’t having any of it, and the reform movements themselves can’t do anything about that.

During the height of the Cold War, Cuba was sending armies of foreign mercenaries around the world. And Soviet counterintelligence and disinformation ops were aimed at crippling directly the effectiveness of the CIA, Defence and State Departments and thereby compromising national security at its core by neutralising intelligence gathering and wrecking effective measures to protect our own secrets and thus imperiling the very capacity to deter a Soviet attack. Actions of a far larger scale and far more serious than VEVAK writing Ahmad Chalabi's material for him.

Iran funds and supports cells of terrorists around the world. And Iranian counterintelligence and disinformation ops are aimed at leading us into crippling situations and dehabilitating pitfalls. You’ve just won the fucking argument for me, dipshit.

It is you who spews false points by the bucketful. Iran has not invaded its neighbours nor interfered with the open intercourse of the Persian Gulf. They have not fired missiles at our planes, such as Iraq has, nor did they attack one of our frigates in the Gulf, as Iraq did in 1987. They did not retaliate against us in the wake of our accidentally shooting down one of their passenger jets in 1987. Iran did not attempt to interfere in either our war in Afganistan nor either campaign against Iraq. They did agree to rescue downed American fliers coming within their territory during the Afganistan conflict and have arrested and detained Al-Qaeda operatives wanted by U.S. and regional authorities. They have shown far less hostility than Iraq had in fifteen years. The fact that some elements of their military support terrorist organisations shows no greater propensity toward anti-American hostility than those elements in the Pakistani military who similarly support Al-Qaeda elements. Iran is not an ally, but they are not yet the outright enemy you keep trying to inflate them into.

You’ll have to excuse me. The reason I’ve not been able to respond in the past several days involves this post. I was too busy laughing at your attempts to portray Iran as the “nice-but-not-quite-friendly” type.

Formulating a list of the problems they did not cause, you realize, does nothing to alleviate or make up for the problems they did evidently cause. How you can call Iran’s attempt to drag the United States into a war anything less than obviously hostile is beyond me.

Immaterial. Iran could have but did not mount any sort of diplomatic opposition against our actions, because they had a parallel interest in seeing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein removed. You continue to make no point of any substance.

Actually, many in Iran condemned the American action in Afghanistan, as I have pointed out. Tehran has neither been shy in attempting to infiltrate their agents into Iraq. That they do not openly oppose the United States means nothing. An open declaration of overt opposition would not further their position in any way whatsoever.

And your support for this assertion is... Oh yes —pulled out of your own ass as usual.

TIME Magazine, actually. The issue on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

They don't have to launch a general drive into Iraq, numbskull. Nor are they going to simply leave their airforce out to be destroyed at our convenience and would likely disperse forces to obviate against any Pearl Harbour-type strike on their militar capability.

Strawman. I never suggested at all that the Iranians would not attempt to defend their airspace. Whether they would be successful, however, is something else entirely.

They could certainly strike at our lines of supply, disrupt operations at Basra, launch a Silkworm barrage at shipping in the Gulf, and mine the sealanes.

Disrupt operations at Basra by deploying military units our air forces could quickly destroy. Launch Silkworms from launchers we would annihilate. Or mine the sealanes we already control?

Our own troops are spread out in-country and dependent upon long supply lines stretching from Baghdad to Basra. And Kosovo has certainly demonstrated that a campaign cannot be won entirely by airpower; in fact not at all. This doesn't even begin to touch upon the diplomatic and political effects of this little mastubatory fantasy you've spun out; which simply assumes that Iran is nothing but a big, inviting target.

No, that “mastabatory fantasy” is nothing but a lie of your manufacture. Not to mention that the aim of Kosovo was not to destroy a limited number of target facilities, and so has no bearing whatsoever on this discussion.

If an attack upon Iran spins out into a ground war, they have a larger army than we can bring to bear in the immediate phase of the conflict, and that is where they have the advantage.

Ground forces we would detect mobilizing and collecting long before they could do us more than token harm.

