Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

Courtesy of the New York Times:



Seriously Iran, kind of lame.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

You know it's bad when governments are using photoshop to seem strong.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

You know it's bad when our government and media are blowing this Iran thing up and trying to start stuff with them. It's not like all the outlying countries around Iran aren't allowed to have missiles. Missiles are not nukes.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

I agree, KG.

So have you heard Iran has a bunch of missiles and they like to wave their dick around? BREAKING NEWS!! ALERT THE MEDIA!

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Missiles are not a concern. Missiles plus a nuclear program (even Obama concedes they have one) a promise to wipe the US and Israel off the map? Concern.

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If Iran so much as fires one nuke at us, it will
A) be a national tragedy
and
B) Iran will be reduced to a smoldering crator

Seriously...it would be a pretty desperate move on their part. This is simply dick waving at its finest. And, apparently, our media and government have an itchy trigger finger.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

Well thats a very ethnocentric view of Iran's political policies. We think its sabre rattling because that is what we know. It is the idea that makes most sense. Its always been a mistake in the West to view them through the East's sensibilities. We made the same mistake when Rumsfeld thought that people would welcome us with open arms once Saddam was overthrown.

What if Iran's goal is to bring about the apocalypse? We already know that fundamental islamists welome the opportunity to die for the good fight, why should we assume a nation run by fundamentalists would care if they are destroyed in the process of cleansing the earth in blood?

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

You make valid points and I agree with you. I just hope the UN steps in, not the US, and I hope they step in with diplomacy. Anc, sanctions aren't diplomatic....I think if Iran was going to go out on one last Apocalyptic crusade they would just try to blow up Israel.

Anyway, Rumsfeld underestimated a region that has had thousands of years of turmoil...if you don't rule that region with an iron fist you don't rule at all.

The Middle East is like the theoretical physics of politics, so I'll shut up now.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

I don't think that's correct. Nobody would "welcome the opportunity to die for the good fight", or that they'd want "the earth cleansed in blood".

You're just assuming these. And so does the US.

This makes these countries hate the US, because it seems like they're just looking for a reason to attack them, with no evidence. And this is the main reason these countries seem like a threat to the US. It's a vicious cycle that the US starts, and usually gets to finish.

It's like going through somebody's house without a warrant.

I truly believe that instead of thinking "What if Iran's goal is to bring about the apocalypse", the US thought "What if this guy who buys so many weapons is a psycho", they'd solve a lot more problems.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

The only person making assumptions here is you, and that is assuming that there is no evidence for Iran being run by an apocalyptic cult.

My evidence, that you claim doesn;t exist, is called the 12th Imam theory, the coming of the al Mahdi (islamic messiah), and its what those who rule Iran believe.

And for the record, the destruction of the US and Israel is in Iran's CONSTITUTION.

This is why I talked about the mistakes of ethno-centric political thinking. You assume that because self-desctructive politics is insane to use, it is insane to them. These are the same types of people to look forward to dying in battle to that they can live forever in glory in death. Martyrdom is a way of immortality.

That is why Iran can be considered a threat. How do you fight a nation whose leaders believe it is their duty to bring about choas of subjudation because God told them so? This is exactly what makes fighting islamic terrorists so difficult. How do you fight someone who wants to die for their cause?

You are the one making blind assumptions, especially those that blindly blame the US for Middle Eastern behavior that has been consistent for the past 1,000 years.

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This is the source for the above quote:

http://www.allaboutpopularissues.org/12th-imam.htm

And KG, I agree that I hope the UN will do something, but it was the UN's utter inaction over the last 20 years that has helped create this nightmare. I don;t trust the UN to do much but maintain the power and profit of old, impotent empires who have little place determining world events and issues.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

Ok, I'll admit that I didn't know all about that 12th Imam stuff. But I never said that they want world peace or anything.

The problem here isn't really Iran. That's why I always said "these countries". The US lost their credibility with the Iraq thing - the Iraqi War. Something they still haven't managed to put an end to. Something they started with something they couldn't prove - and still haven't proved. And this will continue, as long as the US play the Big Brother.

This isn't Minority Report. You can't see into the future. You don't know what people are going to do.

And just because Ahmedinejad says that he wants to save the world, but first has to lead it into chaos doesn't mean he's actually going to do it. And that certainly doesn't mean a country, which has had some incidents regarding world security, to see this as it's own job and step in (read: start another war in the mid-east).

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

This is the classic problem with Islamic fundamentalism. How do you combat an enemy on Earth that is fighting a war in Heaven and Hell?

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I believe Japan can answer that question.




That was supposed to be mildly humorous. I'm not really for the whole mass genocide thing though.


