What's happening on Feb 11, Mr. Ahmadinejad?

Great Debates
41

I’m just pointing out that even countries like America can look like they’re raical warmongering fanatics depending on where you live in the world.

Iran are down the list of regional countries that support terrorism. Our allies Saudi Arabia come top. Even members of the Saudi royal family used to fund Al Quaeda, some probably still do. But we somehow don’t paint the Saudis as radical nuts that need to be overthrown.

It would be lovely if Iran just stopped doing what they’re doing and the best way to do this, like I said before, would be sticks and carrots. But we’re all sticks and no carrots.

42

Iran’s prez is the only guy Iranians get a chance to elect. They don’t get free elections, they get a bunch of guys approved by the GC but in the 1990s they elected Khatami, the guy seen as the most reformist out of the available bunch. The GC in general didn’t like that at all and would have preferred the election of somebody more conservative and like you pointed out he got nowhere. After Bush’s axis of evil thing/invasions the Iranian electorate swung round to electing the most conservative guy they could, Ahmadinejad.

What I was pointing out originally was that despite everything America had done and was doing to Iran, the Iranians in general by 1995 or whenever Khatami got elected, wanted to be a little less radical. That changed after the axis of evil/invasions. Anything else you’re reading into what I wrote is up to you.

And while you may not have said you want Iran to get bombed you definitely agree with “getting tough” and generally threatening them. The logical extension of that is military action. You can’t continue to threaten with no consequences for the guys ignoring the threat, can you?

43

Iran has called for the end of the Israeli regime and the way they’re calling for that is to have the right of return for the Palestinian diaspora and free elections to get rid of it. I haven’t seen anybody Iranian talk about military action but I have seen the head Iranian guys say they’ll never attack anybody unless they get attacked first.

There’s plenty of dubt that Iran will build a weapon. Our last intelligence report says they don’t know whether they will or not. It’s linked further up the thread.

44

No, you are simply inventing fictions to bolster your narrative.

Could it be because they’ve taken some steps to crack down on their support of terrorism? That Iran still eagerly supports racist terrorists bent on ethnic cleansing via mass murder? Could it perhaps be because Iran has used those terrorists in operations that the Iranian government itself organized, planned, funded and directed against American targets?

And as for not being critical of the Saudis? Your narrative needs work. I suggest you google “Wahabism”. You might also want to tone down the rhetoric a bit. The fact that the Saudis are working with us while Iran has taken up a hostile (rhetorical) posture and and (actual) hostile posture to US allies and democracy states in the region shows why your facile comparison breaks down like tissue paper in a thunder storm.

Also pure fiction. Obama in particular has been quite expressive about the potential for new, friendly relations. Of course, Iran’s unmasking as a brutal dictatorship (for those who had much doubt) kind of put a chill on the process, but still, the claim that we’ve offered no carrots is absurdist fiction.

Unless of course you mean Iran doing such things as taking US citizens hostageand trying to exchange them for, among other people, an Iranian arrested in Canada on charges of trying to obtain nuclear technology.

45

And those who have paid attention to the news, we know that they don’t actually get to do that either.

I already pointed out that this is a fiction, why you are repeating it is beyond me.

This too is fiction, both on the governmental and the popular levels. Why you are again repeating non-truths is baffling. In point of fact, Iranians have maintained a strong popular desire for democracy and and end to Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for warm relations with the west/outside aid. Please at least try to discover what the actual facts are before you let rhetoric get center stage.

Caught inventing one fiction about what I’ve posted, not only do you not apologize you respond by immediately doing it again. Show anywhere I’ve supported threatening Iran. You can’t, because you invented it and citing your imagination is hard. Of course, your argument is mere rhetoric as you yourself just advocated a “carrot and stick” approach. So if I say that we should offer aid in exchange for democratic reforms and a stop to their nuclear program and sanctions if they don’t, why, then I’m threatening them. But if you say the same thing, why, you’re a pragmatic peace loving hero.

