Biggins
Cake Or Death
IIRC this thing you call "evidence" has never been a requirement for sabre rattling.......pfffft evidence...LOL :p
Iran
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IIRC this thing you call "evidence" has never been a requirement for sabre rattling.......pfffft evidence...LOL :p
RosscoPico
Psy-warrior bunny
Please watch this, the presenter has obviously got a pretty good idea of what's really going on...
kihrjil
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Having read up a bit more - as far as I can make out, the tension is not centred on whether they have an active weapons program per se, more that it seems like they are technologically placing themselves in a position where they could implement one very quickly.
For instance the Arak nuclear site is a heavy-water facility, which can be used for both creating weapons and in a certain type of power-plant reactor. Problem is, Iran weren't building the type of reactor which would use it (this was in 2006, their response was that they were going to build that particular kind of reactor, but after the heavy water plant was finished - this might well have happened, I'm not sure).
Another example is the Natanz facility for enriching uranium, which IAEA inspectors found was capable of enriching it to weapons grade - unnecessary for power production. Recently the IAEA confirmed that they have indeed started to do so, but the Iranian government claim that it is for use in research reactors.
The very recent issue (as in last week), was that the IAEA team were denied access to the Parchin facility, which is the one they are concerned is used for developing the actual delivery technology (it's not nuclear, so I don't think it has been inspected previously as they had no official reason to do so, and I'm not sure if they do now, techinically).
So any one of those things taken in isolation does not suggest a weapons program, or come outside of Iran's rights under the NPT treaty, but collectively they don't seem to fit a nuclear program aimed solely at power production, and I can see why hackles are raised.
Sorry none of that is referenced, there's a little bbc round up of Iran's nuclear facilites here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11927720 and I might try and find some better ones when I've got a moment.
For the record I do not think that any of the above provides a basis for military intervention. Even if proof of an active weapons program could be established, I still think there is some very skewed cost to risk analysis going on.
SugarPixie
unforgoatable
I just can't get my head around why Israel is allowed to have nukes but not Iran!
edit..something to do with them being musalims i guess?
edit..something to do with them being musalims i guess?
RosscoPico
Psy-warrior bunny
I certainly don't think the concept of Iran having a nuclear weapon is a bad thing, in fact if Russia could sell Iran a half-dozen nukes then that would be ideal.
Military aggression from the US/Nato alliance targets weaker states with valuable commodities which they need. Of course their are strategic geopolitical implications too, as Iran is a ally of China and Russia and these countries have strong ties. Harming Iran is an indirect challenge to these other global players, who are well aware what the real reason are for this confrontational approach.
Technically we are already at war with Iran. Drone planes, economic warfare, assassinations of iran nuclear scientists, explosions at Iran's nuclear sites etc.
To be honest, I don't think the US would actually come out all that well in a war with Iran. Read this;
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=285164
"In Millennium Challenge 2002’s war scenario, Iran would react to U.S. aggression by launching a massive barrage of missiles that would overwhelm the U.S. and destroy sixteen U.S. naval vessels – an aircraft carrier, ten cruisers, and five amphibious ships. It is estimated that if this had happened in real war theatre context, more than 20,000 U.S. servicemen would have been killed in the first day following the attack."
Why hasn't the US attacked North Korea? Maybe because they have a suitable deterrent, i.e. nukes?
Who's got (by far) the most WMD's in the middle east, errrmmm.....Israel! According to Wikipedia: it has been estimated that Israel possesses from 75 to as many as 400 nuclear weapons.
So what really should the IAEA be doing, I'd say they should be investigating Israels nukes as we don't even know how many they have managed to stockpile!
If Iran had a nuke would it fire one at Israel? Well, that would be total suicide then wouldn't it!!!!
I say good luck to Iran for developing Nuclear weapons, as they've already learned now that if they are one of the remaining resource rich counties in the world and especially with all that oil just sitting there, then they had seriously better watch out as bigger powers will of course want to take it off them for themselves.
So if they had a nuke (I know this would sound crazy to some people), I think it would actually make the world a safer place (i.e. they will be less of a viable target)!
Before you suggest that I'm being ridiculous by saying this, please take a read of article first;
Israel: "Wiped off The Map". The Rumor of the Century, Fabricated by the US Media to Justify An All out War on Iran
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21188
Military aggression from the US/Nato alliance targets weaker states with valuable commodities which they need. Of course their are strategic geopolitical implications too, as Iran is a ally of China and Russia and these countries have strong ties. Harming Iran is an indirect challenge to these other global players, who are well aware what the real reason are for this confrontational approach.
