Out of Iraq and Into Iran?

30 thoughts on “Out of Iraq and Into Iran?”

1. Scott
   You might enjoy this
   Entitled Army Future Invade Azerbaijan
   http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/tradoc-uses-a-s.html
   it will have the war as videogame guys slavering at the mouth.
   Adolf wanted to go to Baku too but he didn’t manage to capture the Tractor Factory on the Volga.
   The weak kneed lilly livered Brits have wimped out of course.
   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/14/nforeign214.xml

2. Lets “fishing …nasty” all these talks and posts by some they had specialities in ME as they claims, and other many Americans, all these accusations of wars and crimes they did not realising that their country supporting for a long time Israel with all their crimes in ME not just that in 1980 they fuel the war between Iraq and Iran, followed in 1991 by giving a green light by US Ambassador April Glaspie to Saddam.
   But all in all Americans enjoying their life while the crimes done in ME for long time just because their different administrations worked hard to control and get the life blood for them “THE OIL”.
   Did you realise that just writing accusing others of the crimes your country doing on different names can stop these sets of wars?
   North Korea is on your footstep guys, has more advanced and dangerous weapons than Iraq and Iran both you knew all that, what your administration did?
   Lest solve it diplomatically!! But oh yah those researchers and academics saying US should intervene in Iraq and Palestine supporting our friend Israel (the only democracy in ME) let us portioning their country!!, we created this country let redraw the new map for them!! Or better of lest “Kill’em All” those nationalists, insurgences and terrorists.
   But what friends you had in the region guys who kept in power so long by your support?
   The Saudis, Kuwaitis and Those ageing Kingdoms in the Gulf, its ok they are corrupted thugs and anti-democratises regimes but are friendly lets you to get their oil (at lower prices) “stealing” their nation and their people wealth but those corrupted thugs are friendly and well doing for their nations in your eyes and researches as soon are doom stupid and they enjoying their red nights in your land.
   According to your set of laws that born about 300 years ago most of you proud of the values of that set of laws from the democracy and freedom is states this:
   In the [Constitutional] convention George Mason argued that the President might use his pardoning power to “pardon crimes which were advised by himself” or, before indictment or conviction, “to stop inquiry and prevent detection.” James Madison responded:

   [I]f the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds [to] believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty…

   Madison went on to [say] contrary to his position in the Philadelphia convention, that the President could be suspended when suspected, and his powers would devolve on the Vice President, who could likewise be suspended until impeached and convicted, if he were also suspected./I>
   Then do your homework their not on other land by killing them and steal their wealth and enjoying their life greedy peoples
   

3. Scott,
   Out of Iraq and Into Iran?
   “Out of “FORMER” Iraq and Into Iran?”
   How much smear fishy this Scott according to your own writing in last post?
   The head of post so fishy here
   Did you see this will help you in case your specialty in ME and Iraq short of knowledge!!
   The Bases Are Loaded
   http://www.alternatefocus.org/
   And what about US embassy in Baghdad Scott, is it build to be left for Iraqi?

4. How Salah,
   Old Cheyenne saying: Fish rot from head down. Bush head of pale face fish. Bush rot. Heap bad news for pale face.
   Thus spake Red Moccasin, Hoarse Whisperer

5. caught from JC’s blog:
   http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd79.html
   (e.g., “the Senate’s blank check for war on Iran”)
   The writer leaves out that at least some of those who voted for it were careful to assert that they were not authorizing use of force against Iran…. Alas, that’s a distinction easily lost….

6. Scott, the reason why the former White House one-star spokesman in Baghdad was framing the snatch-and-snuff attack on our outpost last January as an Iranian enterprise was to lay the predicate for an Iranian attack as a force-protection measure designed to protect the US troops in Iraq. The president is spinning this as part of the Iraq venture, which is already authorized. “Self-defense” (irony intended) is inherent in all the US rules of engagement.