Through tyranny and dictatorship? Or...with Democracy and thousands of lives lost.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

So the average of 50,000 Iraqi citizens per year that were killed or went "missing" under Saddam Hussein are so much more acceptable?

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

He never said it was more acceptable.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

I never said he did. I asked him if he thought they were.

I'd like him to clarify since his previous response attached deaths to democracy, but not the previous dictatorship, so I don't believe that is an unreasonable request.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

I assumed it was sort of implied with the whole "tyranny" thing, but maybe it wasn't.

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Is it acceptable in my mind? No. No, Saddam was a horrible dictator, and it was well documented that he killed many of his own people. He deserved the hanging that he got.

It would be interesting to look at some numbers, and see the annual number of Iraqis the US has killed since the start of the war vs. the annual amount killed per year when Saddam was in power. The comparison isn't completely fair, and the numbers should level off in our favor at some point....but it's still an interesting statistic.

I guess we could break the cold hard numbers down with math...but the value of human life far exceeds any statistic. That said, hopefully in the long run the US invasion of Iraq will be profitable to saving Iraqi lives. Aka, hopefully we can establish some law in the country, and hopefully the rival groups like the Sunnis and the Shiites will be friends. Otherwise, as horible as Saddam's dictatorship was, he at least kept some order...even if it was at the expense of tens of thousands of annual deaths.

Life is life, so I won't mention that Democracy is costing us US causalities as well is Iraqi causalities. I'm sure some Americans do not care that thousands of Iraqis were dying in the hands of Saddam - not our problem - and by that logic, we could have avoided the causalities of our own men had we not interfered with other people's business. That argument is valid, because let's face it....Bush isn't a humanitarianism. He's an OILitarian.

If the United States went to go fight for every group of people suffering massive net losses under the hands of a cruel dictatorship...well, we'd be involved with more than Iraq right now.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

This is why atheistic propaganda exists.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

Well in order for numbers to level off in "your favor", 1.5 million Iraqi's would have to die. And there are cold hard numbers, but those numbers change depending on who you talk to and what criteria they use. Those that want to paint the war as evil, count every death possible, sometimes including natural causes, to make their point. Those that are pro-war do just the opposite. Regardless, realistic numbers don't even come close to Hussein's brutal regime and likely never will since the new strategy is working out so well and deaths have fallen to the point that the Iraqi government is asking us to reduce troop numbers because they think they can handle it themselves.

So do you or don't you think that the tens of thousands of deaths under Saddam were more acceptable or not? First you say no at the beginning of the post, then you follow it up with this statement? Say what you mean and stop trying to play both sides of the fence. There is no such answer as "No... but yes."

I really wish I could find the video of Hussein's rise to power. It was televised as he sat on a stage, smoking a cigar, and having every other person seated in their "parliament" escorted out of the room and killed. Ever see someone shit themselves? Watch that and you will. Literally. I couldn;t disagree with you more, and actually talk to a Iraq war vet to see if your view holds any water. They've talked to the people there, and you opinion of "ordered dictatorship" will likely change.

Explain the logic of this statement. Honestly, every time someone says something to the effect of "blood for oil" all they do is tell me they refuse to think critically about the war...

So if we can't do everything we should do nothing? I've never understood this argument. If we follwed the ethic behind it nothing would ever get done in the world in any venue. Don't let the impossible perfect prevent the achievable good.

In any case, we are there NOW. This is a real situation with real consequences if we abandon the situation or just let Iran do whatever they like. Do you know how much Hussein feared Iran? He lied about WMD's because he was afraid if Iran knew they had gotten rid of them they would have plowed them under. This is according to Hussein's interrogator.

Hussein feared Iran more than the US. And we shouldn't be concerned over their nuclear program and missile tests?

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

No. I do not think that tens of thousands of death under Saddam's dictatorship was acceptable.

My point is this: There is good evidence that suggests that the motivation to go to war with Iraq was for oil. At the beginning, the Bush campaign downplayed the Iraq war as the United States doing Iraq a wonderful favor by riding it of its horrible dictator. That was a truth stretched in favor of the administration. It wasn't Bush's main motivation for invading Iraq. And, regardless if there is some truth to it, it's still not accurate of why we decided to go to war with Iraq in the first place.

This is subjective. Everyone has their own opinion about what we should do. We should do something. For instance, we should have made better plans before the insurgency. Defeating Saddam was no biggie. The guy was in shambles from the Gulf War. This fact is reflected wonderfully...we took Saddam out of power really quickly. That was the easy part, and apparently that was as far ahead as the Bush administration planned. We can't go back in time and change the fact that the United States was unprepared. And, I don't have to complain about this; the history books that will exist 20 years from now will do a good job explaining how we dropped the ball.


