So in other words, no, you cannot substantiate your CT, you have no evidence for your CT, you cannot provide even a semblance of evidence for your CT other than a cum hoc fallacy, and when given valid reasons why the US would object to Iranian nuclear weapons, you can only ignore them or distort them as “oooh scary!”.
This, while relying only on fear-mongering about dangerous Zionist Influence of the US government, which of course you neither have, nor can, prove. Par for the course.
Oh, and “attacks on the US”? Seriously? Dude, you are still dredging up incidents from 1983 (in Lebanon) to prove your thesis that Iran is some kind of imminent threat to the US. That’s 29 years ago, for anyone who needs help with the math.
Ooh, scary!
(And again, AIPAC’s lobbying is not theory. It is fact. Did you say you are a donor?)
Yes, the ones which were cited and substantiated. Unsurprisingly you’re mischaracterizing them, ignoring the Khobar Towers bombing, and ignoring Iranian cooperation with Al Quaeda. You’re also pretending that these were brought up to prove a point about how Iran is an “imminent threat” (you made that up) because you are unable to address the actual point, which is that despite numerous cassus belli over the years, Iran hasn’t been attacked. So absent a cassus belli, it has nothing to worry about.
*You still have nothing. *
Already dealt with that dodge.
So not only can you not substantiate your Conspiracy Theory about Zionist Influence of the US government, not only are you distorting the historical record, not only are you refusing to address the actual comments other posters have made, but you’re now repeating the exact same dodges that have already been debunked.
This, of course, would not be an issue if you had something more than nothing, at all.
Hit our headlines. I clarified what I meant before. Reread it and you’ll see it addresses what you stated here.
3rd to the last paragraph of the article clarifies that you posted another opinion piece of an individual unassociated with official policy of Saudi Arabia. It also shows that Saudi Arabia probably wouldn’t have the stomach for it.
The only thing your cites do is make me feel more terrible that we are ruining Iranian lives with these sanctions and it’s based on this kind of analysis.
The writer of your first article has been shown to be a liar on 4 separate occasions and is clearly an obfuscator (isn’t that your favorite term? Or is it distorter) on the subject of his opinion piece.
No, you didn’t.
The claims were correct, after Iran’s activities were made public knowledge, a number of ME nations started ramping up nuclear programs. You tried to handwave that, you didn’t address let alone analyze it. In point of fact, you tried to call the truth a “lie”, and tried to deny it by distorting both the historical record and the actual text of the quote. Your claims about cites should not be believed until you cease such debating tactics.
Another claim of yours that’s fictional. I’m not sure what game you’re playing here, but anybody can click on the link and see that your claims are obviously false.
Your claim that al-Faisal is “an individual unassociated with official policy of Saudi Arabia” just shows that, again, your staements are divorced from reality. That you are reduced to going to the 3rd to the last paragraph to find some analysis so you can pretend that it’s an opinion piece shows, again, that your descriptions of cites cannot be trusted.
Yet again, you provided a wiki cite. You provided it to claim he was a “conspiracy theorist”. It didn’t mention a word about any CT’s. You’d invented that. There is more than a bit irony of in you calling him a “liar” when your own claims about him proved to be invented. I’d also note that the issues raised in your wikilink were pretty much universally about quotes which may either have been mistranslated, fabricated, or poorly sourced. You have not proven which. You have, in fact, not provided anything other than Wikipedia.
Further, even if true, you are resorting to pure ad hominem diversion. You could rather easily discuss the facts he raised in the article, but you have chosen character assassination and keep referring to the facts he raised as “opinions” since you’ve been seeking to distort them. You still have not come up with a plausible reason for why many nations in the ME showed a distinct interest in nuclear programs once Iran’s own program became news. Your claim that they just want nuclear power for peaceful electricity is something that those outside of your fellow travelers will most likely not swallow.
I’m sure readers won’t have any problem noticing that you are entirely unable to explain how the bill could possibly be misconstrued as authorizing the use of force or acting as a declaration of war against Iran without having to resort to the hysterics of your fevered imagination.
AIPAC isn’t posting in this thread. I’ve pointed out several times that the US has implemented sanctions on double-digit numbers of countries that we have not gone to war with. I don’t give a whit what AIPAC says, I disagree with them on a number is issues. Anyone advocating bombing Iran should have their head examined, IMHO.
But delaying and undermining sanctions on Iran (and possibly companies like Shell Oil) is a stupid and counterproductive thing to do when it is done for a completely meaningless and ineffective amendment. Paul’s amendment literally has no legal effect whatsoever, not even in the slightest way. On the other hand, I can’t say for sure if sanctions will help persuade Iran to dial back it’s nuclear program, it is the best bet. And stopping a regional nuclear arms race before it starts is a very, very important thing.