I don’t exactly enjoy such gamesmanship.

Astounding doubletalk. First of all, no, that’s not the logical conclusion to my argument, it’s just one you made up and tacked on. After admitting I never said we should bomb Iran, you’re now actually arguing that I’m really saying we should bomb Iran.

And, of course, yet again you’ve been skewered on the horns of your own double standard. As, after all, Iran has been threatening Israel and the US for quite some time. So by your own (horribly mistaken and rationalized) ‘logic’, Iran is going to attack us sooner or later.

Like I said, rhetoric and noise.

46

Published: June 23, 2009
WASHINGTON — Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.

The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers’ copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.
The Saudis and their defenders in Washington have long denied links to terrorists, and they have mounted an aggressive and, so far, successful campaign to beat back the allegations in federal court based on a claim of sovereign immunity.
Allegations of Saudi links to terrorism have been the subject of years of government investigations and furious debate. Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country.
But the thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents compiled by lawyers for the Sept. 11 families and their insurers represented an unusually detailed look at some of the evidence.
Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.
A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.
Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.
And a confidential German intelligence report gave a line-by-line description of tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers, with dates and dollar amounts, made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to another charity that was suspected of financing militants’ activities in Pakistan and Bosnia.
The new documents, provided to The New York Times by the lawyers, are among several hundred thousand pages of investigative material obtained by the Sept. 11 families and their insurers as part of a long-running civil lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia and its royal family liable for financing Al Qaeda.
Only a fraction of the documents have been entered into the court record, and much of the new material is unknown even to the Saudi lawyers in the case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/middleeast/24saudi.html

And that’s jusr the ruling regime, there’s an enormous number of Gulf millionaires and billionaires that have sent money to Islamic causes like Afghanistan, Palestine, Kashmir etc. over the years and funded various muj groups. Pretty much any radical Islamic movement anywhere is always going to get funding from these guys.

  1. Documents show the Saudis were supporting terrorism up to at least 2006, that’s well after they “took steps to crack down” on terrorism. But America chose to conspire to hide that from the general public as much as they could.

  2. I think we’re just in the initial stages of negotiation and it’ll probably go on for years on and off, more off than on. It may be that there’s no way to make any deal with the Iranians but I think eventually, probably later than sooner, we’ll end up making a deal with them. We’re going to end up negotiating with the Taliban, we’ll end up negotiating with the Iranians.

47

I’m happy to let our fellow forumers decide which of us is full of fiction.

48

Ah, the “punch”:

At least we can be sure it will be non-alcoholic punch! :slight_smile:

49

Iran has already attacked Israel many times with rockets so I don’t understand your logic.

50

Common mistake. Hamas/Hezbollah munitions aren’t generally anti-personnel rounds designed to indiscriminately kill and maim civilians and cause terror. They’re actually kitten and puppy delivery systems. To be fair, they haven’t yet solved the problem of deceleration’s effect on the cuties, but they’re working on it.

The fact that I’ve refuted all your fictions with cites while you go on to repeat them or make up new ones “Your not wanting to bomb Iran just shows how much you want to bomb Iran!!!”, I think, seals the deal.

And of course there are your continued evasions. Your earlier claim was that Saudi Arabia is the top sponsor of global terrorism. To ‘prove’ this, you have offered a cite for a fact that was already agreed, which was that some members of the royal family supported AQ (of course, so did Iran). A gotchaya! for an admitted detail is… curious. Even more curious is the bait and switch nature of your rhetoric. Your claim was not that random royals did, but that the nation of Saudi Arabia did. I’m sure our readers can spot the difference there, too.

