Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 8183 Location: Fingerlakes - NY usa
War isn't always fought with force. Iran could simply flood the US economy with counterfeit money and bring it to it's knees. The US may even destroy itself, but then control would fall into the hands of world rule as if it isn't already. Unfortunately, Israel is in control of the propaganda war atm.
Tue Jun 19, 2007 3:41 pm
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illuminated
Joined: 21 Feb 2006 Posts: 108 Location: Behind the scenes
madthumbs wrote:
War isn't always fought with force. Iran could simply flood the US economy with counterfeit money and bring it to it's knees. The US may even destroy itself, but then control would fall into the hands of world rule as if it isn't already. Unfortunately, Israel is in control of the propaganda war atm.
Agreed, but if it came down to a military conflict the USA has a rediculious amount of arms...
Tue Jun 19, 2007 3:46 pm
madthumbs
Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 8183 Location: Fingerlakes - NY usa
Let me just put this into a bit of perspective for you as far as what the USA is able to do. There are roughly 20-30 submarines which circle somewhere around the globe. These submarines on average carry 16 Nuclear warheads each. The submarines are undetectable by any radar, sonar, etc., standards today. 1 submarine has enough Nuclear warheads to destroy human civilization on earth. The USA has THOUSANDS of nuclear warheads. I live in San Diego. I am surrounded by Marines, Navy, Seals, you name it. Both my roommates are in the Navy and on the USS Nimitz (currently deployed to the gulf). This information I just gave you is common knowledge given to me by my roommates as well as other friends in the Navy. No one religion, country, power, nation will EVER take down the USA because when push comes to shove the USA will destroy the world......
Humans and their struggle for power sickens me..
Ahh yes, but you see we can't use that logic forever. We do have the most firepower known to man, and we can destroy the world over and over again. But what happens when your enemies catch up to your military power? It doesn't matter that we can destroy earth "1000 times over". If someone can do it "10 times over", whats the difference?
(sadly, my logic here is the reasoning for the War of Terror™. It appears some people actually believe we can use totalitarian states to stop people from attaining nuclear weapons. My logic should lead them not to detaining people who seek nuclear warheads, but rather WHY they wish to kill hundreds of thousands in the first place.)
As America should of learned by now,Arrogance or hubris can not win wars,in fact they serve only to make you lose wars.
America's and Britain's defeat in Iraq are prime examples,After wining the war against Saddam's fores, there was a brief moment when the Iraqi people were happy.
when the Iraqi found out that America was not really there to free them,That torture,rape,murder and looting were America's way of life. a way of life that was no better than Saddam's way.
in the last 50 years Americans have lost wars they should of won, but arrogance got in their way. instead of winning hearts and minds they lose them.
In the aftermath of President George W Bush's recent tour of the Persian Gulf, coinciding with a similar trip by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, culminating in a deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a small French base, Iran's security calculus has changed. It has almost reached the point of Tehran considering the option of reciprocating the perceived excess Western intrusion into its vicinity by allowing a military base for China at one of Iran's Persian Gulf ports or on one of its islands.
Without doubt, this would be a significant geopolitical move on both Iran's and China's part, bound to unsettle the US superpower that enjoys unrivalled hegemony in the oil region and which has unsettled China with its recent civilian nuclear agreement with India, widely interpreted as a long-term "containing China" initiative.
In the tight interplay of geopolitics and geo-economics, with China heavily dependent on energy imports from Iran and other Persian Gulf states, the trend is definitely toward China's naval complement of its flurry of energy deals in order to secure its precious oil and (liquefied) gas cargo ships exiting through the narrow corridors of the Strait of Hormuz.
Presently, China's strategy is confined to the port city of Gwadar along the southwestern coast of Pakistan in Balochistan province, strategically located near the Hormuz Strait. Yet, due to the close US-Pakistan relations, it is highly improbable the US would permit Islamabad to enter into strategic relations with Beijing so that China, still lacking a formidable navy, could utilize it for power projection in the region.
Not so with Iran, which is constantly threatened by the US, and now France, and which already enjoys observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), headed by China and Russia. Iran's bid to join the SCO has been stalled partly as a result of the standoff over its nuclear program, but will likely succeed in the not too distant future should the present patterns of Iran-Russia and Iran-China cooperation continue.