Are you certain?
Enough already. The statements are factually correct or they are not; your belief that FinnAgain is posting on behalf of AIPAC or repeating their position is not relevant.
I did discuss the facts. The wiki article covering his lies and conspiracy theories are all cited and can easily be verified.
As far as purity of my ad hominem diversion goes, my attacks on the character of your source, as well as your other sources of information, which all, charitably, suck, are only in addition to extensively demonstrating that they take facts and “obfuscate” or “distort” to get their conclusions.
Sifting through the shit and finding the facts leads to only one rational conclusion - that Middle Eastern countries (8 of 10; I bet 9 was Iraq - Iraq with its single parliamentarian) are developing nuclear power facilities in cooperation with Western powers.
By your logic, and with the side-by-side comparison of facts, you can also conclude that Turkey is starting its own nuclear weapons program, which is idiotic.
How many of those countries have been rebuked by the IAEA for hiding activities that are directly related to weapons?
Let’s remember that the IAEA gave Iraq a clean bill of health in the 2002-2003 inspections, and as we know, there was no nuclear weapons program. Now the IAEA inspectors are saying that Iran is hiding weapons-related activities.
Frankly, I’m not sure if you understand anything about the IAEA. They are a UN organization and is not beholden to or run by the US or any of our allies. They are as close as it comes to having an impartial referee on nuclear issues. They conduct inspections in all countries with developing nuclear research programs, and it is incredibly rare that they raise the kind of alarms that they have on Iran.
I strongly suspect that you don’t really care about any details of what Iran is doing, or not doing. But if you don’t care about any of the pesky facts here, your opinion of whether we are headed for war is entirely subjective, and like all other opinions that aren’t backed up by any facts, should not be taken seriously.
Sorry, you’re imagined that.
Just like you claimed that the Saudi ambassador to the US was someone unconnected to the Saudi Government. Just like you cannot challenge the actual facts and were reduced to claiming that the rash of ME nations starting nuclear programs wasn’t in response to Iran, but was due to some sort of sudden desire for green electricity. Just like even when provided with a cite specifically showing Saudi threats of nuking up in response to Iran, you claimed that they were an “opinion”.
I guess if you were ignorant of the facts, then yes. For those of us who have baseline knowledge of above, we know that Turkey has been working on nuclear power for the last 40+ years. Of course, since more than 50% of Turks want nuclear weapons if Iran has them, it’s not at all beyond the pale to realize that Turkey may very well be drawn into a nuclear arms race, especially if not just Iran but much of the ME goes nuclear.
Ludicrous. Potential conflicts of interest are relevant in evaluating the reliability of a person proffering information. (Unless you just don’t see how the interests of Israel and the United States might not be convergent when it comes to Iran.)
At any rate, I haven’t violated any rules of this board.
You haven’t identified any conflict of interest. What you’ve identified is a difference of opinion. You accused FinnAgain of speaking for AIPAC and then suggested he can’t be trusted because he’s speaking for AIPAC, which means you’re merely casting aspersions on his motives. Like I said, his statements are either right or wrong based on their own merits, and his motives don’t enter into it. If you want to even attempt to have a sensible discussion, stick to the facts without arguing about why someone wants to argue against you.
Are you just trying to prove that you can google, half read things, and then make posts? 40+ years and still no nuclear power plant, and 54% want nuclear weapons if Iran has them. Why don’t you mull those two factoids over for a minute.
Arms race? What a joke. It’s only slightly more realistic than “Iran will distribute its nukes to terrorists!”.
I honestly have no idea what you think you are replying to. I was discussing the article written by the guy that spread the a news story that Iran was forcing nonMuslims to wear special identifying outfits. The guy exaggerating the nuclear goings on in the Middle East.
Your admission that you were wrong is, perhaps, not phrased as well as you might have done.
Rather obviously, if Turkey has been working on developing nuclear power for 40+ years, it did not begin doing so after 2003.
QED.
Except, no, he’s not.
The fact is that we have numerous nations in the ME which showed a sudden and novel desire for nuclear plants in the years after Iran’s program became public knowledge. You would have us believe that they all spontaneously wanted green electricity. Others of us know better. Your argument is failing. You’ve even argued that the Saudi ambassador’s statement about nuclear responses to Iran didn’t count, was opinion, and that there wasn’t a source from the Saudi government.