7. From the Daily Star…I cannot support a war with Iran, but I think this regime
   is just despicable…We MUST let our LEGISLATORS know, contrary to AIPAC,
   WITHOUT OUR EFFORTS TOWARD ASSISTANCE TO LEBANON and the PA, IRAN’s influence
   in the region WILL CONTINUE TO GROW…THEY PAY, we do NOT! Hope you all have written in support of a $750M UNCONDITIONAL AID package for Lebanon?
   FYI,
   KDJ
   Iran to intensify crackdown on un-Islamic dress
   By Agence France Presse (AFP)
   Monday, July 16, 2007
   TEHRAN: Iran warned that its police will enforce a drive against clothing deemed
   un-Islamic with renewed vigor this month by doubling the number of forces
   assigned to check up on lax dressing, local media reported. Ahmad Reza Radan,
   the head of Tehran’s police force, dismissed any notion that the crackdown was
   now fizzling out, saying it was “unstoppable.” “From July 23, the number of
   police assigned to this mission will be doubled,” he told the student news
   agency ISNA late on Saturday. “We will multiply the number of patrols from July
   23 in such a way that all streets, parks and places of entertainment be
   covered,” he added. He said the police’s policy will be first to give a verbal
   warning to those who infringe the law and if necessary they will then be
   arrested and taken to a center for “consultation.” “If their behavior is not
   accidental they will then be handed over to the judiciary,” he added. The dress
   crackdown is just one part of a major moral drive in Iran dubbed the “plan to
   increase security in society.” – AFP

8. Say Kevin,
   I now see you apparently (from your other posts) associate “bad hijab” with “Islamo-fascism.” (which is entirely antithethical with the point of Farzaneh Milani’s essay)
   Rather simplistic, don’t you think? And would you characterize the far, far more “rigorous” application of “dress codes” in countries to the south in the same manner? Shall we work to have regime change there too?
   And golly, how about the far more repressed situation facing women in the de fact “Islamic Republic of Iraq?” Or how about the Vatican?
   And as for Lebanon, do you really think that Lebanon’s Shia (nearly half the population) are somehow driven in their aspirations solely because of an Iran on the march? (Maybe it has something to do with being rather under-represented in the 70 year ole’ rigid system there? Maybe we should work to change that?)
   I shudder to wonder who you’ve been reading on Lebanon? Walid Phares? Hrari, inc. media?
   Presume you’re familiar too with the paradox that American aid lately is the “kiss of death” for would-be democratic reformers and “moderates” in the region…. How will your no doubt worthy project get past that challenge?
   BTW, maybe you should start your own website to promote your favorite cause?

9. Scott:
   I am not at all sure how to take what feels like to be a very aggressive email? This is not the first time that you or HC have suggested I find “my own website”. Why are you presuming I associate anything? I am the first to say, and have said, that focussing on the hijab is stupid and racist. Do I support regimes which enforce dress codes? No I do not. Do you?
   Perhaps you did not read my post carefully enough-I said I COULD NOT support a war with Iran-however, I surely do not support the Ahmed Nejad regime.
   I find your tone to be awfully presumptious and unwelcome, to be frank. What gives? I did not write the article, btw. Rather I posted it.

10. PS-no, I do not read W. Phares, Scott. I tend to disagree with religious authoritarianism, of any type. Do I see the Shia of Lebanon as solely doing the bidding of Iran-no. Particularly given that Suleman Franjeih was just in Iran and strongly courted Iran’s support.
    I am completely offended by your presumptions, Scott.

