On nuclear weapons, I agree that Iran’s desire to possess them is a danger to the free world. Only Uncle “I’ve invaded way more countries than Iran” Sam should be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Iran is just too belligerent. I mean, in the time we’ve invaded two countries outright, bombed at least one more in secret, and had very serious plans of fighting several more, they have said they don’t like that there is an Israel. Are they that psychopathic?
I mean, come on. I don’t really like the thought of anyone having nuclear weapons, but the US, having already used a couple, and being just about the most belligerent country around, can’t really say other people aren’t sensible enough to have them while maintaining our own ridiculous stockpile. Especially given that they could use nuclear weapons for energy, or as a defensive insurance mechanism against some nuclear armed country, I can’t remember who, who keeps threatening them every time their leadership doesn’t agree with ours.
To the best of my knowledge, since achieving nuclear weapons, the United States has never actually told any other country that they intend to wipe them off the face of the map. Belligerent? Yes. Apocalyptic? No.
You don’t need to use nuclear weapons to wipe a country off the map. In Japan, we actually killed far more people with good, old-fashioned firebombs. Empty threats are far less scary than a supposedly peace-loving President who probably caused the death of far more civilians in his first three months of office than the Iranian government has killed Israeli civilians in three years. America is scary as hell and we have no place telling anyone else they are.
Except that by using good old-fashioned firebombs, Japan still existed, and in half a century is now an economic powerhouse. Using nuclear bombs ensures that the country will cease to exist.
And it’s not really Americans who’re spearheading the suspicion against Iran; it’s Israel, because they’re the ones being threatened. Israel happens to be an ally of America, is all.
Update: Iran recount ruled out. Man in charge of the vote counting dies in mysterious car accident after leaking information to the media that Mousavi actually won. Let the games begin.
-“Mohammad Asgari, who was responsible for the security of the IT network in Iran’s interior ministry, was killed yesterday in a suspicious car accident in Tehran. Asgari had reportedly leaked evidence that the elections were rigged to alter the votes from the provinces. Asgari was said to have leaked information that showed Mousavi had won almost 19m votes, and should therefore be president.”
Call me a pessimist, but if those articles ARE 100% true (which changes my belief that this MAY have been a fair win, I was hesitant to say it was fraud but that would cement it) then I’d say…Iranians are SOL.
The people in power stay in power, and the theocracy makes a farce of elections. Not that it wasn’t already given how mostly everything seems controlled by those Guardians of the Revolution. Military, foreign stances, information, intelligence…
Even the president seems little more than a puppet, who may just happen to be fairly eloquent.
I agree, I would hope that anyone with half a brain would take to the streets if something like that happened here.
The whole thing is ludicrus, and now this guy dies? And one of the major voices of the theocracy preached against the existing electoral results today (or yesterday)? Things could be going very badly.
Its still doubtful whether they actually stole the election or not. The margin was huge - you can’t do fraud that much, since there are simply too many people involved in counting that many votes to keep it secret. It doesn’t make sense that if the mullahs did steal the election, they would do so so crudely.
A highly vocal minority does not speak for everyone. I point once again to America in the 1960s - students and other liberals held large, highly publicized mass rallies; Nixon was elected twice. In that case, as possibly here, the media blew things out proportion.
I sympathize with the protesters, but I still think Ahmedinijad won things fair and square. the protesters all live in Tehran; most Iranians don’t.
Cid, you need the complicity of huge numbers of people to commit that much fraud. Believe it or not, Iran actually does go through an election process where they have people count and verify the votes. Its not like everyone votes, and all the votes are sent to the mullahs to count by themselves. In cases of fraud, you secretly and carefully bribe or coerce select votecounters to misplace votes. You keep it as low-key as possible. But Ahmedinejad won by a really big margin - either they committed fraud but he was so popular they didn’t need to, or they didn’t commit fraud. Or they committed fraud, but did so with an incompetence unparalleled - which is unlikely.
Also, why are only certain sections of Tehran revolting? Why are the peasants of Iran not doing anything? The peasants participated vigorously in the overthrow of the Shah, yet now they’re not doing anything. Because most of them voted for Ahmedenijad.(I swear to God, I hate this guy’s name :P)
In our own country, people were stunned when Bush was reelected. How could it have happened??? Everybody we knew hated him. But that was the problem, since who we knew was very limited. There was entire swath of the U.S. - in the South, Midwest, and Mountain States - nobody knew anything about.
Why do we always assume that people are incapable of electing anti-liberals who will deny them civil rights and start wars? It happens all the time…
They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran experts” over Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.
More fundamentally, American “Iran experts” consistently underestimated Ahmadinejad’s base of support. Polling in Iran is notoriously difficult; most polls there are less than fully professional and, hence, produce results of questionable validity. But the one poll conducted before Friday’s election by a Western organization that was transparent about its methodology — a telephone poll carried out by the Washington-based Terror-Free Tomorrow from May 11 to 20 — found Ahmadinejad running 20 points ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted before the televised debates in which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived to have done well while Mousavi did poorly.
But before Ahmadinejad, they allowed a reformer(Khatani) to win two elections. Of course, he accomplished nothing, since Iran’s problems go beyond the ability of any one leader to fix.