Technically we are already at war with Iran. Drone planes, economic warfare, assassinations of iran nuclear scientists, explosions at Iran's nuclear sites etc.
To be honest, I don't think the US would actually come out all that well in a war with Iran. Read this;
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=285164
"In Millennium Challenge 2002’s war scenario, Iran would react to U.S. aggression by launching a massive barrage of missiles that would overwhelm the U.S. and destroy sixteen U.S. naval vessels – an aircraft carrier, ten cruisers, and five amphibious ships. It is estimated that if this had happened in real war theatre context, more than 20,000 U.S. servicemen would have been killed in the first day following the attack."
Why hasn't the US attacked North Korea? Maybe because they have a suitable deterrent, i.e. nukes?
Who's got (by far) the most WMD's in the middle east, errrmmm.....Israel! According to Wikipedia: it has been estimated that Israel possesses from 75 to as many as 400 nuclear weapons.
So what really should the IAEA be doing, I'd say they should be investigating Israels nukes as we don't even know how many they have managed to stockpile!
If Iran had a nuke would it fire one at Israel? Well, that would be total suicide then wouldn't it!!!!
I say good luck to Iran for developing Nuclear weapons, as they've already learned now that if they are one of the remaining resource rich counties in the world and especially with all that oil just sitting there, then they had seriously better watch out as bigger powers will of course want to take it off them for themselves.
So if they had a nuke (I know this would sound crazy to some people), I think it would actually make the world a safer place (i.e. they will be less of a viable target)!
Before you suggest that I'm being ridiculous by saying this, please take a read of article first;
Israel: "Wiped off The Map". The Rumor of the Century, Fabricated by the US Media to Justify An All out War on Iran
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21188
kihrjil
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Yea there's no doubt in my mind that there is intense US hypocrisy at the centre of this - but of course in typical US fashion they argue that the threat is so great that it's a worthwhile, nay necessary, hypocrisy :rolleyes:
The nuclear history with Israel looks pretty complex - the big difference between Iran and Israel being that Israel never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This sought to ensure global nuclear safety by setting up an agreement that already nuclear countries (this was in 1968) would openly give information regarding nuclear energy in return for a guarantee that it would not be used for building weapons, and that this entire proces would be completely transparent (hence the IAEA). So Israel, India, and Pakistan didn't sign (hence why the IAEA has no jurisdiction in Israel), but ended up with nuclear weapons anyway. A quick glance on wikipedia shows that France seem primarily responsible for Israel, which I found a little surprising.
Anyway the US have actively pressurised countries to not help Iran develop uranium enrichment facilities ever since the Islamic Revolution, which seems to me to really abuse the treaty, and seems to give a justification to why they might be really reluctant cooperate with the West, and why I don't think this alone can be given as evidence of a weapons program.
That's all cobbled together from fairly hasty reading, I'm sure it's a lot more nuanced than that but I think that's the jist.
depends which iran we are talking here.tyrannical theocracy, or groovy, young & democratic.
IMO the former should have no nukes, and the latter should be allowed to deciede on their own.
I can't get my head around why we we are the morally superior in this situation and even have the right to demand Iran doesn't make nukes if they wanted to. Iran hasn't invaded anywhere in over 300 years, we've been at constant war with some country or other as long as i've been alive! As far as I can see there's no evidence or even grounds for suspicion Iran would use nukes if it had them, I think the real concern is that in getting them they would have the military power required to be taken seriously as a world power, and that would really mess up our (centuries old) plans for dominance of the middle east.
J
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kihrjil
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I get what you're saying, but I do think that there are certain values that we have to have as fundamental, otherwise we become a world full of Switzerlands. Intervention in Iran is being sold on the basis that nuclear war is the most horrible thing we can possibly imagine, and we must do anything we can to stop it happening, or even a situation developing in which it is even remotely likely. Now I don't find any fault with that, regardless of the moral failings of the participants.
But of course it's never clear how likely it is for someone to use a nuclear weapon, and in this case I agree that the evidence is highly flimsy that Iran would do such a thing. The evidence cited is normally the aggressive rhetoric that has come thick from the mouths of the Iranian theocracy for years and years, usually having something to do with removing Israel form the map. Now personally I think their actions do not bear out their words, and that actually there are plenty of domestic reasons why Iranian elites might say these things while having no intention of following them through.
