Santorum hopes the US is behind killing Iranian scientist

dignin

Jason P wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

jp ... plenty of news ... but, not surprisingly the focus has been what is iran going to do to retaliate ... it's clearly a joint effort by the US/UK/Israel ... but no one seems to care that the western powers are yet again intervening and ultimately the cause for the tension being manufactured in the middle east ...

but hey - it's good for business ... so, whatever ... :evil:

To be fair, it's not like Iran is doing anything to reduce tensions. If anything, Iran is "good for business" with their public displays of bravado and threatening to cut of 50% of the world's oil supply. It's not too hard to keep the defense money rolling with enemies like this.

Remember, when Obama first took office he made a gesture to Iran in hopes of future good will and they blew him off. Perhaps Iran's leadership is in effect using the same methods you claim the U.S. uses to stay in power. By presenting on an enemy to unite the citizens against in fear, they gain their backing an unquestioning loyalty.

I think you hit the nail on the head here.......politics are politics, doesnt matter where you are.

whygohome

dignin wrote:

Jason P wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

jp ... plenty of news ... but, not surprisingly the focus has been what is iran going to do to retaliate ... it's clearly a joint effort by the US/UK/Israel ... but no one seems to care that the western powers are yet again intervening and ultimately the cause for the tension being manufactured in the middle east ...

but hey - it's good for business ... so, whatever ... :evil:

To be fair, it's not like Iran is doing anything to reduce tensions. If anything, Iran is "good for business" with their public displays of bravado and threatening to cut of 50% of the world's oil supply. It's not too hard to keep the defense money rolling with enemies like this.

Remember, when Obama first took office he made a gesture to Iran in hopes of future good will and they blew him off. Perhaps Iran's leadership is in effect using the same methods you claim the U.S. uses to stay in power. By presenting on an enemy to unite the citizens against in fear, they gain their backing an unquestioning loyalty.

I think you hit the nail on the head here.......politics are politics, doesnt matter where you are.

Well put.
So, they are adapting the same disastrous form of fear and nationalism that led to the decline of the U.S.....hmmm.......What was it that Ron Paul said of 9/11..?

polaris_x

Jason P wrote:

To be fair, it's not like Iran is doing anything to reduce tensions. If anything, Iran is "good for business" with their public displays of bravado and threatening to cut of 50% of the world's oil supply. It's not too hard to keep the defense money rolling with enemies like this.

Remember, when Obama first took office he made a gesture to Iran in hopes of future good will and they blew him off. Perhaps Iran's leadership is in effect using the same methods you claim the U.S. uses to stay in power. By presenting on an enemy to unite the citizens against in fear, they gain their backing an unquestioning loyalty.

i think if i were iran - i would be skeptical about anything the US does ...

the reality is this: Iran is a problem in the middle east because of US intervention there ... take away their oil reserves and no one would really care about iran ... if the US wanted to alleviate tension in the area - it's pretty simple ... stop covert acts in the region whether its with the CIA or Mossad ... stop supporting Israel unconditionally when the gov't is currently being run by extremists and hardline right wingers ...

and finally stop doing what the oil companies and the mic want them to do ... and stop perpetuating lies to the public ...

JonnyPistachio

whygohome wrote:

....What was it that Ron Paul said of 9/11..?

What did he say?

Jason P

EZ1221C wrote:

mickeyrat wrote:

My personal belief ,they are about a year away from a viable nuke weapon. Possibly closer than that.

I understand that it is your belief, but we've been hearing this same thing from the media for a long time. I think its a scare tactic at this point. "Iran might have a nuclear weapon this year! Let's give more money to Israel!"

The threat is being used as a scare tactic. But I also believe Iran will develop a nuclear weapon once they have the capability. Why wouldn't they?

I can understand why Israel would perform covert operations. The amount of hatred between the two countries has well passed the point of return under the current regimes in each country. Both countries would have to undergo sweeping reform and I don't foresee that happening.

polaris_x

having nukes is the only way to ensure security for iran ... everyone knows this ...

whygohome

JonnyPistachio wrote:

whygohome wrote:

....What was it that Ron Paul said of 9/11..?

What did he say?

In short, he states that we are largely/partially to blame due to our disastrous foreign policy dating back to the 1960s.

https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wh ... 91483.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hJTisovvjc

http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=2372

mikepegg44

VINNY GOOMBA wrote:

Could Iran have killed their own scientists? :think:

or worse yet, just said they did

JonnyPistachio

whygohome wrote:

JonnyPistachio wrote:

whygohome wrote:

....What was it that Ron Paul said of 9/11..?

What did he say?

In short, he states that we are largely/partially to blame due to our disastrous foreign policy dating back to the 1960s.

https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wh ... 91483.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hJTisovvjc

http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=2372

Thanks, I'll check those out.

Jason P

What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?

Byrnzie

The U.S, Israel, and British governments are now practicing the same terrorism they've been preaching against for the past ten years. Hypocrites.

Byrnzie

Jason P wrote:

What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?

What, you mean along with the fact that maybe a million or so people will be killed and another country ransacked and destroyed?

Byrnzie

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... red-murder

Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered

Killing our enemies abroad is just state-sponsored terror – whatever euphemism western leaders like to use


Mehdi Hasan
guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 January 2012



Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the Iranian nuclear scientist killed in Tehran on January 11, with his son, Alireza.

On the morning of 11 January Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was 32 and married with a young son. He wasn't armed, or anywhere near a battlefield.

Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee.

"On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly." On the day of Roshan's death, Israel's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, announced on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear" – a sentiment echoed by the historian Michael Burleigh in the Daily Telegraph: "I shall not shed any tears whenever one of these scientists encounters the unforgiving men on motorbikes."

These "men on motorbikes" have been described as "assassins". But assassination is just a more polite word for murder. Indeed, our politicians and their securocrats cloak the premeditated, lawless killing of scientists in Tehran, of civilians in Waziristan, of politicians in Gaza, in an array of euphemisms: not just assassinations but terminations, targeted killings, drone strikes.

Their purpose is to inure us to such state-sponsored violence against foreigners. In his acclaimed book On Killing, the retired US army officer Dave Grossman examines mechanisms that enable us not just to ignore but even cheer such killings: cultural distance ("such as racial and ethnic differences that permit the killer to dehumanise the victim"); moral distance ("the kind of intense belief in moral superiority"); and mechanical distance ("the sterile, Nintendo-game unreality of killing through a TV screen, a thermal sight, a sniper sight or some other kind of mechanical buffer that permits the killer to deny the humanity of his victim").

Thus western liberals who fall over one another to condemn the death penalty for murderers – who have, incidentally, had the benefit of lawyers, trials and appeals – as state-sponsored murder fall quiet as their states kill, with impunity, nuclear scientists, terror suspects and alleged militants in faraway lands. Yet a "targeted killing", human-rights lawyer and anti-drone activist Clive Stafford Smith tells me, "is just the death penalty without due process".

Cognitive dissonance abounds. To torture a terror suspect, for example, is always morally wrong; to kill him, video game style, with a missile fired from a remote-controlled drone, is morally justified. Crippled by fear and insecurity, we have sleepwalked into a situation where governments have arrogated to themselves the right to murder their enemies abroad.

Nor are we only talking about foreigners here. Take Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist preacher, al-Qaida supporter – and US citizen. On 30 September 2011, a CIA drone killed Awlaki and another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, another CIA-led drone attack killed Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman. Neither father nor son were ever indicted, let alone tried or convicted, for committing a crime. Both US citizens were assassinated by the US government in violation of the Fifth Amendment ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law").

An investigation by Reuters last October noted how, under the Obama administration, US citizens accused of involvement in terrorism can now be "placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions … There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel … Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate."

Should "secret panels" and "kill lists" be tolerated in a liberal democracy, governed by the rule of law? Did the founders of the United States intend for its president to be judge, jury and executioner? Whatever happened to checks and balances? Or due process?

Imagine the response of our politicians and pundits to a campaign of assassinations against western scientists conducted by, say, Iran or North Korea. When it comes to state-sponsored killings, the double standard is brazen. "Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them," George Orwell observed, "and there is almost no kind of outrage … which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side".

But how many more of our values will we shred in the name of security? Once we have allowed our governments to order the killing of fellow citizens, fellow human beings, in secret, without oversight or accountability, what other powers will we dare deny them?

This isn't complicated; there are no shades of grey here. Do we disapprove of car bombings and drive-by shootings, or not? Do we consistently condemn state-sponsored, extrajudicial killings as acts of pure terror, no matter where in the world, or on whose orders, they occur? Or do we shrug our shoulders, turn a blind eye and continue our descent into lawless barbarism?

MookiesLaw

Jason P wrote:

What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?

Depends who you ask. The war mongers and those involved in the Arms Industry will be happy. The Iranian civillian population won't be.

Meanwhile some of us understand how the game is being played and won't forget the facts. The facts are the Israelis have never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty but Iran has, and has complied with its provisions. We shall continue to shake our head at the hypocrisy.

catefrances

Byrnzie wrote:

Jason P wrote:

What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?

What, you mean along with the fact that maybe a million or so people will be killed and another country ransacked and destroyed?

yeah but its not our people and its not our country so...

Nevermind90

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dHqvcgEbs0

word.

polaris_x

Jason P wrote:

What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?

it would be good for obama ... israel will not go to war with iran without US approval ... they may run covert ops but not a full scale war ... by obtaining US approval - the powers that be will be happy and thus ensure obama gets his second term ...

Jason P

polaris_x wrote:

Jason P wrote:

What happens if Israel attacks Iran and we are pulled into a war prior to the elections? Is that good or bad for Obama?

it would be good for obama ... israel will not go to war with iran without US approval ... they may run covert ops but not a full scale war ... by obtaining US approval - the powers that be will be happy and thus ensure obama gets his second term ...

Thinking back, it seems like a president's approval rating skyrockets at the initial onset of a war.

I don't think the US would invade though. I don't even know if they would enter a war unless Iran targeted US in retaliation of an Israel airstrike. The goal is to stop Iran from have the capability to make nuclear weapons. I prefer the covert method versus an all-out war. Everyone in Iran working on the program understands the risk they are taking.

polaris_x

Jason P wrote:

Thinking back, it seems like a president's approval rating skyrockets at the initial onset of a war.

I don't think the US would invade though. I don't even know if they would enter a war unless Iran targeted US in retaliation of an Israel airstrike. The goal is to stop Iran from have the capability to make nuclear weapons. I prefer the covert method versus an all-out war. Everyone in Iran working on the program understands the risk they are taking.

why should everyone else have nukes and iran not?

Jason P

polaris_x wrote:

why should everyone else have nukes and iran not?

Thankfully, everyone else does not have nukes. I like a world where we are trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, not increase them.