Iran Is Now A Top Threat To America

[86Dùde]

Authorities he says. Karl Rove was an "authority". I don't support terrorists groups you moron, but yes, I'd like to see the U.S. federal government burn and if that makes me extreme I'll wear that badge proudly.

[Cyclone Ranger]

One, I was referring to Guido, hence the 'and.'

Two, saying you desire to see the US government burn is inconsistent with not supporting terrorist groups.

[86Dùde]

Ok, if you say so.

[optimus]

I'll rely on authorities to determine the threat posed by Iran other than guys who say they're anti-government extremists that want to see the US fedgov burn, or that they support Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda, thanks.

Baaaaaaaaaa Baaaaaaaa I'll just believe what the "authorities" tell me to believe Baaaaaaaaa Baaaaaaaaaaa

[jwreck]

Baaaaaaaaaa Baaaaaaaa I'll just believe what the "authorities" tell me to believe Baaaaaaaaa Baaaaaaaaaaa

To be fair, he only believes the "right" authorities.

[Cyclone Ranger]

No, you're right. It's much better to get your information from Guido, Snouter, and 86Dude.

[86Dùde]

We'd love to know what you consider an "authority".

[optimus]

If a country hasn't attacked us, and the white house says that country is a "threat," then it's safe to conclude that it isn't a threat, and that the government has some sort of imperialistic agenda.

[Šñøü†ê®]

Obviously needs to be updated with the latest cast of characters...but.

[86Dùde]

LOL Jim.

[Guido]

I'll rely on authorities to determine the threat posed by Iran other than guys who say they're anti-government extremists that want to see the US fedgov burn, or that they support Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda, thanks.

A typically inane, meaningless remark from the Mitty dude. I have no idea what he means by 'authorities,' no idea who "wants to see the US fedgov burn," who "supports Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda," or what any of that has to do with determining the "threat posed by Iran," which is just a simple matter of using basic common sense.

[Cyclone Ranger]

If a country hasn't attacked us, and the white house says that country is a "threat," then it's safe to conclude that it isn't a threat, and that the government has some sort of imperialistic agenda.

If a country is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and is now developing the capacity for nuclear weapons, it's a threat that needs to be dealt with, in spite of your fear of hidden agendas.

[Cyclone Ranger]

A typically inane, meaningless remark from the Mitty dude. I have no idea what he means by 'authorities,' no idea who "wants to see the US fedgov burn," who "supports Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda," or what any of that has to do with determining the "threat posed by Iran," which is just a simple matter of using basic common sense.

A typically deceitful remark from Guido, who knows all of the above.

[Guido]

Comments on the Iran "threat" by Matt Tiabbi, one of maybe 5 genuine journalists in the United States:

You can just feel it: many of the same newspapers and TV stations we saw leading the charge in the Bush years have gone back to the attic and are dusting off their war pom-poms. CNN’s house blockhead, the Goldman-trained ex-finance professional Erin Burnett, came out with a doozie of a broadcast yesterday, a Rumsfeldian jeremiad against the Iranian threat would have fit beautifully in the Saddam’s-sending-drones-at-New-York halcyon days of late 2002. Here’s how the excellent Glenn Greenwald described Burnett’s rant:

It’s the sort of thing you would produce if you set out to create a mean-spirited parody of mindless, war-hungry, fear-mongering media stars, but you wouldn’t dare go this far because you’d want the parody to have a feel of realism to it, and this would be way too extreme to be believable. She really hauled it all out: WMDs! Terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. controlled by Tehran! Iran’s long-range nuclear missiles reaching our homeland!!!! She almost made the anti-Muslim war-mongering fanatic she brought on to interview, Rep. Peter King, appear sober and reasonable by comparison.

Like Greenwald, I was particularly struck by Burnett’s freak-out about Iran’s nuclear program, about which she said, “No one buys Iran’s claim that [it is] for peaceful purposes.” She then cited remarks by Director of Intelligence James Clapper, which, she said, “drove that message home.” But then she ran a clip with Clapper’s quote, which read as follows:

Iran’s technical advances . . . strengthen our assessment that Iran is more than capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon if its political leaders, specifically the Supreme Leader himself, choose to do so.

In other words, “If Iran were to decide to be capable of making nuclear weapons, it would be capable of making nuclear weapons.” Unless I'm missing something, that’s a statement that would be true of almost any industrialized country, wouldn't it?

Virtually all of the Iran stories of late have contained some version of this sort of rhetorical sophistry. The news “hook” in most all of these stories is that intelligence reports reveal Iran is “willing” to attack us or go to war – but then there’s usually an asterisk next to the headline, and when you follow the asterisk, it reads something like, “In the event that we attack Iran first.”

