Obama: "I'm ready to negotiate with you, Iran." Iran: "Fuck you."

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

yes, yes, but it's cheaper than YEARS and YEARS of war... or... whatever it is when you engage in war, but Congress never approves it as a war...

Not necessarily. A lot of times society is not the product of a ruler but the ruler is a product of society. If it is the latter, an assassination will only bring in a new, most likely worse, [insert whatever].

[sugarpop]

Point taken.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by tw

Actually you have it backwards. Israel was first in demonstrating the power and versatility of drones. The only America exception may have been a drone used by Missouri class battleships to help target their 18 inch guns.

Eighteen-inch guns?? Missouri class???

I keep telling you, tw: copyedit, copyedit.

The name ship of the class was the IOWA (BB-61), you nonGoogling good example of a bad example! Your carelessness outside your specialty (about which you do not write) keeps your credibility in the negative numbers. And never, ever, do you clean up your act. Standards in your writing? Either you have none, or you leave them too low.

I'll leave you the chance to discover the actual size of the Iowa class' main battery on your own.

It's actually pretty fun. Battleships have an ominous yet undeniable beauty to them, like a fighter plane or a naked sword.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Yea, I thought a lot of the speech had not been publicized. But you know when you stand in front of the world and say some pretty stupid stuff as a world leader it is hard to recover from that. Look at Bush.

Better to look at Hugo Chavez. Bush said things that were pretty blunt. Blunt is not the same as stupid. Did bluntness get in the way of consensus? Perhaps so, but it only flaked off what would have been the weak sisters and other myopics insufficiently committed to democracy to see it emerge in places there hadn't been any recently. As you know, I regard such insufficiency with a very jaundiced eye.

Our foreign problems all come from places that don't have democracies running them. And those problems are general; they are not directed solely at America.

What happens if this equation changes and democracies run those places?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

yes, yes, but it's cheaper than YEARS and YEARS of war... or... whatever it is when you engage in war, but Congress never approves it as a war...

It's a war. Quacks like a duck, etcetera.

Congressionally declared states of war carry with them enlarged government authority, so declaration is heavy with internal political consequence: Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for the duration. Jane Fonda might be either in exile as long as Roman Polanski, or only recently out of prison after being convicted of treason per Article III, Section 3 para 1, US Constitution. Things like that.

But, since the Constitution does not forbid calling out the Army without a Congressional declaration, and it is clear that the option of sending troops, and quickly, without having to put the entire nation on a war footing each time has some real advantages in promoting national policy, the precedent runs about 150 shooting affrays with or in foreign places to 5 Congressional declarations -- and they're still wars. Just various sizes.

Come to 9-11, the feeling both nationwide and on Capitol Hill was that while a declaration of war would very much focus the nation's energies on beating the kaffiyehs off the foe, such a response was somehow misaimed or disproportionate. Not, in the end, right.

None of which tergiversation makes trying to win the fight illegal.

Were it illegal, we're, what? Not supposed to win? Keerist. What's up with that?

And when you really think about what's up with that, it gives you the creeps.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Not necessarily. A lot of times society is not the product of a ruler but the ruler is a product of society. If it is the latter, an assassination will only bring in a new, most likely worse, [insert whatever].

Which is why the exhausting, expensive business of being defeated in a war proves a better resetter of societal rules, viz., 1939-45 Germany, Italy, and Japan. Everyone has their nose rubbed in and-how'd-that-work-for-you? They realize it didn't, and make the necessary sweeping ruleset change.

[TheMercenary]

Did the CIA 'Cook the Books' on Iran?
By Herbert E. Meyer

Do you remember that 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate which concluded -- to virtually everyone's astonishment -- that four years earlier Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program?


Publication of that NIE cut the ground out from under the Bush administration's efforts to prevent Iran from getting its hands on a nuclear bomb. After all, why pressure the mullahs in Teheran to stop a program they'd already abandoned? And, of course, the NIE's conclusion was cited by President Bush's political enemies as (further) evidence that the President and his team were so driven by their hard-line ideology that they (as usual) ignored the evidence provided by our country's senior intelligence analysts.


Now, thanks to a brilliant piece of journalism by German investigative reporter Bruno Schirra published in the July 20 edition of The Wall Street Journal Europe, we have evidence to suggest that the 2007 NIE's conclusion about Iran's nuclear bomb program wasn't merely wrong, but corrupt.


Here's a summary of Schirra's explosive article:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/..._books_on.html


Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council. He is widely credited with being the first senior U.S. intelligence official to forecast the Soviet Union's collapse, for which he later was awarded the U.S. National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. He is author of How to Analyze Information and The Cure for Poverty.

[Undertoad]

Obama (out loud): "Iran, remember when you asked to meet... back in post #205? I'm ready to meet with you now."

