Iran captures US Drone

ONCE DEVIDED

yosi wrote:

Honestly, B, it's impressive just how stubborn you can be in ignoring reality. They're building a bomb. The whole world knows it. It's just kinda ridiculous that you haven't caught on by now. Embarrassing even.
quote]


and I support them building a bomb . If Isreal has the bomb. why shouldnt others in the region have the same.
If isreal pulled apart their nuclear program. It would give much weight to getting Iran to get rid of theirs and have a nuclear free region.
So Isreal started this. they can finish it
start an arms race and think they should be the only one in it :roll:

Cosmo

Drowned Out wrote:

So (I assume) the US violates the airspace of a sovereign country with a military aircraft....therefore you should go drop bombs on said country....in defense of the constitution? Or to protect the technology?

Wouldn't that be a war-like provocation?...and a choice to go down a path that would, according to the hawks, result in socio-economic expansion? Or were you being facetious?

...
Ummmm... Noooooo...
If the Iranian Army loads up their ships and planes and comes over here... then yes, bomb the heck out of their military for trying to invade us.
For us to go over there as a proxy spy for Israel, for example... not so much.
Defense of the nation means defense. It does not mean unilateral first strikes... or military occupation... or gunship diplomacy.
...
I re-read my comment and still can't figure out how you got that of of what I wrote.

Drowned Out

Sorry, I should have quoted this as well:

Cosmo wrote:

The Air Force needs to send in an F-22 to hit the crash site with a couple of 2,000lb AG ordinances

The crash site was in. Iran, no? What am I missing here?
I agree with your last post, of course.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Honestly, B, it's impressive just how stubborn you can be in ignoring reality. They're building a bomb. The whole world knows it. It's just kinda ridiculous that you haven't caught on by now. Embarrassing even.

And from a purely logical perspective, there's a pretty glaring flaw in an argument that essentially says that if something is not true about A then it must also not be true about B. You know, cause A and B aren't the same.

There's no evidence.

Although I understand that the Israeli's are chomping at the bit to start another war. It's what they love.

Byrnzie

Jason P wrote:

Also, do you have any evidence that reports on Iran's nuclear program are untrue?

What reports are you referring to?

Even the latest report cited zero evidence of Iran's building a nuclear bomb.

Not that I'd blame them for trying to build a bomb. It's the logical thing to do when faces by constant threats from Israel and the U.S.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... NTCMP=SRCH

If you lived in Iran, wouldn't you want the nuclear bomb?

The best way for the US to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons is to dial down the rhetoric and adopt some diplomacy


Mehdi Hasan
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 November 201



Imagine, for a moment, that you are an Iranian mullah. Sitting crosslegged on your Persian rug in Tehran, sipping a cup of chai, you glance up at the map of the Middle East on the wall. It is a disturbing image: your country, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is surrounded on all sides by virulent enemies and regional rivals, both nuclear and non-nuclear.

On your eastern border, the United States has 100,000 troops serving in Afghanistan. On your western border, the US has been occupying Iraq since 2003 and plans to retain a small force of military contractors and CIA operatives even after its official withdrawal next month. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, is to the south-east; Turkey, America's Nato ally, to the north-west; Turkmenistan, which has acted as a refuelling base for US military transport planes since 2002, to the north-east. To the south, across the Persian Gulf, you see a cluster of US client states: Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet; Qatar, host to a forward headquarters of US Central Command; Saudi Arabia, whose king has exhorted America to "attack Iran" and "cut off the head of the snake".

Then, of course, less than a thousand miles to the west, there is Israel, your mortal enemy, in possession of over a hundred nuclear warheads and with a history of pre-emptive aggression against its opponents.

The map makes it clear: Iran is, literally, encircled by the United States and its allies.

