Nope, those aren’t even close. And there is no context at all.
You know, I originally had in my post a request that you not link to some lefty blog with a one-liner quote, but I thought “no, **BG **won’t do that”, so I deleted that part. Shows how much I know!
[shrug] It’s what I could find with some quick googling. But I saw Snow make the statement (replayed) on TV at the time. Didn’t you?! It was only two months ago, and it was at the center of the whole attorney-firings controversy!
It means we have to accept that the reality of the situation is what it is and we have to deal with it to shape events in our own best interest.
The Iranians won’t play nice with us even if we behave like hippies.
No state has an unlimited right to do whatever is in its best interest, Evil. Please never, ever forget that; you seem to forget it rather often.
An attack on the western world is an attack on the United States. Our economies and way of life are intertwined.
Until the Iranians, North Koreans, Chinese, Russians and everybody else sign on to this idea, we are going to have to get down in the mud with them. It is an ideologically unpalatable fact of life.
I’ve seen references to the idea of Iran being a democratic society in this thread.
I guess that’s right. They can elect a president. Of course, you can only run for president if the Guardian Council lets you. And once elected, said president can only act if the Supreme Leader agrees. And you can only be on the Guardian Council if the Supreme Leader likes you.
Funny democracy, that.
As for the story, it strikes me as a bunch of gibberish, as does its reactions. Sure, let’s execute the leaker, that’ll do a lot of good. As if Iran doesn’t know what’s going on.
Not to compare them overmuch, but we can only get a president of the RNC or DNC approves them. Sure, they’re not theocrats (or at least half of them aren’t), but still.
-Joe
It’s not a democracy like we are. OTOH, it’s not a total sham democracy like Hussein’s Iraq was; an Iranian’s vote does count for something and, AFAWK, will be counted honestly.
I do not think that it is a wonderful thing to reveal state secrets.
If a news outlet knows about it, it is no longer a secret.
Better that ABC let’s us know that the administration was planning one more idiotic game that will blow up and embarrass us, now, than have to go through all the denials and embarrassing revelations, later.
Everybody has signed on to it, at least to the extent of agreeing in principle that national sovereignty matters and it takes a great provocation to justify any foreign state’s interference in it. (Which was the U.S.'s argument to justify the first Gulf War, remember, and also why we stopped at liberating Kuwait and did not press on to Baghdad.) So far, Iran has not given us any sufficient casus belli. If we have no right to make war on them, we have no right to destablize their government in other ways.
Confirmed liberal checking in, one who doesn’t have much respect at all for the abilities of the Bush administration. But after reading the linked article, I would generally agree with the idea behind the proposed CIA operation. The two poles in the Middle-eastern power struggle are Saudi Arabia-Egypt-Jordan and Iran-Syria (and now much of Iraq; thx again GWB for a war that has severely damaged out interests in the mid-East). The US has (somewhat bumblingly under this president) aligned with the first, so it’s in our interest to reduce the regional influence of the second. Destabilizing Iran in particular is a pretty good way to to do this–I disagree with Nasr’s assessment that the Iranians can effectively ratchet up anti-US interests on their side–and judging solely from the overwhelming number of Iranian bloggers, there is enough discontent inside Iran to make the existence of a tipping point at least arguable.
HOWEVER, I seriously question the current US administration’s ability to craft a plan for this, based mainly on (1) their utter inability to draft a coherent Middle-Eastern policy (sorry, “Stop WMDs/Fight them over there/He tried to kill my daddy” doesn’t cut it), and (2) the choices they’ve made in developing this covert operation. Elliot Abrams of Iran-Contra fame is involved; whatever you thought of the politics surrounding the outing of the Iran-Contra affair, the plan itself–which involved selling arms to Iran partially in the hope they would influence Hezbollah to release American hostages–was an eye-roller, and Abrams had to receive a presidential pardon for his role in lying to Congress about it. That’s not the kind of thing that inspires confidence today. Plus, this administration has a bit of a history of covert operations that seem to become more unpalatable as the details are revealed (secret rendition and domestic spying leap to mind).
In short, the general strategy is something I support, but I just don’t believe the administration is playing it straight with Congress in describing the program, and I have no confidence that the true details of the program represent a good tactical plan.
As for the “traitorous” nature of news organizations that report this, such accusations are barely worth responding to. They are red herrings designed to whip up an already-supportive base into ignoring the details of what’s really going on. Time spent blaming the media is time not spent holding this administration’s feet to the fire on their train-wreck of a foreign policy, and more oversight of these officials is something we desperately need.
You’re right, the odds are pretty low – because it would make no sense. ABC News reporting information it’s received (which is its job) is in no way analogous to an administration official leaking classified information in order to punish a critic.
Perhaps you meant to say: “What are the odds that one of the folks around here who accused Libby (or Bush or Cheney or Rove) of treason over the Plame affair will accuse whoever leaked the information of treason in this case?”
ETA: Maybe we can install Reza Pahlavi as Shah! As soon as his ass hits the Peacock Throne, everything will be hunky-dorey.
Well Merijeek I’ve been thinking about making a thread on how democratic the U.S. is compared to other countries for some time. Suffice to say, we’re better than Iran in this area.
Sweet. Does this mean it’s time to get our war on? I’ve been getting tired reading about Iraq, learning about its cities and its people and its different religious sects and their problems with each other. It’s time to learn about Iran’s cities next, eh? I hear it’s a lot bigger than Iraq too, so maybe it’ll stick on our ribs longer.
Plus it’s always fun killing people for no reason.
Sigh. We had to elect Bush in 2000, didn’t we? Imagine if a competent, non-insane administration received the 2003 Iranian letter.
Thank heavens for hard-headed realists! So much good has been brought to our lives by hard-headed realists.
The D-Day invasion was not a covert operation. Though the plans for it were secret,once the troops started landing in France, they did not disguise that they were carrying out a military invasion. Their boats, planes and vehicles were marked as belonging to the allied armed forces, and the troops were wearing distinctive uniforms. This is not what you do when you carry out a covert operation,
Marshmallow is on to something, and so am I. Iran has some of the same enemies as we, they loathe AlQ. And, once again, I am troubled by the notion that so much of our foreign policy seems centered around keeping the world safe for Israel. A nation I respect and admire, but am not at all willing to die for. Or kill for.
I seem to recall that sort of logic being expressed on September 12, 2001 and following. It appears to have led to the increased use of torture by U.S. agencies. That has worked well for us, so far.
(Not incidentally, that logic was also behind the decision by the Reagan and Bush administrations to send the majority of our insurgency supporting materiél to the forces in Afghanistan who were already recognized to be the most religiously imbued and organized–and who, in fact, became the Taliban–ignoring groups whom we deemed not sufficiently “committed.” That also worked well for us.)
We might need a better model for choosing our actions.
That’s assuming it is in our interest to be aligned with SA-Egypt-Jordan. I don’t think it is, especially WRT SA (a country that needs a regime change a whole lot worse than Iran does). Besides, the Iraq Study Group determined we need to engage Syria and Iran to help us stabilize Iraq. This is a damned funny way to “engage.”
Tyra Banks! (Well, all you said was a better model…)