Neocons Are Clueless About Iran

It's naive to think Mousavi is much different just because his supporters twitter a lot. -- as naive as believing in Obama's "change you can believe in".
Didn't you people learn anything after "orange revolution" in Ukraine? This "green revolution" is gonna be no better.

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About everything!

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Or is it not more Western people who twitter a lot about the Iran elections, while Iranians themselves are not or only marginally present?
I am sure that it would look nice though for those who hype technology, especially the IT brand, as 'the' solution for everything. You can even bring about revolutions with that, ain't that great.
Yeah, only the ones that are wanted.
And I'd rather not 'emulate' the US at this point, their government is highly suspect.

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To be a Repug supporter you must have a life time supply of anti psychotic medications (Supplied by the leadership-Socialized medicine?)
We have heard them bemoan that All Iranians are Terrorist, are hell bent on destroying Israel and we must pre-emptively strike the country to save poor lil' Israel (200 Nuke war heads?) and our troops from this Axis of Evil.
Now we are expected to believe they give a Rats ass about the protesters? FYI if the Bushies had Bombed the shit out of Iran it would have been the lives of those multitudes of moderates/liberals in the streets of Tehran Now, in jeapordy.
The Repugs have wanted to create a 'fight' any way they can to secure more profiteering for their WarDog overlords and Oil royals. Civil War- works for them. In fact that has been their MO for decades- Divide & Conquer- talking it up for one side while supplying funds and weapons for the other.
Why couldn't Bush (McCain, Hillary, Hagee) make the case to attack Iran- because enough Americans knew that the people of Iran were being subjected to the same crazy leadership as US
I am supportive of the Iranian Protesters- But we must Let THEIR LIBERATION Be THEIRS.
I always think there is no possible way I could hate or distrust a Repug any more vehemently, but everyday I am proven Wrong!

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An objective analysis of all the available information reveals that Ahmadinejad won the National vote fairly.

The fact that the use of the Internet, Mobile Phones, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter had a very positive effect for Mousavi in Tehran - did not mean that Nationally he won the vote. Tehran has a population of 7 Million which is around only 10% of the National population.

Arguably the influence of "Western Culture" had a significant effect on turning the vote in Tehran - and at the local level in Tehran the Protestors may feel justly aggrieved because they know that locally they won. However it is not just Tehran that voted, but all of Iran.

It's about time someone actually Twittered the Truth rather than their political bias.

Tony

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is this the beginning of the test that Joe Biden was warning about last year? if so, then this whole thing was in the works for some time.
linked text

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I would only suggest to those who are so quick to criticize the president that they put themselves in his shoes and start thinking long range - which, after all, is the whole point of diplomacy. A good diplomat thinks little about tomorrow, or next week - or even next year. The goal of competent international strategy is to think in terms of years, even decades down the line.

First of all, consider this: what do these people on the Far Right think would happen if tonight Obama denounced the results of the election and demanded that the opposition be installed immediately? I guarantee you that within five minutes, "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be in front of the television cameras, having a positive jihad hissy fit:

"See?? The Great Satan has chosen sides! He wants this government - your government - to be skinned like rabid dogs. DEATH TO THE EVIL AMERICAN TYRANTS! And have a lovely day."

It is in the best interest of not only the American people - but the people of Iran as well - that our president exhibit for the world the demeanor of calm, cool detachment. That is what is known as "international statesmanship"; the type of which was never displayed by his half-witted predecessor. To put it in terms that Rush Limbaugh and the habitual viewers of FOX Noise will be able to understand, the very last thing in the world Obama needs right now is to get into a pissing match with these clowns.


Freshman Diplomacy 101

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

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The recent election outcomes in Iran is strikingly compared to the results in the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections:

In Iran, cities such as Tehran, with a large, relatively higher salaried and educated populace, voted against the incumbent. Rural, relatively uneducated, and the low income/poor voted for the incumbent.

In the USA, urban areas with large, educated, relatively higher salaried and educated populace, voted against the incumbent. Rural, relatively uneducated, and the low income /poor voted for the incumbent.