The only way out of such a quagmire would be to conquer and occupy the country, and we're already stretched thin maintaining the occupation of Iraq as it is. And there won't be a Coalition of the Bribed to aid us in Iran; not even the British will assist us in such lunacy. There is no advantage to be gained in an attack upon Iran, but a lot of potential for disaster of military and political scope —particularly the latter.

There is the advantage of postponing their nuclear research and potential weaponization by several years or more.

I've mentioned UNMOVIC and IAEA throughout the course of this particular discussion, and Cheney's public repetition of INC bullshit as fact speaks for itself as to his not verifying its accuracy with any other source of intel. So take your "concession accepted" pronouncement and shove it up your ass.

Except that you can’t prove he took INC’s statements at face value without any further input. And so your point cannot be properly sustained. Too bad.

No, that's called a jibe, moron . And Iran's disupte was with Saddam Hussein, who actually invaded their country —which sort of justified their hostiity towards Iraq. Their relations with the new government are yet to be determined. Rather, it is your automatic assumption that Iran will threaten Iraq post-Saddam is what is delusional here.

The entire Arab world sans only Syria under-wrote Iraq’s war. The Arab nations were thoroughly terrified of the Ayatollah and the power at his disposal. Hell, in 1991, we stopped short of disarming and disemboweling Saddam primarily because of Iran.

And if the relations of their new government can’t be determined by you after their sponsorship of terrorism and attempts to bring us to war, then you might want to see a doctor as soon as possible.

The Jerusalem Force was covered in the Asia Times article as well as the OCNUS analysis piece also cited. Furthermore, the article you cite says no more than has already been hashed over in this thread or in the other articles cited

First of all, this attempted rebuttle is nothing more than a pile of bullshit. Comparing Iraq’s attempts to build a credible terrorist network with those of Iran is like comparing the United States Army to that of Honduras, and assuming that the later must somehow be a reliable indicator for the capability of the former merely because both fulfill the same ostensible roles in their respective nations. Saddam’s failure to actualize the power of his own clandestine operations groups has absolutely no bearing on Iran’s luck in the same endeavors.

Sadly for you, your article provides no proof that the Jerusalem Force is indeed powerless save for a silly and baseless comparison.

, and still does not speak to the point I've been arguing, which is whether or not Iran's government is facing overthrow from its own military forces or even its Revolutionary Guard. No, I'm not gong to be eating anything today. So take your GOTCHA and cram that up your ass as well.

Who said anything about overthrowing a government? Another lie on your part, hm?

I’m talking about an organization that is beyond the scope of Tehran’s control or effective retaliation. Whether or not they can take direct control is immaterial to that point.

And in case you want to keep crying about Pakistan, let me reiterate: they already have the bomb we want to keep Tehran from acquiring, thus placing Iran, too, outside restraint.

Since the entire previous posting was addressing the issue at hand, we'll just put this down as yet another of your strawmen.

You’re the one who’s spent the better part of five pages masturbating to random accusations of George Bush.

That is not FACT, that is OPINION. The two terms are not interchangeable despite your ongoing effort to make them so. Nor has there been any attempt to argue for an Iranian atomic energy programme taking place with no monitoring from the IAEA. You've been asked repeatedly to present evidence that the Iranians are in fact aiming for a bomb and you continue to put forth opinion and wild speculation in its place. I can only assume you are too stupid to understand what the definition of the world "evidence" actually is.

Are you missing the point intentionally, or were you just dropped on your head as a kid?

The step from civilian to military use of atomic energy is relatively small. If left unchallenged, Iran will have more than sufficient time and capability to produce atomic weapons once the IAEA is finished conducting searches we already know Iran has attempted to block.

This not withstanding their already horrendous record when it comes to Iran’s relationship with both terrorists and the United States.

What others? What consequences? What "precedent"? Try actually citing something instead of making blind assertions.

The Chinese faced a huge uproar from the United States after their spies were found here. They nearly lost important trade agreements.