Of course, your evidence is mostly flimsy even for the dodge you’re using it for. Your own cite suggests that the Saudi royals involved, rather than supporting terrorism, are paying protection money.
"Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country. "

Nor does evidence of cooperation with charities mean much unless they had actual knowledge that the money was going to fund terrorists. Not everybody in America who gave to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was a willing financier of terrorism. Your mention of Turki al-Faisal is par for the course and shows the quality of your argument with yet another bait and switch argument. Giving money to the Taliban was not the same as supporting terrorism. And it’s a bait and switch within a bait and switch, as the claim isn’t even that Turki al-Faisal gave money to the Taliban, but that someone who said he was an emissary did, and there’s no evidence that money went to AQ, at all, in any case.

And now you’ve gone from Iran sponsoring terrorism directly from the top echelons of its government to comparing that with random private citizens all over the Gulf region. In addition, your dodge misses the fact that while the Saudis have tried to crack down on terrorist financing with some success and some failures, Iran has done no such thing and continues to finance and arm groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

It’s also obvious what game you’re playing. “Terrorist Supporter B is worse than Terrorist Supporter A, so just ignore A!!!” is just an evolution of the tu quoque fallacy. Even if we accepted the incorrect position that Saudi Arabia is the top supporter of global terrorism, all that would mean is that Iran is also a supporter of global terrorism and you were being picky about whether or not they should take the gold cup or merely the silver medal in the Suicide Bomber Derby. Hardly an argument to hang your hat on.

51

By that logic America has already attacked the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon many times with rockets.

52

Show me where Israel has tried to conquer those countries. Defense is not the same as attacking.

53

:dubious: You don’t want to go there. Israel already conquered the Palestinians, in 1967, and there was undeniably some element of imperialism, however confused or halfhearted, in its incursion into Lebanon.

54

It would be a separate thread because of the complexity of the war but Israel was attacked by multiple countries.

55

Justification does not make conquest anything other than conquest.

56

When you attack someone and lose you don’t get to call do-overs and walk away. You lose, you pay the price. Israel took ground they thought necessary for their security.

None of this relates to the thread topic of Iran’s bizarre threat so maybe you could think in terms of starting a new thread.

57

I wonder what the discussion would be today if Israel had lost those wars? Would you be justifying the resulting genocide?
A country defends itself and pushes back. The aggressor can’t handle the consequences? Then don’t try to invade. Or what Magiver said on a new thread.

58

:dubious:

59

Naw, just same old same old. Much heartfelt angst over Israel’s situation, it’s just that if Israel stops people from attacking it, it is a horrible power that wages wars of imperialistic conquest. It’s not that those sorts of folks are for Israel losing defensive wars and for Israel not protecting itself, they’re just against Israel winning defensive wars and not for Israel protecting itself. It makes perfect sense. Some of these people are the same folks who claim that we should give Hamas unrestricted boarders and freedom of movement so that they’re within rocket range of every single Israel citizen, and they call that a one state “solution”. That too makes perfect sense.

To some.

Of course, since we’ve seen that most of the claims about Iran are sophistry or fallacies or fictions, I can see why some folks would like to move the topic back to their interesting ideas about the evils of defending yourself from aggression. Although I do have to admit, I would like to hear another Hooker With a Heart of Gold story about how the Iranian government is just a pawn in the Great Game and if it wasn’t for mean old mister Bush, everything would be champagne and strawberries (well, except no champagne for gays, cuz there aren’t any in Iran and that’s the US’ fault too). Oh oh oh, it’d be nifty too to hear about how the Iranian people’s overwhelming support for democracy and warmer relations with the US fits into the narrative, but I guess that since that doesn’t fit into the narrative we’d better not mention that since Bushhitler fucked everything up and Axis of Evil and won’t someone think of the children???

Anybody going to comment on Iran responding to Obama’s policy of engagement by holding some more Americans hostage? Please, will someone argue that that’s a defensive act? Pretty please?

Awwww… shucks.

60

I’m going to go out on a limb and draw your attention to the 18 year occupation of southern lebanon, the support for terrorist militias and complicity in dreadful massacres.