11. On the Nature of Our Crimes
    But all in all Americans enjoying their life while the crimes done in ME for long time just because their different administrations worked hard to control and get the life blood for them “THE OIL”.
    Well, first of all, it is not JUST because of the oil, that’s only perhaps 75% of it. There is fifteen or twenty percent of it that is a sentimental attachment to Jewish Statism, to a non-material matter called “Zionism” or “democracy” or even “Western Civilisation” by its fans. We Westerns can never put such lofty spiritual stuff first, as all Easterns instinctively do, but you’re making a mistake to thing it counts for nothing at all when it comes to explaining our crimes.
    We’re good at word games, though, which must mean that word games are not really very spiritual. Add together “Gulf of Petroleum” and “State of Israel” and what do you get? Not a hard question (if you’re one of us): obviously what you get is Stability. As to percentages, 75+20=95. So then, nineteen parts in twenty of the explanation of our “crimes done in the ME for a long time” is our passionate devotion to Stability.
    Notice, incidentally, that it is a good deal less embarrassing for evil US to stand up for Stability without ever crudely mentioning either the regional oil or the neo-Jews of Palestine. In the mouths of certain rightist orators, Ms. Stability can start sounding like a very spiritual kind of lady. Myself, I think that’s silly: she’s not Madame Blavatsky, she’s only a word game, at bottom, Stability is. Nevertheless even word games can have consequences, and in this case the consequences are easy to spot, namely our general tendency to want to freeze every status quo visible in the Greater Levant, regardless of whether it has any significant, or even any intelligible, connection with “Gulf of Petroleum” and “State of Israel” or not. Since “our” oil and “our” Zionism are adequately assured at the moment, and have been since 1945 or thereabouts, it looks as if our — no shudder-quotes! — statespersons have turned the word game of Stability into some very dubious policy maxim like “Let nothing ever change at all, lest it change for the worse!”
    Now I have no wish to be non-bipartisan about all this at the moment, I am prepared to attempt to account for all my poor misguided Uncle Sam’s “crimes done in the ME for a long time” simply as such, with no pretending that we donkeys have been (or perhaps ever will be, alas!) any better or any worse than the militant extremist elephant crew. Nevertheless, Ms. Stability, considered as a geopolitical strategy rather than a cynical word game, seems very lopsidely “conservative” to me. And rather a nasty and Gloomy Gus sort of “conservative” to boot, not Alexander Pope’s genial and expansive “Whatever is, is right!” but more like “Whatever is, is at least better than almost anything that ain’t!” Maybe even, “Go find out what this new gang of troublemakers want and then make sure that they never, ever get it!” (“Oh yuck!,” he editorialized parenthetically.)
    ===
    A reminder may want to remind me that my percentages still add up five percent short. And so they do. I’ve deliberately left the most active ingredient out so far. A decoction, or call it a Stability Cocktail, of 75% “Gulf of Petroleum” plus 20% ‘State of Israel” can of course be considered inactive only relatively. Even a whiff of that brew, let alone a draught of it, always gave offense to very many and it still does, no doubt about it. But look around you, Mr. Reminder! Is that all we have to worry about nowadays? Would it no be rather a pleasure, sir, to rewind the clock of fantasy back to where decent political grown-ups had nothing worse to worry about in the Greater Levant than THAT stale old worry, as it now retrospectively appears to have been?
    Mr. Prosecutor sternly speaks of my Uncle Sam’s “crimes done in ME for a long time.” I trust I may make a distinction of times without it being accounted any overlooking of any crimes to insist that something extraordinary has recently happened under the neo-régime of the Kennebunkport-Crawford Dynasty kiddie. Perhaps not precisely on the occasion of 11 September 2001, perhaps not precisely in March of 2003 either, probably somewhere in between. If Mr. Prosecutor doesn’t see any major discrimination of things in approximately that period, well, that’s more a fact about Mr. Prosecutor than a fact about the accused. Where would one have to be standing, exactly, not to see any material difference between Uncle Sam’s shabby traditional old crimes BEFORE, and Sam’s brave new crimes AFTER?
    Mr. Prosecutor must stand somewhere outside the USA, not to track him down more specificly. He simply does not understand how most nephews and nieces of Uncle Sam emote nowadays. Anecdotal evidence being perfectly worthless, allow me to provide some: I tuned in to WRKO AM-680 Boston the other day and found a rather less bigoted wind-up-toy rightist than usual, Mr. Avi Nelson, saying that if Bill Clinton had gone after M. Bin Ládin the way the Bushies have more recently been egregiously failing to go after him, America would have thought Clinton demented as well as adulterous. Yet after the silver lining comes the cloud: Citizen Avi thinks the crux of here and now is “THEY want to come and kill us.” That tripe and baloney is not peculiar to the militant extremist Republicans, Sen. Zell Miller, in another utterly nonprobative anecdote that nevertheless somehow sticks in my mind, went Citizen Avi one better: if appears that THEY don’t really so much care about killing US, THEY come hither instead specifically to massacre Sen. Zell Miller’s children.
    Mr. Prosecutor takes no notice of all this, and of course on the absolute merits he shouldn’t, for absolute merits “all this” has none. Nevertheless, as raw fact about the USA it ought to be taken notice of in any competent indictment.
    I have not thus far actually named the five-percent active, or rather, HYPERactive, ingredient in my Uncle Sam’s brave new revision of the traditional Levantine Stability Cocktail. I know what most respected Western moralists would call that odd five percent, I know what a Realpolitiker Chancellor Bethman-Hollweg called it in 1914, I could easily dig up some very damnably silly callings of it from the Wingnut City and the Rio Limbaugh of 2007.
    I shan’t try to teach Mr. Prosecutor what the True Name of the hyperactive 5% ingredient recently is, I only aspire to bring it to his attention that such a hyperingredient must exist and that in fact it really does exist. “Gulf of Petroleum” plus “State of Israel” has been recently turned into a whole different decoction, far more noxious, by a one-in-twenty admixture of ________________.
    “We report you decide” chant the slaves of Murdoch in fair-and-balanced unison! Ok, sure, and allow me to report that I’ve left a perfectly blank space for Mr. Prosecutor (or anybody else) to fill in with whatever decisions he happens to prefer. I only insist that THIS is where the blank space must be located, that if you don’t see any blank space there, it becomes rather questionable whether you can properly second-guess my Uncle Sam at all.
    But God knows best. Happy days.