Regarding the latter, China has already surpassed Germany as Iran's number one trade partner. Sinopec, China's largest oil refiner, has just finalized a multi-billion dollar deal to develop the giant Yadavaran oil field, and this is in addition to the "deal of the century" contract for natural gas from Iran's immense North Pars field. Chinese contractors are also busy constructing oil terminals for Iran in the Caspian Sea, extending the Tehran metro, building airports, among other projects. And this while China arms sales to Iran have included such hot items as ballistic-missile technology and air-defense radars.
The growing Iran-China cooperation on the energy and trade fronts is bound sooner or later to spill over into more meaningful military cooperation and, in turn, this depends to some extent on the ebbs and flows of Iran-US and China-US "games of strategy", particularly if China feels additional pressure from the US on the geopolitical front.
For sure, Iran's willingness to show a greater willingness than hitherto to embrace China's naval vessels making port calls to Iran is now in the cards, this as a prelude to more extensive agreements up to and including provisions for a small Chinese naval outpost on one of Iran's Persian Gulf islands.
Again, such a scenario, sure to raise the serious ire of Washington, depends on a number of intervening variables. These include future US moves in the Persian Gulf, for example, whether or not the US military will end up utilizing some of the man-made artificial islands set up by the UAE. If so, thus enhancing the US's power projection capability with regard to Iran, Tehran may be more inclined to try to offset the US's leaning so heavy on it by playing the "China card".
To reiterate, France's bold new move in the Persian Gulf is equally unsettling to Tehran, which finds the new pro-US turn of French foreign policy detrimental to its national interests. The net result is the cognitive bifurcation of "West" versus "us" [1] that nicely dovetails with the new "eastern orientation" of Iran under President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. This is part and parcel of an energetic new "globalist" approach that includes new strategic openings with certain Latin and Central American nations.
In other words, it is sheer error to misinterpret Iran's "new foreign policy" as one-dimensionally regional or continental in nature, despite its narrow focus on Iran's immediate regions.
"Iran cannot remain indifferent to the aggressive geopolitical maneuvers against it by Western nations [who are] targeting Iran in no unmistakable language," says a prominent political science professor at Tehran University.
The professor loudly wondered how France would react if all of a sudden Iran started setting up bases near its coastline or, for that matter, how Washington would respond to an Iranian base in Iran-friendly Nicaragua? "They definitely need a wake-up call that national security is not a one-way process."
While Iran's political pundits are not yet willing to concede that Iran is now at the stage to allow a Chinese base along its vast Persian Gulf coastline, nonetheless quite a few agree that with the changing geopolitical milieu representing potentially serious national security threats to Iran, all options must remain open.
Note
1. After all, Sarkozy has stepped down from his predecessor's talk of "multiploarism" and, instead, per an article in this week's New York Times, "has tempered that notion with talk about France's place within its 'Western family', an expression welcomed in Washington".
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
US Offshore Oil Drilling- McCain vs. Obama - It is not just about the offshore oil drilling but how about builds more refineries. Easy math is to look at 30 years ago and we have same number of refineries but the number of cars increased almost 4 times. Why do we have to spend money to the Middle East and let your own children starving when you have both the resources and capability to do so? Are you waiting to see the gasoline price reach $10 per gallon before doing something about it?
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 9:50AM BST 24/06/2008
John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, has predicted that Israel could attack Iran after the November presidential election but before George W Bush's successor is sworn in.
Bolton: 'the argument for military action is sooner rather than later'
The Arab world would be "pleased" by Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, he said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
"It [the reaction] will be positive privately. I think there'll be public denunciations but no action," he said.
Mr Bolton, an unflinching hawk who proposes military action to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons, bemoaned what he sees as a lack of will by the Bush administration to itself contemplate military strikes.
"It's clear that the administration has essentially given up that possibility," he said. "I don't think it's serious any more. If you had asked me a year ago I would have said I thought it was a real possibility. I just don't think it's in the cards."
Israel, however, still had a determination to prevent a nuclear Iran, he argued. The "optimal window" for strikes would be between the November 4 election and the inauguration on January 20, 2009.
"The Israelis have one eye on the calendar because of the pace at which the Iranians are proceeding both to develop their nuclear weapons capability and to do things like increase their defences by buying new Russian anti-aircraft systems and further harden the nuclear installations .
"They're also obviously looking at the American election calendar. My judgement is they would not want to do anything before our election because there's no telling what impact it could have on the election."
But waiting for either Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, or his Republican opponent John McCain to be installed in the White House could preclude military action happening for the next four years or at least delay it.