But to the US (and any supporters of intervention) this doesn't matter - because to them the risk doesn't have to be big, even if the smallest threat exists then they believe any cost is worth paying to stop it. And the fact that they are Islamic, fanatical, and have made what are essentially genocidal statements in the past, combined with even the capacity to create a nuclear weapon, is enough for them. I think this is skewed, but this is the effect of 9/11.
And this is why I don't think Iran is about oil at root - I am not trying to suggest that Western foreign policy does not consider things like that (it would be ludicrous and naive to do so) - but I think this really is the effect that 9/11 has had on them: that any Islamic power has the potential to act suicidally irrational, and that because of this they must be challenged at anything that even hints at nuclear armarment. And this is terrifying, because it leaves Iran in the position of having to prove a negative, and could well end up driving them to actually start a nuclear weapons program in a classic prisoner's dilemma scenario.
Mohammeds bride was Aisha, whom he met when she was 9 and as far as i am told the marriage was consumated when she was 12. Not sure what the life expectancy was back in those days.
Marriageable age used to be 14 or 12 in Britain Source QI, in a bit about Gretna Green.
Marriageable age used to be 14 or 12 in Britain Source QI, in a bit about Gretna Green.
This from the US Department of Defence, it's also backed up by Wikileaked reports. It wasn't big news because it wasn't the mass production which was lied about to go to war, but there were chemical weapons still floating around Iraq.
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=15918
Quite frankly, i'd take that report with a pinch of salt, given it's provenance. It's a retroactive attempt too justify and cover arses.
It also contains inaccuracies and misleading ionformation.
For example, to say that it's not known exactly how sarin breaks down is bollocks. There have been books written about it.
And to say that the remaining products could have been useful to terrorists is duplicitous. The premise for invasion was WMDs launched within 45 minutes, remember?
There is no doubt that Iraq did have WMDs. We know that because it was NATO aligned countries that supplied theh technology, the knowhow and the precursors.
What that report doesn't say is that they were all way past their use-by date and non-viable when they were discovered.
That is exactly what Blix, Ritter and the other UN inspectors reported before the invasion.
After UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, U.S.-led forces bombed many sites believed to be chemical weapon plants. After the bombing, reports emerged that Iraq had rebuilt many of those sites, and that the sites appeared to be operating. It was inferred that Iraq had resumed its production of chemical weapons, and was adding new elements to the portion of its previous stockpile that had never been accounted for. No evidence confirming these inferences has emerged to date.
http://www.iraqwatch.org/profiles/chemical.html
It also contains inaccuracies and misleading ionformation.
For example, to say that it's not known exactly how sarin breaks down is bollocks. There have been books written about it.
And to say that the remaining products could have been useful to terrorists is duplicitous. The premise for invasion was WMDs launched within 45 minutes, remember?
There is no doubt that Iraq did have WMDs. We know that because it was NATO aligned countries that supplied theh technology, the knowhow and the precursors.
What that report doesn't say is that they were all way past their use-by date and non-viable when they were discovered.
That is exactly what Blix, Ritter and the other UN inspectors reported before the invasion.
After UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, U.S.-led forces bombed many sites believed to be chemical weapon plants. After the bombing, reports emerged that Iraq had rebuilt many of those sites, and that the sites appeared to be operating. It was inferred that Iraq had resumed its production of chemical weapons, and was adding new elements to the portion of its previous stockpile that had never been accounted for. No evidence confirming these inferences has emerged to date.
http://www.iraqwatch.org/profiles/chemical.html
Thew report doesn't state that Saddams forces had been stockpiling them, or were aware of them...it's talking about more random finds of chemicals, ones that had disappeared or couldnt be accounted for. Nothing major, nothing big enough to be able to claim they werent lying in the first place, a few bullets here, a shell there.
Since you're using iraqwatch as a source...
http://www.iraqwatch.org/profiles/chemical.html
From the same link
Its not hard to believe there were a few shells or bullets that tested positive to chemicals.
In providing these links I'm in no way attempting to justify the invasion of Iraq. I think it was wrong, illegal and somewhere around 100,000 Iraqis were murdered to kill one man.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/nov/15/usa.iraq
The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it
Now we know napalm and phosphorus bombs have been dropped on Iraqis, why have the hawks failed to speak out?
