iran didnt say anything - their idiot president did and he is just as unpopular there as your precious bush is here. i know its a difficult concept for you bush-worshipers to grasp, but the leader does not = the country. either way, what does ahmadinejads comments have to do w/ the topic at hand tradertexx? how exactly am i a "liberal" tradertexx? please explain...your "credibility" is on the line. i know its a difficult concept for you bush-worshipers to grasp, but opposition to the bush administration does not make one a "liberal" (is 75% of the country "liberal"?). and calling others liberals is especially hilarious when your precious bush is the most liberal president this country has ever had with regards to the economy and expanding the size of the federal government. NO CRED!
As long as American warships were in International waters and not shooting at Iran, they have a right to peacefully do as they please. If the Iranian warships want to come to the Gulf of Mexico and not shoot at us, we should not harass them either. (Although it would be wise to surround and watch them.)
I'm bothered by the fact that they were allowed to come that close to US warships in a hostile manner, if the incident occurred as reported. (still an "if" there, IMO) Impeach Bush.
Who are we viewing as our "kids" over there: deployed GIs, oil companies abroad, our economic and cultural allies (Saudi Arabia and Israel) or the people who actually call that place home? Any of those choices probably make us look condescending and interventionist in the eyes of the natives. We'd enforce the Monroe doctrine if someone encroached in this hemisphere; I don't know how shocked or offended we should be about getting harrassed in the Persian Gulf by, y'know, Persians.
Given that the U.S. wants to attack Iran, this isn't surprising. Actually the majority of hostile rhetoric is mostly directed towards Iran from the U.S. I don't think Iran has said anything hostile towards the U.S. They are against the Zionism though. Ironically enough, the translation of "wiping Israel from the map" is false and actually mistranslated into English by the Iranian media itself. Actual translation from Farsi is more closely to the Israeli Regime should disappear from the page of time. Anyways that said, these "stunts" are probably made to provoke the U.S. into attacking which makes us look like the bullies. There is a reason why Geroge Bush Sr. did not want to remove Saddam Hussein. It was to keep to prevent Iraq from being a shi'ite nation and keep Iran in check. The United States is already allied with most of the Arab nations around the peninsula. They did not want a state in which controls a large supply of oil to dominate the region in which we cannot influence (Iran). Ironically, Bush Jr, invaded Iraq which allow Iran to better secure the region.
Poeple, please don't mix-up "Iranians" with the "Iranian Government". Some Iranians do not want to associate themselves with their government, specially living outside of Iran, and would find that insulting...
thats a great point. There is a large group who don't like their govt...i just hope with iran continuing to bring pressure on itself, it may help some kind of govt "overhaul" I also dont think saying that the US "wants" war it accurate as well.
There is really no logic in your little statement and its actually pretty immature and annoying to see this..people need to stop mixing up the govt with the people of Iran...
This is where the problem lies. If the U.S. attacks Iran, those Iranians who dislike their government will flock to support it. Nobody likes to have their own country attacked or invaded by a foreign country no matter whether you like the government or not. It's this "we are going to fix your government for you" attitude that creates so much hatred towards the U.S. What should be your allies become your enemies instead.