If that wasn't worrying enough, your country seems to be under (covert) attack. Several nuclear scientists have been mysteriously assassinated and, late last year, a sophisticated computer virus succeeded in shutting down roughly a fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Only last weekend, the "pioneer" of the Islamic Republic's missile programme, Major General Hassan Moghaddam, was killed – with 16 others – in a huge explosion at a Revolutionary Guards base 25 miles outside Tehran. You go online to discover western journalists reporting that the Mossad is believed to have been behind the blast.

And then you pause to remind yourself of the fundamental geopolitical lesson that you and your countrymen learned over the last decade: the US and its allies opted for war with non-nuclear Iraq, but diplomacy with nuclear-armed North Korea.

If you were our mullah in Tehran, wouldn't you want Iran to have the bomb – or at the very minimum, "nuclear latency" (that is, the capability and technology to quickly build a nuclear weapon if threatened with attack)?

Let's be clear: there is still no concrete evidence Iran is building a bomb. The latest report from the IAEA, despite its much discussed reference to "possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme", also admits that its inspectors continue "to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at [Iran's] nuclear facilities". The leaders of the Islamic Republic – from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to bombastic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – maintain their goal is only to develop a civilian nuclear programme, not atomic bombs.

Nonetheless, wouldn't it be rational for Iran – geographically encircled, politically isolated, feeling threatened – to want its own arsenal of nukes, for defensive and deterrent purposes? The US government's Nuclear Posture Review admits such weapons play an "essential role in deterring potential adversaries" and maintaining "strategic stability" with other nuclear powers. In 2006, the UK's Ministry of Defence claimed our own strategic nuclear deterrent was designed to "deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression against our vital interests that cannot be countered by other means".

Apparently, what is sauce for the Anglo-American goose is not sauce for the Iranian gander. Empathy is in short supply. As leading US nuclear policy analyst George Perkovich has observed: "The US government never has publicly and objectively assessed Iranian leaders' motivations for seeking nuclear weapons and what the US and others could do to remove those motivations." Instead, the Islamic Republic is dismissed as irrational and megalomaniacal.

But it isn't just Iran's leaders who are unwilling to back down on the nuclear issue. On Tuesday, around 1,000 Iranian students formed a human chain around the uranium conversion facility in Isfahan, chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel". Their protest may have been organised by the authorities but even the leaders and members of the opposition Green Movement tend to support Iran's uranium enrichment programme. According to a 2010 University of Maryland survey, 55% of Iranians back their country's pursuit of nuclear power and, remarkably, 38% support the building of a nuclear bomb.

So what is to be done? Sanctions haven't worked and won't work. Iranians refuse to compromise on what they believe to be their "inalienable" right to nuclear power under the Non-proliferation treaty. Military action, as the US defence secretary Leon Panetta admitted last week, could have "unintended consequences", including a backlash against "US forces in the region". The threat of attack will only harden the resolve for a nuclear deterrent; belligerence breeds belligerence.

The simple fact is there is no alternative to diplomacy, no matter how truculent or paranoid the leaders of Iran might seem to western eyes. If a nuclear-armed Iran is to be avoided, US politicians have to dial down their threatening rhetoric and tackle the very real and rational perception, on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan, of America and Israel as military threats to the Islamic Republic. Iranians are fearful, nervous, defensive – and, as the Middle East map shows, perhaps with good reason. As the old adage goes, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

ONCE DEVIDED

Great post byrnsie

hmmm what treaties or agreement. even inspections has isreal agreed to in regard to nuclear weapons.

Byrnzie

ONCE DEVIDED wrote:

Great post byrnsie

hmmm what treaties or agreement. even inspections has isreal agreed to in regard to nuclear weapons.

None. They deny having any. But everyone knows they have plenty. It seems that these criminals will remain unacountable as long a A.I.P.A.C controls the U.S congress.