NY Times: U.S. to Accept Iran’s Proposal to Hold Face-to-Face Talks

The Obama administration said Friday that the United States would accept Iran’s offer to meet, fulfilling President Obama’s pledge to hold unconditional talks despite the Iranian government’s insistence that it would not negotiate over the future of its nuclear program.

The decision to engage directly with Iran would put a senior representative of the Obama administration at the bargaining table, along with emissaries from five other nations, for the first time since Mr. Obama took office.

The decision is bound to raise protests from conservatives who contend that unconditional talks are naïve, and from human rights groups that say the United States should not legitimize an Iranian government that appears to have manipulated its presidential election in June and crushed protests after the vote.

In advance of Friday’s announcement, senior administration officials said that their offer to negotiate directly with the Iranians, for what could turn into the first substantive talks since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, was, as a senior official had earlier put it, a “bona fide offer.”

Obama (secretly): "Guys, meeting with Iran isn't going to actually work... get ready to fuck them."

Jerusalem Post: US shifting Iran policy toward sanctions

The United States is laying the groundwork for sanctions against Iran after having become increasingly disenchanted with the strategy of engagement, two senior administration officials told Jewish leaders in Washington on Thursday.

William Burns, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, said the Obama administration wants to prepare for sanctions now, so that it will be ready to implement them at the end of the year if it comes to that, and not have to start from scratch at that point.

Top White House Middle East adviser Dennis Ross, appearing beside Burns at the panel discussion with the Jewish leaders, explained that the administration's focus on diplomatic engagement had shifted following the Iranian elections, and indicated that the White House now had a more skeptical view of that approach which could give way to sanctions.

Making one more attempt to talk first to determine the seriousness of Iran's interest in negotiation seems reasonable.

n coordination with allies, Washington said today it would accept Iran's offer of comprehensive talks, to test out if Iran was serious about negotiations.

The U.S. announcement came as China and Russia said they weren't prepared to support new sanctions on Iran at this time given Tehran's written proposal this week. Iran's offer for comprehensive talks was made in a formal, five-page written response delivered to ambassadors in Tehran this week.

"The United States and five partner countries have decided to accept Iran's new offer to hold talks, even though Iran insists it will not negotiate over its disputed nuclear program," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said at the State Department briefing today, as cited by the AP.

"The ball is in Iran’s court whether it is prepared to seriously engage in the nuclear issue, as well as others," Crowley said in a further statement by email. "We are following a two-track strategy along with our partners in the P5+1 process – engagement and pressure. Iran’s response will feed into the stock-taking that the President indicated we will make. If Iran refuses to engage seriously, we will take that into account."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurar...s.html?showall

If talks are unproductive...proceed with sanctions.

Makes sense to me.

"Look, I actually think there is some stuff in there … a small opening," said the National Iranian American Council's Trita Parsi. "Fundamentally," he added, he thinks the administration is "not seeing it as a complete rejection. But at the same time, I am not going to characterize it as a positive opening per se. There is a small crack there, [and] there seems to be a willingness to explore it."

Parsi noted that the White House seems to have negotiated an extra couple weeks -- into October -- in which to test out the seriousness of the engagement offer before key Congress members push through Congressional legislation further sanctioning Iran.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurar...t.html?showall

[Undertoad]

Makes sense to me too. The dance is being danced, and being danced well.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Makes sense to me too. The dance is being danced, and being danced well.

Diplomacy is dancing and talking while keeping the big stick visible at your side. IMO, that is always a better approach then waving the big stick first and attempting to publicly bully and/or humiliate your adversary.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Diplomacy is dancing and talking while keeping the big stick visible at your side. IMO, that is always a better approach then waving the big stick first and attempting to publicly bully and/or humiliate your adversary.

Yea, and when they drop a nuke on Israel or visa versa I will remind you of this.

[DanaC]

So what would you prefer America to do in relation to Iran?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by DanaC

So what would you prefer America to do in relation to Iran?

Negotiate. Force them to keep the Nukes they and everyone else knows they are making on the table. I would and think we need to continue to foster elements within their country who oppose the current radical elements.

In the end we may need to allow Israel to bomb the fuck out of the infrastructure and defense. They have one large gas refinery. They have lots of oil but one refinery. Bomb the hell out of it. Do not invade. Give them payback for the damage they did to US and UK troops in Iraq. Otherwise I would just sit on them. We owe the government nothing. I say we embrace the people.

[Undertoad]

Iran: "We're ready to cooperate with you."
UN: "If you ship your uranium to Russia, we will return to you uranium that's ready for use in nuclear power plants."
Iran: "Fuck you."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/wo...er=rss&emc=rss