This entire concoction is almost as f#cking ridiculous as Almoo's Tmac 4 Starbury thread in the GARM.... This BS is akin to a couple of 7th graders coming home from school, spotting a pack of lions kickin it on the front porch of their house, and then breaking a twig off a tree and charging said pack of lions all the while whispering like CP3O the robot "I am coming to you - I am coming to you now - soon you will - - - explode - from my nuclear twig"
This article from the day before from Huffington Post was interesting. I assume the author has the linguistic background to personally know what he is talking about after listening to the tape. Remember Jessica Lynch? ******* The Pentagon's version of the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning, involving U.S. Navy warships and Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats is, at the very least highly suspicious. On Tuesday, the Navy released video footage and an audiotape to back its claims that the Iranian boats acted in a threatening and provocative manner, but neither the video nor the audio are particularly convincing as proof that Iran had hostile intentions. The video, which shows what is claimed are Iranian boats speeding around U.S. ships, doesn't show any of the boats hurtling directly towards any of the navy ships, nor does it show what the Pentagon claimed the Iranians then did, namely dropped "white boxes" in the water. (I would have opened fire at those, wouldn't you?) The audio tape is even less convincing, mainly because the person speaking doesn't have an Iranian accent and moreover, sounds more like Boris Karloff in a horror movie than a sailor in the elite branch of Iran's military. (The tape is also separate from any video.) Any Iranian can immediately identify Persian-accented English, particularly if the speaker has had little contact with the West, as is the case with Revolutionary Guardsmen and sailors. Iranians, you see, have difficulty with two consonants such as "p" and "l" next to each other; even Iranians who have lived in America for years will often pronounce "please" as "peh-leeze", or in this case, "explode" as "exp-eh-lode". On the tape, "explode" is pronounced perfectly, albeit as if the speaker was a villain addressing a superhero. Further, it is unimaginable, given what is known about the Revolutionary Guards (and I have met many), that one of its corps would speak in a such a manner, even if the accent were correctly Persian. The fact that the Iranian foreign ministry downplayed the encounter as routine and minor, and that the Revolutionary Guards, not known for their moderation, actually denied the U.S. version of events, is curious. Iran, which is usually keen to exploit its image as a fearless foe of the U.S., would ordinarily relish the opportunity to show that it can be a menace to the great superpower, particularly if, as the encounter shows, the U.S. does little to counter that menace. (Khomeini's words, "the U.S. cannot do a damn thing", are still emblazoned on the walls of the former American Embassy in Tehran.) Iranian patrol boats do indeed, as Iran freely admits, check on ships that enter the Persian Gulf, in this case only three miles outside its territorial waters, much as one would expect them to do (and as the U.S. Coast Guard would undoubtedly do if a foreign fleet of warships cruised within fifteen miles of say, Miami Beach), but apart from the arrest of the British sailors last year, there is hardly ever even a sharp exchange of words. At the risk of sounding like (and as I'm sure I will be accused of being) an apologist for the Islamic Republic, the encounter with the U.S. Navy as described by the Pentagon just doesn't ring true. Coming as it did on the eve of President Bush's visit to the Middle East, the encounter as described is doubly suspicious. The Bush administration seems to have finally settled on a schizophrenic Iran policy; a policy that requires it to on the one hand send conciliatory messages to its foe, if for no other reason than to keep Iraq from imploding, and the other hand maintain pressure on Iran, threatening it from time to time and raising with a domestic audience as well as with the Arab states the specter of a bogeyman run amok in the world's most dangerous region. The policy actually makes sense, in some regards, as Mr. Bush would like nothing more than a stable Iraq in his legacy, something that is impossible without Iran's help (and something that would give a boost to any Republican candidate, particularly Mr. McCain, in the fall), but he also doesn't want to see Iranian power grow too much, especially now that U.S.-allied Arab countries are falling over themselves to appease Iran. The specter of a dangerous Iran, one that could threaten the U.S., is also important for the Republican candidates, robbed as they were in December of their favorite villain with the release of the NIE report that suggested the Iranians were not, in fact, developing nuclear weapons. Mr. Bush can try to use the Persian Gulf incident to his advantage in his meetings with Arab leaders this week, and domestically it will play well, but the Arabs will unlikely be fooled by what appears to be a poorly concocted scenario. They, too, have hard-to-mimic accents when they speak English. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hooman-majd/its-a-fake_b_80682.html
An interesting interview regarding the incident ( Not entierly ) <object width="425" height="373"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VR0ZYIQLsZ0&rel=1&border=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VR0ZYIQLsZ0&rel=1&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="373"></embed></object>
A friend of mine whose mother speaks Farsi told him the same thing; it’s funny how everyone ran with it. I’m wondering if he’s ever said it in English or discussed how it has been mistranslated.