Byrnzie

Another good article here on the escalation of the drums of war by those in D.C and Tel Aviv:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... NTCMP=SRCH

War on Iran has already begun. Act before it threatens all of us

Escalation of the covert US-Israeli campaign against Tehran risks a global storm. Opposition has to get more serious

طالع المقال بالعربية

Seumas Milne
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 December 2011


They don't give up. After a decade of blood-drenched failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, violent destabilisation of Pakistan and Yemen, the devastation of Lebanon and slaughter in Libya, you might hope the US and its friends had had their fill of invasion and intervention in the Muslim world.

It seems not. For months the evidence has been growing that a US-Israeli stealth war against Iran has already begun, backed by Britain and France. Covert support for armed opposition groups has spread into a campaign of assassinations of Iranian scientists, cyber warfare, attacks on military and missile installations, and the killing of an Iranian general, among others.

The attacks are not directly acknowledged, but accompanied by intelligence-steered nods and winks as the media are fed a stream of hostile tales – the most outlandish so far being an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US – and the western powers ratchet up pressure for yet more sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme.

The British government's decision to take the lead in imposing sanctions on all Iranian banks and pressing for an EU boycott of Iranian oil triggered the trashing of its embassy in Tehran by demonstrators last week and subsequent expulsion of Iranian diplomats from London.

It's a taste of how the conflict can quickly escalate, as was the downing of a US spyplane over Iranian territory at the weekend. What one Israeli official has called a "new kind of war" has the potential to become a much more old-fashioned one that would threaten us all.

Last month the Guardian was told by British defence ministry officials that if the US brought forward plans to attack Iran (as they believed it might), it would "seek, and receive, UK military help", including sea and air support and permission to use the ethnically cleansed British island colony of Diego Garcia.

Whether the officials' motive was to soften up public opinion for war or warn against it, this was an extraordinary admission: the Britain military establishment fully expects to take part in an unprovoked US attack on Iran – just as it did against Iraq eight years ago.

What was dismissed by the former foreign secretary Jack Straw as "unthinkable", and for David Cameron became an option not to be taken "off the table", now turns out to be as good as a done deal if the US decides to launch a war that no one can seriously doubt would have disastrous consequences. But there has been no debate in parliament and no mainstream political challenge to what Straw's successor, David Miliband, this week called the danger of "sleepwalking into a war with Iran". That's all the more shocking because the case against Iran is so spectacularly flimsy.

There is in fact no reliable evidence that Iran is engaged in a nuclear weapons programme. The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report once again failed to produce a smoking gun, despite the best efforts of its new director general, Yukiya Amano – described in a WikiLeaks cable as "solidly in the US court on every strategic decision".

As in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, the strongest allegations are based on "secret intelligence" from western governments. But even the US national intelligence director, James Clapper, has accepted that the evidence suggests Iran suspended any weapons programme in 2003 and has not reactivated it.

The whole campaign has an Alice in Wonderland quality about it. Iran, which says it doesn't want nuclear weapons, is surrounded by nuclear-weapon states: the US – which also has forces in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as military bases across the region – Israel, Russia, Pakistan and India.

Iran is of course an authoritarian state, though not as repressive as western allies such as Saudi Arabia. But it has invaded no one in 200 years. It was itself invaded by Iraq with western support in the 1980s, while the US and Israel have attacked 10 countries or territories between them in the past decade. Britain exploited, occupied and overthrew governments in Iran for over a century. So who threatens who exactly?

As Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, said recently, if he were an Iranian leader he would "probably" want nuclear weapons. Claims that Iran poses an "existential threat" to Israel because President Ahmadinejad said the state "must vanish from the page of time" bear no relation to reality. Even if Iran were to achieve a nuclear threshold, as some suspect is its real ambition, it would be in no position to attack a state with upwards of 300 nuclear warheads, backed to the hilt by the world's most powerful military force.

The real challenge posed by Iran to the US and Israel has been as an independent regional power, allied to Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas movements. As US troops withdraw from Iraq, Saudi Arabia fans sectarianism, and Syrian opposition leaders promise a break with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the threat of proxy wars is growing across the region.