It's ironic that the neocons are claiming to support the very same type of folks in Iran they had disenfranchised here twice in the USA presidential elections.

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In Iran, the whores are fighting. That's the reality of the fine analysis. An objective analysis of all the available information reveals that Ahmadinejad's machine stole the National vote. Couldn't fix the results in Teheran, because it was watched too closely, but went on rampage on the countryside, stuffing votes, not-cast, into the ballot boxes with the result that the actual votes found in them exceeded the number of voters on the roll by half and more. There were several districts that reported numbers of votes that exceeded the total population in them, including the newborns, never mind the voters' roll. Of course, it didn't bode well in the stomachs of Ahmadinejad's opposition and they cried 'foul'. The resulting outrage is what the hardliners are trying to hide from the world's sight. While they are trying to blame America and Europe for the outcome, the fine analysis shows them narrowly following G. W. Bush's playbook to the last bitter end. And the GOP is in panic mode, afraid that the world would notice that. In their disarray GOP operatives are shooting each other in their feet. It is high time for our country (USA) to stop paying attention to this fascist cult, save to keep an eye for possible terrorist actions from the desperados. Actually it already had started. Witness the senseless deaths reported in the last weeks. What we should do is fine to high heaven Faux News and their cast of entertainers for spreading willful lies, which are putting the desperados in motion.

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Libertarian Ron Paul was the only member of congress to get it right.

Here is why he voted against HR 560

I rise in reluctant opposition to H Res 560, which condemns the Iranian government for its recent actions during the unrest in that country. While I never condone violence, much less the violence that governments are only too willing to mete out to their own citizens, I am always very cautious about “condemning” the actions of governments overseas. As an elected member of the United States House of Representatives, I have always questioned our constitutional authority to sit in judgment of the actions of foreign governments of which we are not representatives. I have always hesitated when my colleagues rush to pronounce final judgment on events thousands of miles away about which we know very little. And we know very little beyond limited press reports about what is happening in Iran.

Of course I do not support attempts by foreign governments to suppress the democratic aspirations of their people, but when is the last time we condemned Saudi Arabia or Egypt or the many other countries where unlike in Iran there is no opportunity to exercise any substantial vote on political leadership? It seems our criticism is selective and applied when there are political points to be made. I have admired President Obama’s cautious approach to the situation in Iran and I would have preferred that we in the House had acted similarly.

I adhere to the foreign policy of our Founders, who advised that we not interfere in the internal affairs of countries overseas. I believe that is the best policy for the United States, for our national security and for our prosperity. I urge my colleagues to reject this and all similar meddling resolutions.

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It is a basic principle of international law that when a nation's police beat up protesters, any country with an air force in reach has to bomb both sides.

That is why Canada and Mexico bombed the United States during the 1968 Democratic Convention police riot, and probably why the US is now a democracy.

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Just rewrite the article below and change a few names. After all Iran is hardly new Territory for American and British "interests" - and Twitter just makes the who process much easier and more attractive to "sophisticated" Iranian youth brought up on Western pop culture.

link

Extract

US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev


With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory - whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev.

Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists and will never be the same again.

But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.

But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev.

The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections.

In the centre of Belgrade, there is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-violent Resistance. If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire.

They emerged from the anti-Milosevic student movement, Otpor, meaning resistance. The catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia last year, the parallel student movement was Khmara. In Belarus, it was Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora, meaning high time. Otpor also had a potent, simple slogan that appeared everywhere in Serbia in 2000 - the two words "gotov je", meaning "he's finished", a reference to Milosevic. A logo of a black-and-white clenched fist completed the masterful marketing.


Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young activists' weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful.

Last year, before becoming president in Georgia, the US-educated Mr Saakashvili travelled from Tbilisi to Belgrade to be coached in the techniques of mass defiance. In Belarus, the US embassy organised the dispatch of young opposition leaders to the Baltic, where they met up with Serbs travelling from Belgrade. In Serbia's case, given the hostile environment in Belgrade, the Americans organised the overthrow from neighbouring Hungary - Budapest and Szeged.

