Political Frenzy

Photo: Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2007. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Has anyone else noticed the tension between the US and Russia? It’s so thick you can cut it with a knife.

Today Russian president Vladamir Putin, while visiting Tehran, warned the US against attacking Iran. Saying “…no Caspian nation should offer its territory to third powers for use of force or military aggression against any Caspian state.” It has been said that the US would use the Caspian region to launch attacks on Iran.

The fact that Russia is building Iran a nuclear plant in Russia does worry me a bit. But not as much as what Putin said next, “Threatening someone, in this case the Iranian leadership and Iranian people, will lead nowhere, they are not afraid, believe me.” Wow, do I feel the rumblings of World War III?

If Russia is now in bed with Iran I suppose they don’t like threats, they like action…well covert, deniable action.

With Russia as their new ally, Iran does not need nuclear weapons. Russia has plenty!

What does Russia see in Iran anyways? Maybe Putin likes the ‘death to America’ chants, or perhaps he has a love for secretly building bombs that kill Americans without any repercussions.

Nah, it’s probably just the food.

Source: VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press

Today the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spoke at Columbia University in New York City. He was met with protestors lining the streets and a harsh audience of Columbia students.

The quick version of this genius’ appearance:
- The holocaust didn’t happen
- 9/11 didn’t happen like we think it did
- There are no homosexuals in Iran

-OR-

He is dumb

Lee Bollinger, the University’s president facing tough criticism for inviting Ahmadinejad promised tough questions to their guest, and he delivered.

At one point Bollinger told the president, ‘”Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,”… to loud applause.’ After Ahmadinejad voiced (again) his disbelief of the holocaust Mr. Bollinger said, “When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous,” …”The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history.”

My favorite part of the appearance was Ahmadinejad’s answer to the treatment of gays in Iran, to which he said, “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

Another one of my favorite quotes from Bollinger was, “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.” This is said to the president of another country, I love it.

Ahmadinejad’s appearance made him look just like he is, an idiot. I have read reports that he will even be facing repercussions back home in Iran.

I find it hard to believe that someone this stupid could be elected president of any country.

He is simply a headline seeker, and to quote Martin Lawrence he is as annoying “as a gnat at a barbeque.”

Source: Associated Press

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has asked for permission to lay a wreath at ground zero during his upcoming trip to New York City to address the United Nations. The request has been denied…at least the New York Port Authority has some spine.

Why are we letting him into our country?

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said that Ahmadinejad, “…should not be allowed within miles of Ground Zero. In fact he shouldn’t be allowed in the United States of America… It’s an insult to the America people and the civilized world.” Thompson went on to say, “They’ve been killing Americans here and there all over the world for some time,” he said. “They’re doing so in Iraq today.”

I agree with Thompson. The last time that Ahmadinejad addressed the United Nations all he did was grandstand, he said nothing of substance and only confirmed that he is a hardheaded moron. His military forces are building bombs and killing our soldiers in Iraq.

Just because he doesn’t have the guts to attack us with his mask off does not mean that he should be allowed anywhere near the United States.

I understand that this is a UN deal, and that if we didn’t allow him through our border there would be repercussions. But, how bad could they be? The United States is the world’s hegemon and we have upset the UN before (i.e. attacking Iraq).

I can guarantee you that if the shoe was on the other foot Iran would not allow the president of a hostile nation into their country to speak bad of them. But maybe that is one of the things that makes us America.

Sources: Fred08.com, The New York Times

This topic of experience has struck a chord with readers. Many of you have different views on what type of experience a president needs in order to be qualified for the job. Many have some valid points.

In an email one reader told me that foreign policy experience is a must for a would-be president. It is hard to disagree with this, it seems that when a president is criticized it is usually over foreign policy mistakes (cough, cough). When looking at the current candidates I see some very thin foreign policy experience.

Rudy Giuliani, who for some reason I want to like but I don’t, seems to act like he has foreign policy experience. It a recent magazine article Giuliani discussed how he would ‘deal with Iran,’ which seems a bit naive. Here is a guy who was a lawyer and a Mayor trying to say how he would deal with a hostile foreign nation. It is like a basketball player giving directions on how to perform open heart surgery.

I don’t like this, if Giuliani wants to give advice on how to deal with a trash strike I’m all ears. But when he discusses how the U.S. can deal with Iran, “…by undermining popular support for their regime, damaging the Iranian economy, weakening Iran’s military…,” I wonder where he gets his information.

It just sounds like he is regurgitating information from his aides. As a Mayor I can guarantee you that he never dealt with Iran. Don’t get me wrong Giuliani was a great Mayor. But being a Mayor, whether it is of New York City or of Smallville, does not qualify someone to be president. There are simply too many areas that a president deals with that are in foreign territory for a Mayor.