12. Scott
    This Guardian article says that an attack on Iran is back on the table.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2127115,00.html
    I was wondering how these ideas line up with International law.
    As I understand it International Law allows you to attack someone who is preparing to attack you. Fair enough.
    However Iran doesn’t actually have missiles that can reach US or actually have warheads.
    There might be some slight evidence for a possible attack on Israel, but attacking someone because they might attack an ally isn’t on.
    I suspect this would make the Commanders and the pilots who flew the missions war criminals? Court martials in 18 months time? (is it really that long to January 2008?)
    Do we have a specialist in International Law who contributes?

13. Hi Frank. Great question – no doubt deserving of a full discussion.
    Alas, as you know, “international law” has take a severe beating during the Bushist era. Same questions could have been applied to the march to war with Iraq. Previously, the US generally subscribed to the view that we only went to war AFTER attacked, or under attack. (Of course, there’s great historical debates over which claims of “defense” were actually resulting to attacks that were either provoked, or fictional…. ) Repelling Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was defended under this norm — and it received wide international approval at the time.
    But with Iraq in 2003, the US started down the road of the “neoconservative” Bolton-esque version of “international law” — with its change in focus to a presumed defender having the right to launch military action as “anticipatory defense” — against an offense that presumbably was about to happen. (e.g. Israel 1967)
    Yet it’s not just the Israelis who have long used this “anticipatory defense” argument. (never mind its disrepute in IL standard treatises)
    If you look at the arguments Saddam Hussein’s (ummmm….) “advocates” used in 1980 and thereafter, it was the Iranians who somehow had provoked that war — e.g., by incendiary Khomeini comments aimed at Iraq’s Shia, at Saddam, at past agreements, etc. or that Iran was somehow behind bombings and unrest in Iraq.)
    Iran of course took the war into Iraq (after 1982)to seek to “punish the agressor”…. (even as the world at that point was more interested in supporting Saddam to hold back the Iranians) After six long years of bloodletting, part of the reason Khomeini & co could grudgingly accept UNSC Resolution 598 (the “poinsonous chalice”) was because it included the promise by the Secretary General to investigate the origins of the war….
    True to his word, Javier Perez de Cuellar did issue his own report on the origins of the Iran-Iraq war (as he was an international lawyer by training)… and released it as his last act of office. The concept of “proportionality” figured prominently in his strong conclusions that Iraq had started the war…. (e.g., that Iraq’s full scale invasion of Iran was disproportionate to the concerns about what Iran’s actions MIGHT be, even if all the accusations were true….)
    And before Salah treats us to another tirade, I actually worked for the former Qatari Ambassador to the UN for over two years on a full revision of his Ph.D. thesis. Therein, we bent over backwards to cover this issue of war responsibility from multiple angles including that of law. We reiterated Arab reasons to be concerned about Khomeini provocations — and yet at the same time detailing the obvious reasons why Saddam was quite happy to “settle scores” with his Iranian rivals and attack when he calculated that they were indeed quite vulnerable — amid revolution, the hostage crisis, oil field chaos, etc.
    Saddam even managed to declare upon invading Iran that he was “paving the road for the liberation of Palestine”… (wrong direction, but never mind….) :-}
    Much of my work with the Qatari Amb. later went into the documentation of a seminal article on the subject by my mentor, RK Ramazani, (another international lawyer) “Who Started the Iran-Iraq War? in Va. J. of Int’l law (Fall 1992)
    I do hope to teach international law again, and indeed, the various wars involving Iraq and Iran provide much material for discussion and reflection….
    As for your original question, a US bombing of Iran now would have about as much standing according to historic norms of international law as did the US invasion of Iraq in 2001.
    That, of course, won’t stop the Bolton & co from energetically constructing a loud “defense” of such aggressive action…. under their version of international “law.”
    I’m reminded that Helena here posted an short, yet incisive question that “simply” wondered if any aggressor anywhere ever admitted that he was “agrressing?” (I’ll see if I can find it)