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Until just days before the election in Iran, we were led by our media, and especially by our politicians, to believe Iran to be a medieval backwater whose sole goal in life was to wipe Israel off the map. Now all of a sudden these very same folks are trying to convince us that the place is full of democracy-loving patriots who aspire to live like Americans.

It would be my best guess that neither of these images is the truth, and that they are people with a very different history and probably somewhat different values, whose experience with Anglo-Americans has been attempts at exploitation and control.

Obama's reaction has been exactly right. And who here thinks that our government or any government would remain calm and supportive in the face of a million people chanting against it in the streets of its capital?

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He's a harmless bufoon with no real power. His interviews with American press figures are a hoot. He has FUN talking to Americans. He really enjoys pulling our chains, and can hardly keep a straight face during these interviews. Just watch him next time he's interviewed by some American and you'll see what I mean.
Believe me, we have more important things to worry about than President Ahmadinijad.

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Please be aware that "United Against Nuclear Iran" is the same outfit that got the US into Iraq with absolute dishonesty and flasehoods about WMDs. It is important to spread the word about this organization as they have no interest in helping the Iranian people get their freedom. to the contrary, they are advocates of measures that would devestate those people and any and all their aspirations.

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Wake up neocons. Even if the protesters get the government they are calling for, it won't be an American style democracy and they'll still want nuclear power, their right. They could care less what we want for them. They have their own agenda and it's not an American style government and not an American Puppet government. Who ever wins this power struggle, it will still be an islamic country. So, please neocons, wipe the drool off your chins, there won't be a prize for you this time.

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The Iranian people are undergoing a political crisis. The best way to help them is by taking a measured, "hands off" attitude, as Obama is now taking. The fact is that, despite the difference is rhetoric, Mousavi and Ahmadinejad aren't that far apart. And why should Iran's internal affairs be of any concern to us?

Neoconservatives would dearly love to get us ensnarled in Iranian politics so that they can engineer another war, the way they did in Iraq. But why should anyone take neoconservative thought seriously anymore? They are hopeless losers who have shown that their purported intellectual superiority is a myth. Why doesn't anyone have the guts to tell that bozo, Norman Podhoretz, to shut up, and the same goes for Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz--those miserable, lying swine.

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Without understanding the $400 million spent the last year to destabilize Iran's leadership, and histories such as Obama's adviser Brzezinski preemptively creating the Mujaheddin which became the Taliban, just to look good about creating insurgency in Afghanistan, it's hard to believe the neocons are more clueless than most.
Many people here have mentioned the US government's solid history of covert destruction of others way of life for neocon and multinational corporate hegemony.
The neocons aren't confused. It's just a wait and see approach as we run in circles.

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How obvious is this?
Yes, there may be genuine dislike for Ahmanijedad within Iran, but the CIA is just lining them up for the slaughter. $400 million was poured into destabilizing Iran, you have the Shah's son fear-mongering about the possibility of nuclear war and the western media calling these elections long before they even went to vote. There's many other examples here if you look at history.
Unfortunately, history says America's dirty, soulless finger prints are all over this one.

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I'm sort of amazed at the weird spate of articles that claim that the neocons are somehow rooting against Mousavi. Why would they do that, exactly? What do neocons like more than anything else?

ECONOMIC NEOLIBERALS.

They love privatizers, and Mousavi is a classic privatizer. His whole campaign was based around privatizing TV stations and ending aid to the poor.

Our commentator tries to humiliate neocons by tarring them with arms-for-hastages, but it was MOUSAVI who sold them the arms! Look it up!

Mousavi was then, and is now, in bed with Elliot Abrams and his little shadow government. I'm completely amazed that the Nation (and Alternet) is on their side.

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Great piece. If Iran ignored the brutally suppressed Palestinians, and encouraged further idiotic fanatical Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the neocons and other Zionist supporters of the insane "Greater Israel" project would not be concerned about Iran.

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