President Bush (remember him?) met with the President of Afghanistan today. They debated the conditions in Afghanistan and the role of Iran in the current wars.

President Bush is playing defense (just like our troops) on these issues. When the US invaded Afghanistan is seemed that al-Qaeda and the Taliban were defeated and Osama would be captured. Fast-forward 6 years, the Taliban has rebuilt and Osama is wasting perfectly good oxygen in some dark cave (what a hero). On top of that we have an unstable Iraq, and a hostile nation, Iran, building nuclear weapons. Are we back at square one?

No, we are back at square -5.

Karzai, the Afghani President, says that Iran has played a “helpful role” in Afghanistan. Considering that Iran is providing the IEDs that are killing our troops daily in Iraq, I would say that Iran is being “less than helpful.”

President Bush said, it was up to Iran ‘to prove it is not a “destabilizing force” in the region.’ I agree with this, Iran is secretive and blatantly hostile towards the US. Iran needs to show that it is being helpful, and President Bush needs to find out why President Karzai thinks that Iran is.

It is always nice to know if you are in bed with the enemy.

Source: BarackObama.com

Barack Obama’s views on the use of military have been making headlines lately. He made a comment about how, as president there would be no use of nuclear weapons…on civilian targets. Which was criticized by the other candidates including John Edwards who said, “A candidate for president should, in general, avoid talking about the potential use of nuclear weapons.”

Now other campaigns are giving campaign advice?

Obama then made a comment about attacking al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, which caused everyone within a 10,000-mile radius to try to spin it to harm his campaign…ahh yes good old politics.

Obama’s comments also caused President Bush to call the President of Pakistan and discuss how the comments, “were unsavory and often prompted by political considerations in an environment of electioneering.” A presidential candidate has that much pull? I’m impressed.

The Obama campaign has been ratcheting up its display of a ‘tough’ Obama who will fight terrorism. An update email to supporters displayed the image above of an angry Obama and talked about the pressing need to deal with Taliban and al Qaeda and how the Bush Administration missed its chance to take them out. All other update emails have been about ending war, then highlighting his views on domestic issues…there must have been a poll that suggested he would gain points if he took a tough terrorism stance.

I like the move because every other Democratic candidate is preaching the same things. Obama realizes that he must beat the other candidates to get the nomination, to do so he must separate himself from them.

It is good to see the anti-war candidate talking about something other than a pullout. A pullout will only cause the strife in the Middle East to fester.

This reporter is tired today, so to combat the insane amount of anti-Iranian propaganda available on the internet, I’ve found a few little glimpses into the daily lives of Iranians on YouTube to share with my readers. I hope you stop associating Ahmadinejad with Iran and start associating the nation with its people: these people.

This one is great. It is a video of protests happening in Tehran. They are shouting “Death to the Dictator” in Farsi, regarding their president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They are all from the Amir Kabir University of Technology, and are trying to break down the doors to the Presidential Palace. The police did stop the students, but they did significant damage.

White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino spoke critically of Iran lack of compliance with the UN’s nuclear resolution. In order to get her point across, Perino talked down to the Iranian people:

We hope the Iranian people would see that the hard-line policies and the rhetoric that is coming out of its leaders such as President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad is not helpful to the country

They elected him and they see him on television all the time. The breeze from the east is that Ahmadinejad is indeed an unpopular president because he is focusing on external affairs more than the domestic problems he promised to address in his election campaign. But it’s offensive that she would attempt to tell Iranians what’s good for them. “I know what’s best for you even though you don’t”.

The UN placed sanctions on Iran in response: financial and arms. Arms sanctions. Who was selling to Iran before? And why did they think that could possibly be a good idea? Oh wait, yea. That was us. And by us, I mean the US.

But the UK has been much more upset at Iran recently. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard captured several British sailors, and sent out a warning against attacking the Islamic Republic. Tony Blair and his cabinet have been working hard through diplomatic channels to have the sailors returned, but it has had little to yield as of yet.

Although this may inspire a conflict between Iran and the UK, the White House has made it very clear that it does not want to go to war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is painfully clear that if the US attempted an attack on Iran, it would lose. But Iran has an axe to grind with both the US and the UK after Operation Ajax. I urge all my readers to read the Wikipedia article here, and to go out to their local bookstore and pick up All the Shah’s Men : An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer to understand exactly why this is happening.

