Iran: A Bridge too Far?

[vernarial]

They don't really know what they're getting themselves into.

I disagree with this last statement of the article. I think they know full well what they are doing. And they will make even more money, and consolidate even more power. They aren't stupid people. They just have a different opinion on how the world should work. An opinion that all but ignores the suffering of millions of people, but an opinion none the less. I call them ass holes. Some people call them heroic leaders.

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by vernarial

I call them ass holes. Some people call them heroic leaders.

The rest of us just call them politicians.

[albed]

Brits find Iranian bombs crossing into Afghanistan.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...wafghan104.xml

Iran is supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan with the same bomb-making equipment it provides to insurgents in Iraq, according to British military intelligence officers.

the discovery of more than 50 roadside bombs and timers in lorries crossing the border from Iran last month proves that Iran's Quds Revolutionary Guards are actively supporting the Taliban.

A spokesman for the British embassy in Kabul said yesterday: "This confirms our view that elements within Iran are supporting the Taliban.

And it confirms my view that British politicians are too cowardly to retaliate; letting their own soldiers needlessly die so they can keep the support of propaganda indoctrinated idiot voters and cling to their jobs like pathetic power junkies, no better than degenerate drug addicts, while sacrificing every bit of principle and honor in their descent into the political muck.

[malvachat]

A right wing UK newspaper.
Good source of balanced news.
Credible?
Albed seems to think so.
For example.
Gordon Brown does not need to call an election till 2010.
But the right wing press have been telling the story for weeks that he's ahead in the polls and would win easy.
So he is deciding if to call an election.
No doubt at all that he would win.
That's of course till the Tory conference and baby David pulls the lead back.But it makes no difference,Gordon Brown and the labour party would still win.The key is the margin.
If it's a small margin 20,30 seats the press will say his authority as leader is in question.A bigger win gives him that power.Of course now Gordon is indecisive.
But at no time has he said he's even thinking about it's all just press speculation.
It's all part of a continuing attack on Gordon Brown this credible source is running.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...4/npoll104.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m.../05/dl0501.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m.../05/do0501.xml

Getting the idea now.

Now to your story,please find another source with this story.Because I have trouble believing anything in a well known Tory rag.

In fact a list of you credible sources would be nice.
You seem to be dodging doing that for some reason.

[malvachat]

I thinks I must be physic.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNew...50140120071008

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNew...64885720071008

"reuters"
Credible source??
Not sure?still waiting for the list.

From the same source.

"War on terror seen fuelling al Qaeda"

"the "war on terror" is failing and instead fuelling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements,"

"Going to war with Iran", he said, "will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs."

"Oxford Research Group"
Credible??


http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldN...37906320071008

[multi]

The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know

Two former high-ranking policy experts from the Bush Administration say the U.S. has been gearing up for a war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise. It'll be Iraq all over again.

In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say.

"The hard-liners are upping the pressure on the State Department," says Leverett. "They're basically saying, 'You've been trying to engage Iran for more than a year now and what do you have to show for it? They keep building more centrifuges, they're sending this IED stuff over into Iraq that's killing American soldiers, the human-rights internal political situation has gotten more repressive -- what the hell do you have to show for this engagement strategy?' "

But the engagement strategy was never serious and was designed to fail, they say. Over the last year, Rice has begun saying she would talk to "anybody, anywhere, anytime," but not to the Iranians unless they stopped enriching uranium first. That's not a serious approach to diplomacy, Mann says. Diplomacy is about talking to your enemies. That's how wars are averted. You work up to the big things. And when U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had his much-publicized meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad this spring, he didn't even have permission from the White House to schedule a second meeting.

The most ominous new development is the Bush administration's push to name the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.

"The U.S. has designated any number of states over the years as state sponsors of terrorism," says Leverett. "But here for the first time the U.S. is saying that part of a government is itself a terrorist organization."

This is what Leverett and Mann fear will happen: The diplomatic effort in the United Nations will fail when it becomes clear that Russia's and China's geopolitical ambitions will not accommodate the inconvenience of energy sanctions against Iran. Without any meaningful incentive from the U.S. to be friendly, Iran will keep meddling in Iraq and installing nuclear centrifuges. This will trigger a response from the hard-liners in the White House, who feel that it is their moral duty to deal with Iran before the Democrats take over American foreign policy. "If you get all those elements coming together, say in the first half of '08," says Leverett, "what is this president going to do? I think there is a serious risk he would decide to order an attack on the Iranian nuclear installations and probably a wider target zone."

This would result in a dramatic increase in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, attacks by proxy forces like Hezbollah, and an unknown reaction from the wobbly states of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where millions admire Iran's resistance to the Great Satan. "As disastrous as Iraq has been," says Mann, "an attack on Iran could engulf America in a war with the entire Muslim world."

Mann and Leverett believe that none of this had to be.

Flynt Lawrence Leverett grew up in Fort Worth and went to Texas Christian University. He spent the first nine years of his government career as a CIA analyst specializing in the Middle East. He voted for George Bush in 2000. On the day the assassins of Al Qaeda flew two hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center, Colin Powell summoned him to help plan the response. Five months later, Leverett landed a plum post on the National Security Council. When Condoleezza Rice discussed the Middle East with President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, Leverett was the man standing behind her taking notes and whispering in her ear.

Today, he sits on the back deck of a house tucked into the curve of a leafy suburban street in McLean, Virginia, a forty-nine-year-old white American man wearing khakis and a white dress shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. Mann sits next to him, also wearing khakis. She's thirty-nine but looks much younger, with straight brown hair and a tomboy's open face. The polish on her toenails is pink. If you saw her around McLean, you wouldn't hesitate:

Soccer mom. Classic soccer mom.

But with degrees from Brandeis and Harvard Law and stints at Tel Aviv University and the powerful Israeli lobby known as AIPAC, she has even better right-wing credentials than her husband.

As they talk, eating grapes out of a bowl, lawn mowers hum and birds chirp. The floor is littered with toy trucks and rubber animals left behind by the youngest of their four children. But the tranquillity is misleading. When Mann and Leverett went public with the inside story behind the impending disaster with Iran, the White House dismissed them. Then it imposed prior restraint on them, an extraordinary episode of government censorship. Finally, it threatened them.

Now they are afraid of the White House, and watching what they say. But still, they feel they have to speak out.

Like so many things these days, this story began on the morning of September 11, 2001. On Forty-fifth Street in Manhattan, Mann had just been evacuated from the offices of the U.S. mission to the United Nations and was walking home to her apartment on Thirty-eighth Street -- walking south, toward the giant plume of smoke. When her cell phone rang, she picked it up immediately because her sister worked at the World Trade Center and she was frantic for word. But it wasn't her sister, it was a senior Iranian diplomat. To protect him from reprisals from the Iranian government, she doesn't want to name him, but she describes him as a cultured man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair. Since early spring, they had been meeting secretly in a small conference room at the UN.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Yes, she said, she was fine.

The attack was a terrible tragedy, he said, doubtless the work of Al Qaeda.

"I hope that we can still work together," he said.
http://www.esquire.com/features/iranbriefing1107

[malvachat]

Been away for the week(nice break in the sun)
I come back and find Albed still can't come up with a list of credible sources for us all to study.
Why is that?
Maybe it's because he's more interested in name calling than debate.Or even a exchange of views based on agreed principles.
Or maybe he's only interested in one point of view his own.
Or maybe a combination of all three.