14. Hi Frank. Great question – no doubt deserving of a full discussion.
    Alas, as you know, “international law” on war has take a severe beating during the Bushist era. (both “Jib” and “Jab” — in war, and re. cause to go to war)
    Your questions could have been applied to the march to war with Iraq. Previously, the US generally subscribed to the view that we only went to war AFTER attacked, or under attack. (Of course, there’s great historical debates over which claims of “defense” were actually resulting to attacks that were either provoked, or utterly fictional….) Repelling Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was defended under this norm — and it received wide international approval at the time.
    But with Iraq in 2003, the US started down the road of the “neoconservative” Bolton-esque version of “international law” — with its change in focus to a presumed defender having the right to launch military action as “anticipatory defense” — against an offense that presumbably was about to happen. (e.g. Israel 1967)
    Yet it’s not just the Israelis who have long used this “anticipatory defense” argument. (never mind its disrepute in IL standard treatises)
    If you look at the arguments Saddam Hussein’s (ummmm….) “advocates” used in 1980 and thereafter, it was the Iranians who somehow had provoked that war — e.g., by incendiary Khomeini comments aimed at Iraq’s Shia, at Saddam, at past agreements, etc. or that Iran was somehow behind bombings and unrest in Iraq.)
    Iran of course took the war into Iraq (after 1982)to seek to “punish the agressor”…. (even as the western world held its noses and was more interested in supporting Saddam to hold back the Iranians — and making big money selling Saddam arms….) After six long years of bloodletting, part of the reason Khomeini & co could grudgingly accept UNSC Resolution 598 (the “poinsonous chalice”) was because it included the promise by the Secretary General to investigate the origins of the war….
    True to his word, Javier Perez de Cuellar did issue his own report on the origins of the Iran-Iraq war (as he was an international lawyer by training)… and released it as his last act of office. The concept of “proportionality” figured prominently in his strong conclusions that Iraq had started the war…. (e.g., that Iraq’s full scale invasion of Iran was disproportionate to the concerns about what Iran’s actions MIGHT be, even if all the accusations were true….)
    And before Salah treats us to another tirade, I actually worked for the former Qatari Ambassador to the UN for over two years on a full revision of his Ph.D. thesis. Therein, we bent over backwards to cover this issue of war responsibility from multiple angles including that of law. We reiterated genuine Arab reasons to be concerned about Khomeini provocations — and yet at the same time detailing the obvious reasons why Saddam was quite happy to “settle scores” with his Iranian rivals and attack when he calculated that they were indeed quite vulnerable — amid revolution, the hostage crisis, oil field chaos, etc.
    Saddam even managed to declare upon invading Iran that he was “paving the road for the liberation of Palestine”… (wrong direction, but never mind….) :-}
    Much of my work with the Qatari Amb. later went into the documentation of a seminal article on the subject by my mentor, RK Ramazani, (another international lawyer) “Who Started the Iran-Iraq War? in Va. J. of Int’l law (Fall 1992)
    I do hope to teach international law again, and indeed, the various wars involving Iraq and Iran provide much material for discussion and reflection….
    As for your original question, a US bombing of Iran now would have about as much standing according to historic norms of international law as did the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. :-} (e.g., not much!)
    That, of course, won’t stop Bolton & co from energetically constructing a loud “defense” of such aggressive action…. under their version of international “law.”
    I’m reminded that Helena here posted an short, yet incisive question that “simply” wondered if any aggressor anywhere ever admitted that he was “aggressing?” (I’ll see if I can find it)