Dana Perino, Tony Blair, Operation Ajax, Iran, White House

In predominantly Shiia Iran, a rebel sect of Sunnis have begun violent attacks. In February, the Iranian Sunni terrorist group known as Jundollah (or “God’s Soldiers”) took credit for a bomb put on a military bus that killed 18 citizens in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan, and now has released a video of their most recent kidnapping: four members of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Iran’s theocratic government is Shiia, but Jundollah is Sunni - the same sect that al-Qaida claims to represent. This has led some to speculate that the two are linked, but so little is known about Jundollah that it is impossible to tell for sure. Sunnis make up the minority population in Iraq and Iran, but the majority of every other Muslim nation.

The part that interests me the most is the American media’s complete refusal to call Jundollah a terrorist group, preferring to call them “rebels”. My friends, the founding fathers were rebels. The Ramones were rebels. These are terrorists. Is it just impossible for these jingoistic reporters to imagine someone terrorizing Muslims? Is their ethnocentrism that deep?

Why don’t US forces help Iran out and fight this front of the War on Terror? Oh, right, because we’re only fighting people who terrorize us.

Iran, Middle East, United States, Islam, al-Qaida, Jundollah

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is refusing to give up Iran’s growing nuclear capabilities, in spite of the UN’s resolution and the US’s diplomatic assault. Iran has been developing a uranium enrichment center just outside of Shiraz in Natanz with uranium mined in Iran’s Yazd province. The Natanz center houses 300 centrifuges, with plans to install 3,000 more.

Iranian officials maintain that the uranium enrichment is for nuclear power, not nuclear weapons. This would be much less worrisome if it wasn’t for the recently announced Shahab-3D, a missile with an enormous range and accuracy, which experts say could soon be capable of reaching European cities as far away as Paris. Attach a nuclear warhead to the Shahab’s rocket, and Iran suddenly becomes a major military power.

Shahab means “Falling Star” in Farsi, and Hoot means “Whale” - but the Hoot is only cetacean in its enormity. The Hoot torpedo, which is installed on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ naval attack vessels, is the fastest torpedo in the world. Again, if installed with a nuclear warhead, this would make them extremely dangerous.

In order to protect the European nations who are within the Shahab’s range, the US has begun offering missile defense systems to Eastern European nations like Poland and the Czech Republic. England and France have also expressed interest in purchasing the defense systems, which would be based on the now outdated “Star Wars” system made popular by the Reagan White House.

Russia has been adamantly opposed to European countries purchasing such a defense system from Americans. Russian Generals have managed to bring up the fact that the Czech Republic and Poland could be targeted by Russia’s own rockets if they so chose. These comments have been taken as a threat, but most political observers agree that Russia is unlikely to take action, only blow hot air.

But why on Earth would Russia be so opposed to the purchase of a defense system? Some analysts say that Russia is upset at no longer being a superpower, and feels that they should be the ones supplying defense systems to European nations. One commenter brought up the fact that NATO has begun spreading to Russia’s borders and they feel boxed in by the member nations, which this reporter thinks has nothing to do with Russia’s opposition seeing as this is not a NATO plan; the NATO missile defense plan has been in development for decades without a single prototype.

The trail of breadcrumbs starts in Moscow, and trails back to that source of American distress: the Natanz facility in Iran, where the Iranians are enriching uranium. The facility has been under construction for years, originating from a building agreement between Iran and Russia.

That’s right, Russia is building the enrichment facility that has the United States crawling up its own poopshoot. Not only that but before Iran began mining for uranium in Yazd Province, Russia was their number one supplier of uranium. Iran has been enriching uranium for years, it’s just the volume at which they’re producing now that has American officials asking questions. Before the Natanz facility, Iran was using a series of centrifuges supplied by the United States and installed underneath Tehran University.

Russian diplomats to the UN have stated that if the US installs missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, it will be the beginning of another Cold War. They still have access to the technology to make atomic bombs measured by the tens of megatons, and since Agent Hanssen was arrested for selling American military secrets to the Russians, we can be sure that they’re still conducting spy operations.

Now the Kremlin seems to be prepping and grooming Iran as the next nuclear power, selecting a nation who has an axe to grind against the US. Everyone except the average American knows how the CIA, according to files released thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, sent in Agent Kermit Roosevelt to Operation Ajax during the 1950s. Roosevelt snuck in Tehran to topple Mohammed Mossadegh, the first elected leader of Iran, and replace him with the brutal dictator Shah Pahlavi. Roosevelt succeeded, and escaped. Mossadegh had to be removed because of his nationalization of Iranian oil, which many took to be a sign of Communism, but was really the only way to escape from the imperialist rape of his nation by English and American interests.

Iran has never forgiven the US, and is now seeking to pick a fight with its newly acquired weapons and powers, like the nerd who just took karate lessons saying “no” to the bully who took his lunch money. And Russia is the karate teacher.

News, Iran, Middle East, Poland, Czech Republic, Europe, United States, Russia, Iranian Nuclear Conflict, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nuclear Power