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Did US troops use chemical weapons in Falluja? The answer is yes. The proof is not to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It's a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial. But the bloggers debating it found the smoking gun.
- George Monbiot
- The Guardian,Tuesday 15 November 2005
- Article history
The first account they unearthed in a magazine published by the US army. In the March 2005 edition of Field Artillery, officers from the 2nd Infantry's fire support element boast about their role in the attack on Falluja in November last year: "White Phosphorous. WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [high explosive]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
The second, in California's North County Times, was by a reporter embedded with the marines in the April 2004 siege of Falluja. "'Gun up!' Millikin yelled ... grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding it over the tube. 'Fire!' Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it. The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call 'shake'n'bake' into... buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week."
White phosphorus is not listed in the schedules of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It can be legally used as a flare to illuminate the battlefield, or to produce smoke to hide troop movements from the enemy. Like other unlisted substances, it may be deployed for "Military purposes... not dependent on the use of the toxic properties of chemicals as a method of warfare". But it becomes a chemical weapon as soon as it is used directly against people. A chemical weapon can be "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm".
White phosphorus is fat-soluble and burns spontaneously on contact with the air. According to globalsecurity.org: "The burns usually are multiple, deep, and variable in size. The solid in the eye produces severe injury. The particles continue to burn unless deprived of atmospheric oxygen... If service members are hit by pieces of white phosphorus, it could burn right down to the bone." As it oxidises, it produces smoke composed of phosphorus pentoxide. According to the standard US industrial safety sheet, the smoke "releases heat on contact with moisture and will burn mucous surfaces... Contact... can cause severe eye burns and permanent damage."
Until last week, the US state department maintained that US forces used white phosphorus shells "very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes". They were fired "to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters". Confronted with the new evidence, on Thursday it changed its position. "We have learned that some of the information we were provided ... is incorrect. White phosphorous shells, which produce smoke, were used in Fallujah not for illumination but for screening purposes, ie obscuring troop movements and, according to... Field Artillery magazine, 'as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes...' The article states that US forces used white phosphorus rounds to flush out enemy fighters so that they could then be killed with high explosive rounds." The US government, in other words, appears to admit that white phosphorus was used in Falluja as a chemical weapon.
The invaders have been forced into a similar climbdown over the use of napalm in Iraq. In December 2004, the Labour MP Alice Mahon asked the British armed forces minister Adam Ingram "whether napalm or a similar substance has been used by the coalition in Iraq (a) during and (b) since the war". "No napalm," the minister replied, "has been used by coalition forces in Iraq either during the war-fighting phase or since."
This seemed odd to those who had been paying attention. There were widespread reports that in March 2003 US marines had dropped incendiary bombs around the bridges over the Tigris and the Saddam Canal on the way to Baghdad. The commander of Marine Air Group 11 admitted that "We napalmed both those approaches". Embedded journalists reported that napalm was dropped at Safwan Hill on the border with Kuwait. In August 2003 the Pentagon confirmed that the marines had dropped "mark 77 firebombs". Though the substance these contained was not napalm, its function, the Pentagon's information sheet said, was "remarkably similar". While napalm is made from petrol and polystyrene, the gel in the mark 77 is made from kerosene and polystyrene. I doubt it makes much difference to the people it lands on.
So in January this year, the MP Harry Cohen refined Mahon's question. He asked "whether mark 77 firebombs have been used by coalition forces". The US, the minister replied, has "confirmed to us that they have not used mark 77 firebombs, which are essentially napalm canisters, in Iraq at any time". The US government had lied to him. Mr Ingram had to retract his statements in a private letter to the MPs in June.
We were told that the war with Iraq was necessary for two reasons. Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons and might one day use them against another nation. And the Iraqi people needed to be liberated from his oppressive regime, which had, among its other crimes, used chemical weapons to kill them. Tony Blair, Colin Powell, William Shawcross, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Ann Clwyd and many others referred, in making their case, to Saddam's gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. They accused those who opposed the war of caring nothing for the welfare of the Iraqis.