We are there now. And we can't leave. If we leave now, someone will just rise to the position Sadam had. Until we instill order in Iraq, which may take a long time, we can't leave.


While this doesn't directly relate to our discussion of Iraq or the Iraq War...I maintain that we should use diplomacy to try to halt Iran's nuclear program. I don't think we're really in the position to start telling countries if they can or cannot have missiles...Iran has just as much right to defend their border as any other country, regardless of how crazy they are.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

I thought this was a really interesting 3 part documentary. The Power of Nightmares
I think you can see it all on google video.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

I think, if you brought this point up to the thousands of Americans who are without health care or jobs, they might suggest that we could have better invested our money in our own country, rather then helping Iraq. Maybe that view is selfish. But, we are accumulating debt by the trillions, and it's going to come out of the American tax payer's pocket in the end. We have schools, health care, social security...and this war with Iraq.

It's a selfish view. But the war with Iraq doesn't change the fact that over 1 billion people on this planet scrape by on less that 1 dollar a day. I guess you have to tackle the pie one small piece at a time. Maybe we could have helped the world and our country in ways that were wiser than this war. I don't know. It's pointless to debate this because the fact is we are at war with Iraq, and now we have to fund it.

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And to further elaborate on this point, when the Bush administration decided to go to war with Iraq, it was on the heels of 9/11. Couple that with the argument that getting Saddam out of there was in the best interest of everyone, and you have an administration that appears to be pulling some manipulative strings. This country is built upon democracy, yes? The decision to go to war should not be in Bush's hands, it should be in the hands of the country. And, it should be in the best interest of this country. So, again, this is hard to argue because we now know just how taxing this war has been, but I wonder if most Americans at the time of declaring war on Iraq really wanted to go to war. And, we will see if the overall outcome of the Iraq War is in anyway positive for this country.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

Is it because they think they can handle it themselves? They probably can, if they want this sort of thing, but the main reason is they want the US out of their business.


I can't tell if you're being humanitarian here, or just trying to justify the war.

What does "if we can't do everything we should do nothing" mean? I mean, who are "you" (of course, I mean the US - I've been avoiding saying "you" directly, so excuse me) to do something about this? This "superpower" thing is just getting out of hand. It's like the US owns the world.

Just like what KillerGremlin said.

And just think about it, some country, thinking the same thing about the US's policies, came and attacked you, started a full on war, thousands dying all around. Then the world finds out that there's nothing behind it. It all looks to be a lie. What would you think?

I don't think this view is selfish. It's what the government is there for. Yes, they also have to protect their country - their country, not another country- but, well, it's not like they've really "protected" anybody (neither their own nor the other)..

I must say, I don't hate the US, and I'm not looking at this biased. If my country did something like this, I'd be saying the same things. I do say the same things. So..take that as you will..

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

And the evidence you have to support this statement is? Actually, the Iraqi government has been nothing but supportive of the US's involvement since Saddam's removal and the election. And honeslty, talk to an Iraq war vet and ask them whether or not the people there appreciate their efforts.

Well, if the argument against the war is the number of civilian deaths, I will argue on the merits of that argument. The reason why we went to war was because it was believed to be in our best interests to remove Saddam Hussein, and just about every nation in the UN agreed that he was a threat at the time. The disagreement was how to handle it, but that i an argument for another time... or decade.

I'm arguing the point in the context that it was proposed. Like I stated earlier, I don't believe that the US went to Iraq will the primary goal of freeing its people, but I will argue the humanitarian benefits if that is the question that is proposed, and it was.

And no, we don;t own the world, but we do police it in most instances, and we do so at the world's request. Going back to Clinton and before we have always been the major force (in numbers) behind NATO and UN military interventions, but rarely did we command those forces or dictate the actions. In most cases these actions directly were to benefit other nations or provide humanitarian assistance. Read "The Case for Goliath" and they point out how beneficial our superpower status has been for the well being of many nations around thw world, even if you just consider the fact that we police the world's maritime shipping lanes.

In the case of Iraq, the point was to protect our own interests and follow the Bush doctrine that countries that harbor and support terrorists, like Iraq did, are as guilty as the terrorists. Now you an argue the point that iraq may not have been the best choice to do so in the sole terms of terrorist support (Iran has been FAR worse), but it may have been the best target for a cultural campaign to eventually reform the region.

There is the belief that Iraq was chosen because it was the best candidate for the "infection of freedom" theory, in that if a Middle eastern nation was given self-rule, the people of other nations in the region would also demand it. There is some historical evidence to support this, and iraq did have the best infrastructure and most educated populace to make it a great candidate, but if this does work we won't know for probably 20 years. That would be a greater victory through cultural attrition, and not direct or traditional victory. Now you can argue your thoughts on effectiveness in this case, but not the intention of the war.

