US will have to fight dirty in new wars

[Guest LadyC]

sweetservant, you're misunderstanding. the US has not admitted to engaging in torture. the US has acknowledged using methods to garner information that the lunatic fringe considers and reports to be torture. you're reading misleading information from biased news sources.

[Sweet Servent]

sweetservant, you're misunderstanding. the US has not admitted to engaging in torture. the US has acknowledged using methods to garner information that the lunatic fringe considers and reports to be torture. you're reading misleading information from biased news sources.

A Deadwood fan, I see.....

I would suggest you start by reading the history of the region for the past 100 years, all the countries to get a grasp of the under current. I can assure that torture has and is being used.

[Sweet Servent]

Neither of you seem to get it nor really know the polictics of the region, only that you are angry about 9/11 what American is not.... It's so very sad you haven't taken the time to full research the remafications of our past policies on today's problems. I am a woman of God who reads and thinks for myself, and the Bible tells me to love my neighbor as myself. Why do you think God told us that?

[Sweet Servent]

What are your assurances based on?

Brother why are so certain that American you do no wrong? The free press have reports of torture, but I guess because I believe we have done wrong, I must be one of the fringe lunitic.

But the question I have why is it if I disagree with you I am no longer a God fearing woman, but a fringe lunatic. Why are we as Christian engaging like the World in Character assassination. I did disagree that it should not have been reported the secret CIA prisons, it just gave the Islamic extremist fuel to the fire. You think it's bad now, just wait for Iran to make it's move and we helped them with our arrogance.

[Sweet Servent]

Neither of you seem to get it nor really know the polictics of the region, only that you are angry about 9/11 what American is not.... It's so very sad you haven't taken the time to full research the remafications of our past policies on today's problems. I am a woman of God who reads and thinks for myself, and the Bible tells me to love my neighbor as myself. Why do you think God told us that?

Then why don't you post some evidence to prove your contentions? I am not basing my opinions entirely on anger over 9-11. I am basing them on doing what is necessary to make sure we don't have a second 9-11. I don't doubt you are a Christian woman or that you read your Bible. I have been a Christian for over 24 years and read my Bible as well. I have never seen anything in scripture that forbids a nation from defending itself. As a matter of fact, if you read the Old Testament, you will find that God actually helped defend his people when they went into battle.

As for past policies that got us where we are today, that is irrelivant. Basically you are saying that since we did some things wrong in the past, we deserve to be attacked. That is the same type of liberal tripe that comes from places like Air America, a network that is bankrupt when it comes to common sense and now bankrupt financially as well.

Defending itself, brother you don't get it.... No, I never said we deserved to be attacked but if you play with a rabid dog enough and it will bite you. But you aren't looking at how we got here, if we don't start stabilizing the region and stop with policies that are certain to get more innocent people killed. Desperate people feel they have nothing to lose and do desperate things.

How did we get the modern day Iran? Was it not the US who propped up the tyrant who through his own cruelty to his people with death squids and such, caused his people is desperation to turn to false prophets and violence.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was then reinstated as Shah. His rule became increasingly autocratic in the following years. With strong support from the US and UK, the Shah further modernized Iranian industry, but simultaneously crushed all forms of political opposition with his intelligence agency, SAVAK. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became an active critic of the Shah's modernization efforts and publicly denounced the government. Khomeini, who was popular in religious circles, was arrested and imprisoned for 18 months. After his release in 1964, Khomeini publicly criticized the United States government. The Shah was persuaded to send him into exile by General Hassan Pakravan. Khomeini was sent first to Turkey and then to Iraq. While in exile, he continued to denounce the Shah.

[edit] Islamic Revolution and Contemporary Iran

1979 saw an increase in protests against the Shah, culminating in the Iranian Revolution. The Shah fled the country again, after which Khomeini returned from exile in France on February 1, 1979 and eventually succeeded in taking power. On February 11, Khomeini declared a provisional government led by prime minster Mehdi Bazargan and on March 30 to March 31, asked all Iranians sixteen years of age and older, male and female, to vote in a referendum on the question of establishing an Islamic republic in Iran. Over 98% voted in favour of replacing the monarchy with the newly-proposed form of government. Khomeini's new Islamic state instated conservative Islamic laws and unprecedented levels of direct clerical rule.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini leader of the Islamic revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Iran's relations with the United States were severely strained after the revolution, especiallly when Iranian students seized US embassy personnel on November 4, 1979, labeling the embassy a "Den of Spies" and accused its personnel of being CIA agents trying to overthrow the revolutionary government, similiar to what they did against Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. Khomeini did not stop the students from holding embassy employees hostage and instead supported the embassy take over, a move which only increased his popularity among the revolutionaries. Women, African Americans and one hostage diagnosed with multiple sclerosis were soon released. Despite attempts made by the administration of US President Jimmy Carter at negotiation and rescuing the remaining hostages through such methods as Operation Eagle Claw, Iran refused to release them and threatened to put the hostages on trial for espionage. The students demanded the handover of the shah in exchange for the hostages. However, this exchange never took place, and after 444 days of captivity, embassy employees were finally allowed to leave Iran and return to the United States on the basis of Algiers declaration in which U.S. hasn't released the properties of Iran.