15. JHM,
    I’ve taken the time to read all your long tirade carefully, but I don’t see your point at all, I’m completely clueless.
    You aren’t saying that the actual chaos and all the sufferences it means is any better than the stability you seem to decry, are you ?

16. The Lieberman bill had an amendment attached-did this amendment restrain the capacity of the Administration to launch a war with Iran?
    It seems that a war with Iran is quite a political football, linked to the Presidency-

17. The International Crisis Group had an excellent piece on Iran, perhaps 2 months ago or so; I am keen as to whether readers/commentators here have a sense of how much our legislators consider the work of the IGC, or the Carnegie Endowment, for that matter? I know that Daniel Pipes gets an invitation to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations-IGC and CE are from my purview, the most important sources of analysis on the ME.

18. Thanks Scott
    You may recall a great fuss was made by a number of UK generals and admirals in 2003 to get the attorney general to declare that the invasion was legal.
    Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff remarked that after spending years trying to get Milosovich to stand trial in the Hague, that he didn’t intend to end up in the next cell.
    Now that the Federal Courts are starting to assert that the Constitution was never suspended in 2001 after all speculation is rising that handing people over to the Holy Office (the Inquisition) in Guantanamo might not actually be legal.
    One of these days we will be hearing that “Just Following Orders” is not an adequate defence, as was established 60 years ago.
    This surely must give some of the Military Officers and Civil Servants pause for thought.
    Kurt Waldheim’s downfall when things he did when he was in his 20s came out are an example of the kind of career limiting effect of getting involved in dubious wars.

19. Scott
    If you can get to BBC World on TV you will enjoy the Hard Talk with Nick Burns.
    That is one classy Diplomat.
    The program is generally repeated a number of times so if you missed it catch it next time.
    http://www.bbcworld.com/Pages/Schedules.aspx

20. And before Salah treats us to another tirade,
    Who keep interpreting the events in our warm part of the world from their air-conditioned offices using their western mindset?
    Those might know how to read and write Arabic to impress their audience but they do not understand the Arabic mind and culture.
    So Scott, in 1991, 129 bridges destroyed by US, we lived in a complete darkness for four months (no electricity at all) we lived for eight mouths without phone communications, shortage in oil and gas and public services.
    We “IRAQIS” repaired all that from those 129 destroyed brigades to power to the communications, keep in mind there were inhuman sanctions approved by biased UN.
    Then in 2003 to ……………….. may be when ending the bikes rid.
    Iraq went from “Republic of Fear” to republic of hell thank you to US.
    Our families now prisoners in their homes there kids have lost their future because they can not go to their primary schools, to their high schools, to their collages and universities, this generation lost his future and Iraq lost them.
    So you claiming that ” Salah treats us to another tirade” how will be your tone and your nerve if you go through all that for years?
    Note:
    Deleted it if you wish, you’re good in this