Once again, I don't believe we went into Iraq to free their people, it was national defense, but I also don't think the humanitarian portion was an aferthought either. Rumsfeld's "Hey, they'll love us!" strategy shows that we thought we would be widely cheered in the region for doing this.

Well forst off, there is a difference between being wrong and lying. I will accept the premise that Bush, and the rest of the world for that matter, were wrong. I will not accept the premise that Bush lied to get us into the war, and there is no evidence that he did anything but follow the intelligence available at the time.

Secondly, I reject this sort of relatavist argument. The US is not and never was Iraq, in any shape or form. There is an objective difference between right and wrong. If another country were to attack the US, it would garner FAR harsher international reaction that our intervention with Iraq, becasue the US is the US and Iraq was Iraq. The difference should be obvious.

No, its not. It might be what YOUR government is there for, but not the US's and it was NEVER intended to do so. That is why the US constitution is such a unique document, as its primary goal is to allow the US citizen the freedom and security to succeed on their own terms by their own will. America is not a "nanny state", to use a cliched term, and I hope it never will be. This makes national security a PRIMARY goal of the US government and not secondary by any means. if you prefer the way your country handles things, then good for you and those who love your country, but it has nothing to do with our nation and I hope it never will.

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Did Bush manipulate a bit and pull strings? Yes. So did Roosevelt to get us into WW2. The congree manipulates and pulls strings on every bill that passes, adding bridge building to farm bills for example. You act as if this is something new in politics. But the premise was based on the idea that iraq was a threat and the strings were pulled and info tweaked to promote that belief.

And NO, the people do NOT decide who goes to war in the US. The presidient is the Commander in Chief. We elect the person who we trust to make those decisions. Now you can argue whether or not we made the right decision, but decsions to go to war certainly are not to be decisded by referendum.

And yes, I can absolutely say that 90% of the American people, if not more, were very much behind the Iraq war. Thats not even a question, really.

But the argument is whether or not Bush went to war for oil. Nothing in any argument you have made has had anything to do with oil. Attempting to debunk stated US motivations for the war does not prove your theory. A lack of evidence, in your opinion, is not evidence for your opinion about "war for oil". if you want to argue the point that we went to war for oil, then make that argument.

And I started talking about Iran because that is what this thread is actually about (see the title) ;)

But I guess we've moved on it topics :D

Good discussions all around. I hope I have been more civil that usual, I've been working on that.

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

You have.

I just assumed that it was because I'm not Typhoid. :p

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

I think I was even civil with Typhoid this round. I do have to say the temptation was horrible...

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Too lazy (and in too much of a hurry) to quote right now, so I'll just say what I have to say :)

First of all, yes, this has been a very civil discussion. And I sincerely hope that there are no hard feelings from anyone.

Now, about the subject. Well, it's gone on for too long, and it probably won't go anywhere, as this is what the whole world is talking about and nobody has gone anywhere with it. So I'll just state my primary concern - the policing of the world, as Prof put it. I just don't feel it's right. It may be what the world wants, but I don't think it should be like that.

Oh and I of course don't have any evidence to prove that Iraq wants the US out of their business. I should have stated that that was my opinion.

But I do have to say, on the topic of the "nanny state", I didn't mean the government should look after everybody in need. I meant that the US should first sort out their more obvious internal security issues.

And that's that..

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I'm watching this on google video right now. It is quite intriuging.

P.S. While this film is still interesting, it certainly doesn't prove anything was a "myth." There's no examination of the Soviet Union, or the Soviet Union's leaders, Marx's ideals on the base and superstructure. It's just, "oh yeah, we proved that last time."

Re: Iran photoshops missiles into picture to appear powerful
 

New Iranian Missles

from digg: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49403380@N00/2658316482/

if this doesn't make you roflcopter i don't know what will

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Its more of the same relatavist nonsense. It's cognitively interesting to make arguments such as "black is white and everything we think is wrong", but in the end it is mental masturbation: Momentarily entertaining, but when the moment is over it means nothing.

Just because you compare our government to terrorists, doesn't make it so, it just means you can manipulate and argument when you are the only voice in the room.

A reviewer compared it to the Matrix in terms of opening eyes, and I would agree. I loved the Matrix as I found it to be a compelling story that played on our sense of certainty and unerlying doubt. But in the end it is fiction, just like the argument "The Power of Nightmare's" atrempts to make.

FYI: I didn't watch the whole thing, but honestly, its all be said before and revisionist history for political expediency is nothing new, and goes back to the Cold War, if not earlier. I huess what bothers me the most about journalists like this is that they act like they're breaking new ground, when all they do is repeat one another ad nauseum.