An NBC report Greenwald also wrote about put it this way: “Within just the past few days, Iranian leaders have threatened that if attacked, they would launch those missiles at U.S. targets.”

There’s a weird set of internalized assumptions that media members bring to stories like this Iran business. In fact there’s an elaborate belief system we press people adhere to, about how a foreign country may behave toward the U.S., and how it may not behave.

It reminds me a little of a passage in Anna Karenina about the belief system of noblemen in Tolstoy’s day:

Vronsky’s life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do… These principles laid down as invisible rules: that one must pay a cardsharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never lie to a man, but one may lie to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one, and so on.

We have a similar gentleman’s code, a “Westernized industrial power” code if you will, that operates the same way. In other words, our newspapers and TV stations may blather on a thousand times a day about attacking Iran and bombing its people, but if even one Iranian talks about fighting back, he is being “aggressive” and “threatening”; we can impose sanctions on anyone, but if the sanctioned country embargoes oil shipments to Europe in response, it’s being “belligerent,” and so on.

I’m not defending Ahmadinejad, I think he’s nuts and a monstrous dick and I definitely don’t think he should be allowed to have nuclear weapons, but to me this issue has little to do with Iran at all. What’s more troubling to me is that we’ve internalized this “gentleman’s code” to the point where its basic premises are no longer even debated.

Once upon a time, way back in the stone ages, when Noam Chomsky was first writing about these propaganda techniques in Manufacturing Consent, our leaders felt the need to conceal – or at least sugar-coat – these Orwellian principles. It was assumed that the American people genuinely needed to feel like they were on the right side of things, and so the foreign powers we clashed with were always depicted as being the instigators and aggressors, while our role in provoking those responses was always disguised or at least played down.

But now the public openly embraces circular thinking like, “Any country that squawks when we threaten to bomb it is a threat that needs to be wiped out.” Maybe I’m mistaken, but I have to believe that there was a time when ideas like that sounded weird to the American ear. Now they seem to make sense to almost everyone here at home, and that to me is just as a scary as Ahmadinejad.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz1mwG2YokZ

[Cyclone Ranger]

Essentially, all he's doing is offering the Mideast version of the 'immoral equivalencies' argument championed by 86Dude: we've somehow done it, therefore we should let Iran weaponize nuclear materials they can proffer to their terrorist proxies, and if our cities go up in radioactive firestorms, that's just our chickens coming home to roost.

Fuck that. It's not worth American lives.

[Šñøü†ê®]

Interesting article Guido. The MSM is uniformly neocon at this point. I think CNN got rid of their last non-neocon host because he made a comment about the their personal policies. I remember Erin Burnett from her years at CNBC as the unwitting stooge who with Jim Cramer participated in various forms of market manipulation. I would be curious how the Rolling Stone editors let that essay be printed. My guess is that they insisted he say Ahmadinejad is a "bad guy" to act as a qualifier. What commentary I have seen from Ahmadinejad is that he seems to be a rational, patriotic leader who had the founding fathers not been freemasons would have proudly associated with.

[Cyclone Ranger]

If you desire to know what I can consider an authority, read the above, then think the opposite.

[optimus]

If a country is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and is now developing the capacity for nuclear weapons, it's a threat that needs to be dealt with, in spite of your fear of hidden agendas.

Deal with it with diplomacy, yes. Deal with it with violence, no.

[86Dùde]

Essentially, all he's doing is offering the Mideast version of the 'immoral equivalencies' argument championed by 86Dude: we've somehow done it, therefore we should let Iran weaponize nuclear materials they can proffer to their terrorist proxies, and if our cities go up in radioactive firestorms, that's just our chickens coming home to roost.

Fuck that. It's not worth American lives.

While it would be well deserved if Iran nuked DC it isn't what needs to happen. We can't preemptively bomb our way out of mistakes we've made in the past. In the best case scenario you'll have only limited success while creating hell on earth whether you're right or not. Since we cannot realistically bomb our way out this we're just going to have to get used to another nuclear powered state, and contain them or find another way of dealing with them. The world wouldn't survive a war with Iran if it started tomorrow.

[86Dùde]

The bottom line is that U.S. can't have Iran getting in the way of it's imperial foot and won't sit back and have a nuclear iran intefere with it's foreign policy ambitions in the ME which, if Iraq is any indicator, doesn't bode well for Iran. If I were I ran and was encircled on all sides by an all consuming western empire then I'd want nukes too if I knew they could buy me compromise.