21. Salah
    You might like some Irish poetry that says more or less what you are saying but nearly a hundred years ago.
    Like most people I adore Qabbani’s poetry and the total chutzpah of Darwish.
    Too long a sacrifice
    Can make a stone of the heart.
    O when may it suffice?
    That is Heaven’s part, our part
    To murmur name upon name,
    As a mother names her child
    When sleep at last has come
    On limbs that had run wild.
    What is it but nightfall?
    No, no, not night but death;
    Was it needless death after all?
    For England may keep faith
    For all that is done and said.
    We know their dream; enough
    To know they dreamed and are dead;
    And what if excess of love
    Bewildered them till they died?
    I write it out in a verse –
    MacDonagh and MacBride
    And Connolly and Pearse
    Now and in time to be,
    Wherever green is worn,
    Are changed, changed utterly:
    A terrible beauty is born.
    Perhaps we in the air conditioned offices with a western mindset and an intermediate level of Arabic (because Fred Halliday says you can’t understand the Middle East if you dont speak Arabic) might have something to offer of shared experience of misery.
    In the post about Riverbend I mentioned Simone Veil who was liberated from Auschwitz and went on to be President of the European Parliament.
    Your generation hasn’t lost the future. You only lose the future if you give up.

22. Your generation hasn’t lost the future. You only lose the future if you give up.
    Yes of course, who can build Iraq?
    Who can serve Iraq and the land?
    Who can love Iraq?
    The occupier forces and their mercenaries Frank?
    Did you read the recent report from The UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF)
    IRAQ: Traumatised Iraqi children suffer psychological damage
    http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/4ef14e3c0bd5ad74baf903a1b1ad849c.htm
    Do you read/”Knew” what the occupier” doing in Iraq?
    They destroys not just the state they destroy the society, they show you and making you to believe Iraq like Afghanistan, or any African poor nation that’s not deserve to live, they need you to believe and indorse this in eyes and minds of western and the world that Iraq nothing just a gang of humans not deserving to live or to control their wealth, that’s whey those western thugs and gangs came to save the flow of oil to western world.
    They forgotten Iraq in 1980s was the best of all the ME countries in all levels and have the ability in wealth of humans and resources to get out of the THIRD WORLD LIST country!!!
    Is this make sense to those without scene who livening far from Iraq and talking about Iraq? Those who puts numbers and name tens of Arab peoples as terrorist!!! As if there are no terrorists in this world just these tens of people caught in Iraq, did they brought to justices? Did they have fear trials? Did they have lawyers to say why and what’s their goals>
    But some so convincing put these tens of Arab as if these are making “every ill’s” in Iraq today, but they forgot their thug Paul Beremer with $Billions vanished without even questioning him, or the Death Squad Ambassador John Negroponte in Baghdad and more and more.

23. Congressman McDermott on Iran
    http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/sp070717.shtml

24. Salah
    Preaching to the Choir only goes so far. I sympathise enormously, but I am a pragmatist.
    Occupations are brutal. The Russians raped every woman between 12 and 60 when they captured Berlin. The French killed vast numbers in Algeria, so much so that when it was all over they had difficulty finding anyone to handover the country to.
    The Mongol capture of Baghdad was traumatic. They say the Khan had tomove his camp upwind due to the smell of the bodies.
    If you want a tale of misery try reading about the 30 Years War in Europe. The population of Germany declined by 30% due to disease and starvation.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War
    So I am curious to know what you are doing to prepare to rebuild the place when the Americans leave next year. You have excellent english language skills and can provide a key to all the knowledge available on the internet for people who dont have your skill.
    I build telephone networks and am working on producing a knowledge base in Arabic to allow engineers to provide Iraq with a leading edge telecommunications network in a few years time.