Given that they care so much, why has none of these hawks spoken out against the use of unconventional weapons by coalition forces? Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP who turned from peace campaigner to chief apologist for an illegal war, is, as far as I can discover, the only one of these armchair warriors to engage with the issue. In May this year, she wrote to the Guardian to assure us that reports that a "modern form of napalm" has been used by US forces "are completely without foundation. Coalition forces have not used napalm - either during operations in Falluja, or at any other time". How did she know? The foreign office minister told her. Before the invasion, Clwyd travelled through Iraq to investigate Saddam's crimes against his people. She told the Commons that what she found moved her to tears. After the invasion, she took the minister's word at face value, when a 30-second search on the internet could have told her it was bunkum. It makes you wonder whether she really gave a damn about the people for whom she claimed to be campaigning.
Saddam, facing a possible death sentence, is accused of mass murder, torture, false imprisonment and the use of chemical weapons. He is certainly guilty on all counts. So, it now seems, are those who overthrew him.
RosscoPico
Psy-warrior bunny
I think you've right Jim, the Iranian regime aren't as young or groovy enough yet to be the possessors of thermonuclear weapons. So we should wait until they are, and then give them some
Can I presume then, that you didn't read the article which I recently posted - before you made this comment?
Iran didn't say anything about removing Israel from the map, that's the Western Media's lies which you're regurgitating there!
THE PROOF:
The full quote translated directly to English;
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
Word by word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).
Here is the full transcript of the speech in farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad's web site
www.president.ir/farsi/ahmadinejad/speeches/1384/aban-84/840804sahyonizm.htm
Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21188
So putting that in context now, does suggesting that the Zionist regime must vanish from the page of time compare with wiping Israel off the map, err no, I don't think so!!
Also, you have to ask yourself, why would the media manipulate this and repeat it to the world so many times (i.e. Iran getting ready to wipe Israel off the map, with a nuke of course!) until most people believe it? Regrettably, hardly anyone ever stops to think whether or not they are being told the truth - they just believe what they read and when you see those same remarks made in enough different places - well then it must be true then, it must be?! Can you give us one good reason why the media have done this, I ask you?
You say 100,000 Iraq's - hmm, I wonder where you got that figure from, the mainstream media perhaps?!
"The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 "excess deaths" (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths -- from health emergencies, for example -- or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million "excess deaths" as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war."
Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12150
So if we can assume that an Iraqi's life is only worth 10% of a EU/US/AUS citizens life, then you've got it pretty much spot on! The Guardian article you posted was interesting to read, although it was pretty clear for all to see during the war that white phosphorus munitions were being used, as the bright white flash and tracers that are produced are a obvious signature of this kind of incendiary device.
But deaths alone don't put it into perspective really, consider also...
4.5 million displaced Iraqis
1-2 million war widows
5 million orphans
or nearly 1 in 2 Iraq's affected(!)
that was a 2009 report and still the bombs are exploding to this day, more iraqis are being killed or injured, orphaned etc. etc.
let's not even start to mention the 2000 odd tonnes of highly toxic depleted uranium dust which will plague them for an untold number generations (U238 half life (99% in DU) = 4.47 billion years)....
But don't worry everyone - we won this war, so it's all good now and the world is a much safer place and well worth the muli-billion dollar debt us tax payers now owe for this and can't afford to repay
We we're doing really well until 2001, and then what happened? Of course not all this debt is attributed to war, but that year just so happened to signify the start of the decline of the UK's economy.
kihrjil
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Indeed I did not read your link. To be clear though, what I attempting with that post was to illustrate the pro-intervention argument from the point of view of those who hold it. The point of this was to try and engage with it, rather than fall into the black hole that surrounds political arguments where opposing positions accuse each other of being too ridiculous (or in your case, malign) to be taken seriously. I think I made it pretty clear that I don't find that argument (pro-intervention) satisfying, not because it is incoherent or driven by evil motives, but because I think it relies on skewed value-judgements, which owe themselves primarily to the psychological impact of the very real 9/11.
With all that in mind, I don't think that whether the aggression is directed at the Zionist regime or Israel itself really makes a difference, the argument revolves purely around the point that some (many) believe that any Islamic hard-liners (and therefore the Iranian regime) are barmy enough to use a bomb if they get one.
For the record I would regard mainstream media as a more reliable source than globalresearch. I really don't want to get into a discussion of the relative merits of sources of information - all we can discuss is hypothetical motives and play tennis with the burden of proof.
**siiigh** Ive had this debate before. The number was believed to be upwards of 600,000 in 2006. Ive come across plenty of people who because there is no conclusive body count are able to argue that down, and the minimum number that even the conservatives will admit is more than 100,000. Im not after a debate here, if its a million, its a million. Either way its a fucking lot of murder that our money paid for.