A US or Israeli attack on Iran would turn that regional maelstrom into a global firestorm. Iran would certainly retaliate directly and through allies against Israel, the US and US Gulf client states, and block the 20% of global oil supplies shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Quite apart from death and destruction, the global economic impact would be incalculable.

All reason and common sense militate against such an act of aggression. Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel's Mossad, said last week it would be a "catastrophe". Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, warned that it could "consume the Middle East in confrontation and conflict that we would regret".

There seems little doubt that the US administration is deeply wary of a direct attack on Iran. But in Israel, Barak has spoken of having less than a year to act; Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has talked about making the "right decision at the right moment"; and the prospects of drawing the US in behind an Israeli attack have been widely debated in the media.

Maybe it won't happen. Maybe the war talk is more about destabilisation than a full-scale attack. But there are undoubtedly those in the US, Israel and Britain who think otherwise. And the threat of miscalculation and the logic of escalation could tip the balance decisively. Unless opposition to an attack on Iran gets serious, this could become the most devastating Middle East war of all.

WaveCameCrashin

Cosmo wrote:

Well... look on the bright side...
Iran will give the drone to China...
You will be able to buy a drone from Wal-Mart next Christmas.

Right next to the American flag
(made in china)

usamamasan1

This war with Iran has begun already folks...


We want our drone back!

"If you were Iran, and Pres O asked you to return our drone, what would you say??" Ari Fleischer, GOP public relations strategist and former spokesman for the George W. Bush White House, asked on Twitter.

"'O: I asked Iran 2 return drone & we'll see how they respond," Fleischer wrote in another Twitter post mocking the request. Ronald Reagan "didn't ask Iran 2 return hostages. Iran feared him, so they were freed."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/obama ... 35747.html

BinauralJam

I dont see Obama starting a war on the eve of an election year. It's possible, but i don't see it.

Cosmo

usamamasan1 wrote:

This war with Iran has begun already folks...


We want our drone back!

"If you were Iran, and Pres O asked you to return our drone, what would you say??" Ari Fleischer, GOP public relations strategist and former spokesman for the George W. Bush White House, asked on Twitter.

"'O: I asked Iran 2 return drone & we'll see how they respond," Fleischer wrote in another Twitter post mocking the request. Ronald Reagan "didn't ask Iran 2 return hostages. Iran feared him, so they were freed."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/obama ... 35747.html

...
Truth be known... Ronald Reagan also negotiated with Terrorists in Iran in order to fund our little forray into Central America.
The picture gets clearer when you step back and view the entire canvas, rather than focusing on one element of the painting.
...
Also... WHY SHOULD Iran give back the drone? WE were spying on THEM. Would Ari Fleischer say the same... if the shoe were on the other foot? I didn't think so.

catefrances

Cosmo wrote:

usamamasan1 wrote:

This war with Iran has begun already folks...


We want our drone back!

"If you were Iran, and Pres O asked you to return our drone, what would you say??" Ari Fleischer, GOP public relations strategist and former spokesman for the George W. Bush White House, asked on Twitter.

"'O: I asked Iran 2 return drone & we'll see how they respond," Fleischer wrote in another Twitter post mocking the request. Ronald Reagan "didn't ask Iran 2 return hostages. Iran feared him, so they were freed."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/obama ... 35747.html

...
Truth be known... Ronald Reagan also negotiated with Terrorists in Iran in order to fund our little forray into Central America.
The picture gets clearer when you step back and view the entire canvas, rather than focusing on one element of the painting.
...
Also... WHY SHOULD Iran give back the drone? WE were spying on THEM. Would Ari Fleischer say the same... if the shoe were on the other foot? I didn't think so.

did they say please?

Cosmo

catefrances wrote:

did they say please?