25. Scott
    Thanks for the clarification on the status of a premptive attack an somone preparing to attack you.
    I was thinking back to the raid on Libya way back 20 years ago. As I remember it the US lost one of their aircraft, and the crew were fished out of the Mediterranean and the bodies returned.
    In the case of a raid on Iran what would be the status of downed aircrew if the attack is of dubious standing in Law?
    Are they Prisoners of War if there is no declaration of war?
    Given the deployment of Russian made TOR systems in Iran downed aircrew is a distinct possibility.
    I suspect there might be some rapid return to orthodoxy from the position that what is happening “renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

26. This is definitely a good sign
    http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/640B81FE-9C35-4481-BD65-FE894F9BF46B.htm
    Now when I roll out Broadband in Teheran everybody will be able to play massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft
    Mr Kristoff in todays NYT can fantasise about Mr Cheney and Mr Ahmadinjedad swiping away at each other with virtual battleaxes.

27. Nice catch Frank.
    As much as I’m not as much the fan of video war-gaming, you’re right — it would be more preferable for the “boys” to take out their fantasies where they can’t hurt anybody for real.
    Alas, therein is so often the problem — a lot of the gaming produced here in the US sure seems like recruiting fodder dreamed up by the Army. (like the movie 300 and the video game that went with that one)
    PS: Were you joshing or perhaps serious re. when “you” roll out broadband for Tehran? Going for wireless bb or hardwire options?

28. Frank, your reference to the downed pilots’ issue brings up so many “interesting” angles that I’ve hesitated to respond, lest I get too long winded.
    Consider first it recalls the aborted hostage rescue effort in 1980 — and the ugly desecration of the American corpses thereafter by Khalkali & co….
    Yet I also remember that when the US was going into Afghanistan, the Iranians reportedly granted overflight permissions to US flights — and even had made overtures about Iranian space being available for emergency landings and rescues….
    As for POW status in an undeclared war, that was Vietnam wasn’t it too?
    And the entire “law” on pow’s has been, if you will, “shot to hades” over the past four years, and not just by irregulars, but by “our guys in uniform.” We’ve essentially thumbed our nose at the world over their “quaint” standards, but now if our guys (and gals) would get captured in raids, we’ll expect Geneva to be respected in full….
    Yesterday, the Bushies declare that the US does not torture captive suspects and even defines it — but then refuses to answer questions about specific nefarious practices….
    (No disrepect to the many US military international lawyers who continue to make the case for respecting the “rules” we helped craft in the first place… if only their superiors did)

29. Scott
    Fixed line of course. The radio stuff is too bandwidth limited becasue you have to share the availble bandwidth among everyone in a cell.
    I downloaded 3.8 Gigabytes of a game to my PC overnight last week.
    We can do commercially viable 200 Megabits on Copper these days and offer up to a Gigabit on Optical. GPON is presently 2.5 Gbits down /1.25 Gbits up, with a fourfold upgrade in the pipeline and WDM GPON a few years down the road.
    This enables a content and application revolution similar to the Windows upgrade and has stunning economic impacts. It is enabling technology for Friedman’s Flat World and Lula, and Dmitri Medvedev’s social programs and I quite expect to be building things in Teheran sometime in the next ten years (unless it is a glowing hole with my ghost bobbing about in the middle of it).
    The International Telecommunications System is the first globalised system and my job is to manage evolution between generations.
    I am working on the enormous barrier caused by language and trying to overcome the problem that 65% of the worlds internet sites are in English but only 10% of the world speak english as their mother tongue.
    How on earth do you build a critical mass of engineers in a country who can read, comment on and amend RFCs if it takes them a day to read ten pages? (dont worry, I have found the answer) I find I can manage 5 pages of Russian and maybe three of arabic before I need to take a break. My Persian is very beginners so it just isnt up to it. So I sympathise with my colleagues when they cant find the information they need on Google coz it takes me forever to use the right search terms and evaluate the results in arabic or Russian or Finnish.
    We are totally in the clag now that China is rolling out its own standards, if like the CSO documentation they are not published in English. They have a big enough share of the world market for them to publish de facto standards for their market and lock out the round eyes who can’t read the specs.
    So I am suggesting to my young friends in Halab and Damascus and Amman and Cairo that they take a course in Mandarin.

30. Paul Krugman laments his Broadband speed
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/opinion/23krugman.html?hp

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