"An Obama victory would rule out military action by the Israelis because they would fear the consequences given the approach Obama has taken to foreign policy," said Mr Bolton, who was Mr Bush's ambassador to the UN from 2005 to 2006.
"With McCain they might still be looking at a delay. Given that time is on Iran's side, I think the argument for military action is sooner rather than later absent some other development."
The Iran policy of Mr McCain, whom Mr Bolton supports, was "much more realistic than the Bush administration's stance".
Mr Obama has said he will open high-level talks with Iran "without preconditions" while Mr McCain views attacking Iran as a lesser evil than allowing Iran to become a nuclear power.
William Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative, told Fox News on Sunday that an Obama victory could prompt Mr Bush to launch attacks against Iran. "If the president thought John McCain was going to be the next president, he would think it more appropriate to let the next president make that decision than do it on his way out," he said.
Last week, Israeli jets carried out a long-range exercise over the Mediterranean that American intelligence officials concluded was practice for air strikes against Iran. Mohammad Ali Hosseini, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, said this was an act of "psychological warfare" that would be futile.
"They do not have the capacity to threaten the Islamic Republic of Iran. They [Israel] have a number of domestic crises and they want to extrapolate it to cover others. Sometimes they come up with these empty slogans."
He added that Tehran would deliver a "devastating" response to any attack.
On Friday, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, said military action against Iran would turn the Middle East into a "fireball" and accelerate Iran's nuclear programme.
Mr Bolton, however, dismissed such sentiments as scaremongering. "The key point would be for the Israelis to break Iran's control over the nuclear fuel cycle and that could be accomplished for example by destroying the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan or the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.
"That doesn't end the problem but it buys time during which a more permanent solution might be found.... How long? That would be hard to say. Depends on the extent of the destruction."
Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:51 am
antanitis
Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 33 Location: northhills pennsylvania USA
i think the topic of this argument is really too broad. If we go to war with iran of course we can destroy their whole country and population is minutes but is that really a "win" for anyone?
July 10, 2008, 9:16 am
In an Iranian Image, a Missile Too Many
By Mike Nizza and Patrick Witty
In the four-missile version of the image released Wednesday by Sepah News, the media arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, two major sections (encircled in red) appear to closely replicate other sections (encircled in orange). (Illustration by The New York Times; photo via Agence France-Presse)
Latest update at 3 p.m. Eastern Agence France-Presse has retracted the image as “apparently digitally altered.” More developments at the bottom of the post.
As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo was used on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.
The Los Angeles Times, The Palm Beach Post and Chicago Tribune, among others, used the image on their front pages on Thursday.
Our home page at 3:56 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday.
Agence France-Presse said that it obtained the image from the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, on Wednesday. But there was no sign of it there later in the day. Today, The Associated Press distributed what appeared to be a nearly identical photo from the same source, but without the fourth missile.
As the above illustration shows, the second missile from the right appears to be the sum of two other missiles in the image. The contours of the billowing smoke match perfectly near the ground, as well in the immediate wake of the missile. Only a small black dot in the reddish area of exhaust seems to differ from the missile to its left, though there are also some slight variations in the color of the smoke and the sky.
Does Iran’s state media use Photoshop? The charge has been leveled before. So far, though, it can’t be said with any certainty whether there is any official Iranian involvement in this instance. Sepah apparently published the three-missile version of the image today without further explanation.
For its part, Agence France-Presse retracted its four-missile version this morning, saying that the image was “apparently digitally altered” by Iranian state media. The fourth missile “has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test,” the agency said. Later, it published an article quoting several experts backing that argument.
Along with major doubts about the image, American intelligence officials had larger questions on exactly how many missiles were fired. One defense official said that “at least 7, and possibly up to 10″ had taken flight in all, though the intelligence data was still being sorted out. Only one of them was said to be a Shahab 3.
Throughout the day, several news sites have taken steps to disown the photograph that they ran on Wednesday, including LATimes.com and MSNBC.com.
In a sentiment no doubt echoed by news organizations everywhere, an MSNBC editor acknowledged that the four-missile picture was initially welcomed with open arms. “As the media editor working the msnbc.com home page yesterday, I was frustrated with the quality of a fuzzy video image we published of the Iranian missile launch,” said Rich Shulman, the network’s associate multimedia editor. “So I was thrilled when the top image crossed the news wires.”
Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.
Top, the image that Agence France-Presse obtained from Sepah News on Wednesday. Below, another image that The Associated Press received from the same source on Thursday, which appeared to be taken from the same vantage point at almost the same time.
