deja iran

[alexamenos]

i remember wayback in early 2002, about a year before Operation Iraqi Liberation began, I was surfing my usual round of sports and porn internet sites when I stumbled across international newsstories wherein Russian intelligence sources were saying that the US was building up for an imminent invasion of Iraq.

How could the russians have known in January of '02 that US was going to invade Iraq? Congress hadn't even debated the matter at the time.....hahaha...effing commies, they don't understand how things work in a democratic society.

in completely unrelated news.....

MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran's borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

"The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran," the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran "that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost."

He also said the U.S. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, said last week that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future.

A new U.S. carrier battle group has been dispatched to the Gulf.

The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around 80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are heading for the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been deployed since December 2006.

The U.S. is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the region.

[capitalcity]

Cowboy up.

[Darth Ape]

It reminds me of the situation with China a couple of years back in which they took control of one of our air ships and arrested its crew. China backed down then, for good reason. I don't see the same thing happening with Iran. My guess is that they wind up convicting those Brits of espionage, sentencing them to death, and starting a World War over this thing.

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by Darth Ape

It reminds me of the situation with China a couple of years back in which they took control of one of our air ships and arrested its crew. China backed down then, for good reason. I don't see the same thing happening with Iran. My guess is that they wind up convicting those Brits of espionage, sentencing them to death, and starting a World War over this thing.

was it a ship? perhaps its the vodka, but I vaguely recall a plane going down in china, and things gettin' a little testy but nothing coming of it. in my humble opinion (which is to say my grossly inflated opinion of myself), I don't think wars and such ever actually start over such trivial things....like when Franz Ferdinand or whatever his name was got shot before the start of WWI or when Confederates started taking pot-shots at Ft. Sumter. Those wars were already on their way, and the "one thing" explanations are really just a simplification for the war-narrative.

anyway....we don't want to take on one-billion nuc-lar chinamen. the chinese could have strung the sailors up by their nuts and we'd of done nothing other than bitch and moan. iran is different...we've got a bunch of folks itching for a fight with iran, and sooner or later the iranians will give us sufficient provaction even if this ain't it.

cheers

[dalmations202]

Option # (who knows)

Glass Parking Lot

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by dalmations202

Option # (who knows)

Glass Parking Lot

...that's an eminently plausible scenario....

[MavsX]

holy jesus

[mcsluggo]

Originally Posted by alexamenos

was it a ship? perhaps its the vodka, but I vaguely recall a plane going down in china, and things gettin' a little testy but nothing coming of it. in my humble opinion (which is to say my grossly inflated opinion of myself), I don't think wars and such ever actually start over such trivial things....like when Franz Ferdinand or whatever his name was got shot before the start of WWI or when Confederates started taking pot-shots at Ft. Sumter. Those wars were already on their way, and the "one thing" explanations are really just a simplification for the war-narrative.

anyway....we don't want to take on one-billion nuc-lar chinamen. the chinese could have strung the sailors up by their nuts and we'd of done nothing other than bitch and moan. iran is different...we've got a bunch of folks itching for a fight with iran, and sooner or later the iranians will give us sufficient provaction even if this ain't it.

cheers

From my memory, there were several incidents that occurred over about a year and a half. the two KEY events were our <inadvertant?> bombing of the Chinese embassy somewhere in the former Yugoslavia, and a Chinese fighter jet clipping a US lumbering (prop) spy plane in air space that we claim is international, and the chinese claim is their own. after the collision the jet crashed (and the piolet died), and the US plane was forced to land immediately, which meant in China. Where the chinese boarded the plane and confiscated all the equipment.

However, an important thing happened with the plane downing... the chinese people went NUTS much more than the chinese government was comfortable with. The GOC (governemtn of China) had been aggressively stirring nationistic tendencies and dissing the US since the embassy fiasco, and staging anti-american demonstrations, and what-not, but with the plane, the staged demonstrations actually became real and spontaneous and freaked out the GOC, because they lost control of the size and the scope of the level anti-american sentiment. Fringe nationalist and military figures also tryed to seize influence by further stoking the flames. THe GOC are not dummies and while they viewed the nationalist lever as a crucial policy tool, they also knew that they NEEDED stable relations with the US. THe GOC immidiately began to take efforts to slow down (rather than pump up) the demonstrations while simultaneously talking tough internationally. After this incident they have NOT used the US as the source of nationalism stoking very often, and have instead largely relied on Japan and Taiwan for these exercises.

Iran is different. Ahmadinejad only has ONE arrow in his quiver. He ONLY has nationalism. his economic policies are widely panned (and the economy was anemic before he showed up, and will continue to be so for a while), and people are chaffing at the fundamentalist social restrictions... the ONLY thing he has is rah rah nationalism, and he will play that card over and over and over again. Its hard not to when its all you got. He will "yank the lion's tail" every chance he gets.

[alexamenos]

certainly....

I'd still maintain that the Chinese Government could massacre a gillion nepalese, wipe hong kong off the map, blow-up a US commercial airplane or two, wipe themselves daily with a US flag and even dis' on apple pie....

it still wouldn't be sufficient provacation for war.

iran, on the other hand....ahmadinjead could begin sucking bush's dick tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference. that is, Iran's existence is sufficient provacation for war. it's the logic of empire, really, and as such it follows a logic of it's own.

empire logic goes something like this -- you establish an interest in some far flung place, say Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, which is essential (ostensibly, at least) to protecting the *national interest*. Now, given the importance of Saudi and Kuwait to our national interest, we can't just let them get attacked willy nilly by crazy people, can we?

iraq is a threat to Kuwait and Saudi, now we gotta straighten it out once and far all. just like that, we've now got a big interest in iraq. we can't have the iranians messin' round in Iraq, can we?

and on and on it goes...such is the business of empire.

cheers