That the ME stands on the edge of a nuclear arms race due to Arab/Persian tensions, mainstream Muslim/Khomenist and Wahabist/Khomenist tensions isn’t in any serious, rational dispute. The “best” case scenario is that Iran becomes totally unrestrained with its terrorist forces in places like Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
He’s not the Saudi ambassador to the USA. He’s not anyone’s ambassador. He had no official role in the Saudi government at the time of the speech. All of which is in your article! Read the goddamn thing before you post.
He had a short tenure as ambassador to the USA from 2005 - 2007. I would find him more plausible in his role as intelligence chief or whatever but its obvious he didn’t have that job since 2004. So he’s 4 years out of the loop when he gave the speech, and the rest of your article places doubt on Saudi Arabia going through the effort of building nuclear weapons.
I’m just using the facts of your articles to show how you don’t read them or only see what you want to see. For example, you read 40+ years and shit your pants running to the keyboard but didn’t bother to read that it is only recently that any serious government effort has been made. It doesn’t matter anyway, I was just trying to guess the lying liar’s 10 countries in the greater Middle East. You know when you are trying to come up with new terms like greater Middle East that you must be massaging the data a bit.
Again, you are wrong on the basic facts correct and you’re engaging in goalpost shifting. You claimed that he was “an individual unassociated with official policy of Saudi Arabia”. I proved you were wrong, and pointed out that he’d held consular access, I could have also pointed out his intelligence leadership, I could have pointed out that he still has high level contacts to the government. To be honest, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and assumed that you knew who the man was without having to go to Wikipedia and that you would reason your way from the fact that someone who’d had access to the highest levels of Saudi Power and still does, to that fact that he was not in fact “unassociated” with Saudi foreign policy. At this point I can only assume that you do not grok how the Saudis select their ambassadors to the United States or what it signifies that a source on Saudi politics has served as ambassador to the United States.
However, you then switched your original claim about him being "unassociated’ with official foreign policy to a nonsensical claim that I’d claimed he was the current ambassador, that I hadn’t read the article, and so on.
Your ignorance of the issue is preventing you from understanding what’s going on. Not only is Turki Al-Faisal not “out of the loop”, by claiming that, you reveal that you do not actually know who the man is.
[
](Analysis: Selling arms to the Gulf - BBC News)
So the guy with decade of experience in the government, whose comments routinely reflect government thinking, is the guy you’re claiming is “unassociated with foreign policy”. To say nothing that you are ignoring the fact that he is a prince of the ruling family. In an absolute monarchy, it’s hard to claim that i]a prince of the ruling family* is “unassociated” with the government unless that man has actually somehow done something to relinquish his status. He hasn’t.
You claimed that Turkey’s nuclear program was somehow a refutation of the claim that nations in the ME were starting nuclear programs in response to Iran. I pointed out that as it started decades earlier, it was a poor example for you to use. You then, incomprehensibly, claimed that I was incorrect to point this out because while Turkey has been pursuing nuclear energy for decades, it is only now seeing actual progress. While you’ve expressed that view with maximum invective and minimum coherence, that point is irrelevant to the fact that you were wrong to use Turkey as an example in the first place. Further, you claimed that one of the current targets of your scorn had “come up with” the term “Greater Middle East” and therefore must be “massaging the data”. You actually stated that you’d never even heard the term before a handfull of hours ago. However, a basic level of factual knowledge on the topic would have let you know that the term "Greater Middle East"has been in use for nearly a decade and is currently used by such bastions of conservative thought as The Nation.
But instead of admitting, to say nothing of correcting your mistakes, you’ve doubled down and are now absurdly claiming that I haven’t read my own sources. I honestly believe you when you claim that’s how you interpret what’s transpired, but the fact is that you neither understand the context nor the factual content of my statements, and you’ve switched your own argument in an attempt for some gotchaya!, and your argument is simply failing on all fronts.
All because you refuse to admit that yeah, there is a very real risk of a nuclear arms race starting in response to Iran and, yah, the Saudis have indeed been making noise about their role in that race. All because, in a quite frankly *through the looking glass * level bizarre rant about “lying liars”, you are again ignorant of the basic fact that, yes, since Iran’s nuclear program went public, more than a dozen nations in the ME have begun or revived nuclear programs. But instead of addressing the facts, you launched into an ad hominem attack against a “lying liar” whose facts were, well, correct.
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](http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-dossiers/nuclear-programmes-in-the-middle-east-in-the-shadow-of-iran/nuclear-programmes-in-the-middle-east-in-the-shadow-of-iran-press-statement/)
Back down. Admit you were wrong. Correct your argument with new, accurate data. There are worse fates in life than learning from your mistakes, Inbred.
So you’re saying we should stop the Middle East from using nuclear energy? Their reasons for wanting it, as set forth in your last quote, sound perfectly legitimate.