Meanwhile, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein decided to take advantage of what he perceived to be disorder in the wake of the Iranian Revolution and its unpopularity with Western governments. Of particular interest was that the once-strong Iranian military had been disbanded during the revolution. With the Shah out of power, Hussein had far-reaching ambitions to assert himself as the new strong man of the Middle East and planned a full-scale invasion of Iran, boasting that his forces could reach the capital within three days. The Iraqi army's assault took the country completely by surprise and the destructive Iran-Iraq War called "Saddām's al-Qādisiyyah" in Iraq, and the "Imposed war" in Iran had begun.

Tens of thousands of Iranian civilians and military personnel were killed when Iraq used chemical weapons in its warfare. Iraq was financially backed by Egypt, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, the United States (beginning in 1983), France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the People's Republic of China (which also sold weapons to Iran), the Soviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact states. All of these countries provided intelligence, agents for chemical weapons as well as other forms of military assistance to Saddam Hussein. Iran's principal allies during the war were Syria, Libya, North Korea, Cuba and Yugoslavia.

Although Saddam Hussein's forces made several early advances, by 1982, Iranian forces managed to push the Iraqi army back into Iraq. Khomeini refused a cease-fire from Iraq which was demanding huge reparation payments and an end to his rule. Khomeini also sought to export his Islamic revolution westward into Iraq, especially on the majority Shi'a Arabs living in the country. The war then continued for six more years until 1988, when Khomeini, in his words, "drank the cup of poison" and accepted a truce mediated by the United Nations. With the fall of Saddam's regime in Iraq in April 2003 and his capture in December of that year, Iran announced it had sent its own indictment against Saddam to Iraq's government, with the list of complaints including the use of chemical weapons. The total Iranian casualties of the war were estimated to be anywhere between 500,000 to 1,000,000. Although Iran itself also possessed chemical weapons, it never used them during the war. [17][18][19][20]

In contemporary Iranian politics, it is believed that internal political factions are divided between conservatives who call for keeping the original ideology of revolution and reformists who want to review the old ideologies with respect to today's world. Iranian establishment's greatest pride is a claim of complete Independence. The struggle between reformists and conservatives continues today through electoral politics, and was a central focus in the Iranian presidential election of 2005, which resulted in the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since then, there has been an increase in tensions between Iran and the US. However, given the opacity of Iranian politics, these assertions involve at least as much speculation as they do analysis.

Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and as such has the legal right to use and research nuclear energy for peaceful purposes [21]. On numerous occasions, the Bush administration has threatened Iran with economic sanctions

[Leonard]

Sweet Servant, your lunatic philosophy cost over 100,000,000 lives in the last century alone. Are you prepared to assert that it is compatible with the 'good news'?

You have bought into the big lies of the Marxist, America-hating press. I assure you this IS demonic influence. You need to repent and ask God to free your mind from every vestige of Dialectical Materialism, and you will then be free of being led astray by the enimies of righteousness.

[Guest LadyC]

sweet, i am highly offended by your implications. first of all, i was responding to a direct statement by you that the US has admitted to using torture. this is untrue and i stated so. your response to me comes across as incredibly insulting since i have no clue what a deadwood fan is, but was said with sarcastic contempt. furthermore, your response to me had zero to do with the statement i made. it had nothing to do with the history, the culture, the anything other than that you made an untrue statement that the US has admitted to committing torture in gitmo.

second, you also imply that since you are a God fearing woman who thinks for herself and your opinion is different from mine and buteros, that butero and i must be, at the very least, incapable of doing our own research and forming an educated opinion. and at the very most, your comment implies that we are not God-fearing.

i can't speak for butero, but i know i gather my information from various news sources to get a balance. some of those news sources are mainstream, some are not. some are more liberal, some are more conservative, and some are in between.

but i have yet to see you provide any evidence to support your assumption that the U.S. has admitted to committing torture, or even any evidence to support your assumption that it is a routine occurrance under the authority of our government.

are there rogue military personnel who commit atrocities? absolutely. and when their deeds are brought to the attention of the government, they are subject to the consequences of their actions. some people don't deserve the honour of serving our country because they are too bent on delivering their own personal brand of justice.

but a few individual idiots committing crimes against the geneva convention do not by any means indicate that our government is authorizing torture.

[Guest LadyC]

oh yeah, and like butero, i never implied you were a fringe lunatic or an unbeliever. seems as though you have a propensity for throwing out blanket accusations that bear little resemblance to the truth, whether it's about the government or about people who disagree with you and call you to task.

[sweetycakes]

Hey, stop throwing accusations at each other, you lot....

Or I will have to come over there and bang your heads together!

[Marnie]

Maybe you should read the Bible. If you think Guantanamo bay is torture, you have serious problems.

If Joshua or Samuel were prosecuting the war in Iraq, and the "war on terror", there would be NO prisoners, they'd all be dead right now. Saddam would have been sumarily executed, via hanging, stoning, or crucifixion within minutes of being captured. Joshua crucified several people in the Bible.

In ancient times, and even not so many centuries ago, when a nation went to war with another nation, the winner did not pay the loser to repair their streets and homes and farms and cities, no, the loser payed the WINNER, and was usually taxed heavily. But America is so backwards, that we pay money to our enemies, who started this war when they came over here and murdered thousands, and when they refused to do what they were supposed to do from the last war.

some of you people need to get your heads screwed on straight, because you'd just sit there and let Osama, or that Iranian Ahmadenijad(or however its spelled), come kill your own family and not even raise a hand.

I am having a moment here. A wonderful moment. I know it's not love, but by golly when somebody makes common sense, well, it just makes me well up. I might actually be open to the dreaded group hug. *sigh* Thanks WSB for that post.