...
It's basically... when someone hits the ball too hard to the closed outfield and in goes over the fence into that mean old lady's house that no one wants to go over there to ask for the ball back because she will rattle off the mug for an hour about how irresponsible you are and there is not a good reason why she should give you the ball back and how dangerous it is because the ball could have hit one of her 22 cats in the eye and after thinking about it... we decide it's not even worth the hassle, so you collect enough empty Pepsi bottles from the neighborhood to get the 3 cent deposit and just buy another fucking ball from the toy aisle at the Safeway market because it ain't worth the hassle.

catefrances

Cosmo wrote:

catefrances wrote:

did they say please?

...
It's basically... when someone hits the ball too hard to the closed outfield and in goes over the fence into that mean old lady's house that no one wants to go over there to ask for the ball back because she will rattle off the mug for an hour about how irresponsible you are and there is not a good reason why she should give you the ball back and how dangerous it is because the ball could have hit one of her 22 cats in the eye and after thinking about it... we decide it's not even worth the hassle, so you collect enough empty Pepsi bottles from the neighborhood to get the 3 cent deposit and just buy another fucking ball from the toy aisle at the Safeway market because it ain't worth the hassle.

so how many pepsi bottles you reckon itll take to buy a new drone???

Cosmo

catefrances wrote:

Cosmo wrote:

catefrances wrote:

did they say please?

...
It's basically... when someone hits the ball too hard to the closed outfield and in goes over the fence into that mean old lady's house that no one wants to go over there to ask for the ball back because she will rattle off the mug for an hour about how irresponsible you are and there is not a good reason why she should give you the ball back and how dangerous it is because the ball could have hit one of her 22 cats in the eye and after thinking about it... we decide it's not even worth the hassle, so you collect enough empty Pepsi bottles from the neighborhood to get the 3 cent deposit and just buy another fucking ball from the toy aisle at the Safeway market because it ain't worth the hassle.

so how many pepsi bottles you reckon itll take to buy a new drone???

...
Several billion.
But, seriously... either we should have been more careful with our billion dollar R.C. Toy or we shouldn't have been flying it over that mean old lady's house.

catefrances

Cosmo wrote:

Several billion.
But, seriously... either we should have been more careful with our billion dollar R.C. Toy or we shouldn't have been flying it over that mean old lady's house.

im thinking both.


im also hoping the aliens dont come looking for those craft the US govt has got hidden in area 51. cause ive seen mars attacks and it aint pretty.

Cosmo

catefrances wrote:

im thinking both.
im also hoping the aliens dont come looking for those craft the US govt has got hidden in area 51. cause ive seen mars attacks and it aint pretty.

...
It's like when the DEA scores a huge drug bust in Arizona and the Mexican Drug Cartel thinks we should give them their drugs back. If they didn't want to lose their drugs... they shouldn't have sent it over here, right?

catefrances

Cosmo wrote:

catefrances wrote:

im thinking both.
im also hoping the aliens dont come looking for those craft the US govt has got hidden in area 51. cause ive seen mars attacks and it aint pretty.

...
It's like when the DEA scores a huge drug bust in Arizona and the Mexican Drug Cartel thinks we should give them their drugs back. If they didn't want to lose their drugs... they shouldn't have sent it over here, right?

they should only be returned if the drugs are faulty.


http://vimeo.com/11873080

pjl44

usamamasan1 wrote:

This war with Iran has begun already folks...


We want our drone back!

"If you were Iran, and Pres O asked you to return our drone, what would you say??" Ari Fleischer, GOP public relations strategist and former spokesman for the George W. Bush White House, asked on Twitter.

"'O: I asked Iran 2 return drone & we'll see how they respond," Fleischer wrote in another Twitter post mocking the request. Ronald Reagan "didn't ask Iran 2 return hostages. Iran feared him, so they were freed."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/obama ... 35747.html

So you want Obama to trade weapons for the return of our drone? I guess we can scrape up whatever we didn't give to the Mexican cartels.