"It looks as though Iran has started a war with us - and now it is up to us to finish it."

You seem quite enthusiastic about fighting a war with Iran. Almost like you're looking forward to it..... To me, a full-scale war with Iran seems unlikely for a few reasons.

1) As much as you hate to admit it, President Bush's credibility, at least for now, seems to be gone. Whether they're right or wrong, I think most Americans are unwilling to trust President Bush with another war.

2) Who will fight in an Iranian war? After the war in Iraq, we certainly won't have much support from the international community. Surely our current troop levels can't effectively support wars in both Iraq and Iran.

3) Who will finance a war with Iran? Can we really afford to do this again?

4) Here's the big one: Is it really worth it? Full-blown war in any situation should be the absolute last resort. If we're going to cause death and pain for millions of soldiers and their friends and relatives, we had better have a damn good reason.

OK, I'll be the first here and after reading what Sambo the Suicide Bomber has posted in another story, I'm pretty convinced that if the general mentality of the Iranian people is even close to that of Mr. SSB, their neighbors are in for a lot of trouble in the future.

"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations..."

However in the Preamble it states "to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and...."

The Iranian's have proven that they have no intentions of honoring the UN, the US or anyone else that holds them accountable for their actions, therefore, we, as the world watch dog, must be fully prepared to confront this martyr complex head on.

Just look at the past thirty years or so and one can clearly see that even when we've supported either side with weapons and intel in hopes of them destroying each other, our efforts have always been thwarted by an intervention from either the Russians or Chinese.

We surely need to work harder on our relations with those two countries before we'll see any success in the middle east.

If it were up to me, any enemy fighter in Iraq who's not of Iraqi origin would be tied to the nearest rock, shot with lard-dipped bullets (as was Pershing's practice when dealing with muslim insurgents in the Phillipines in 1898), and his body either buried with pig carcasses (also done by Pershing), or dropped back into his home country. Any Iraqi insurgent caught using a human shield would also receive a similar fate. I realize, of course, that there is one drawback to this proposal (besides the inevitable howls from the left), which is that many of these guys would actually welcome death. It would feed right into their martyr complex.

If that idea is too harsh, let me propose another course of action. Keep the captured Iranians alive and parade them around for all to see, to show the world that Iran's intervention is a major cause of the problems in Iraq. Then release them back in to Iran with a warning that they risk being "Pershinged" if they ever return to Iraq, after their total time in detention is 444 days.

Nice to see that Mark Noonan erased my previous posts on this subject. So ill post it again.

Markl, DON'T cut out parts of the article to suit your own ends. YOU conveniently forgot to mention that those 4 Iranians were guests of the IRAQI president TALABANI.

"Nonetheless, the two raids, in central Baghdad, have deeply upset Iraqi government officials, who have been making strenuous efforts to engage Iran on matters of security. At least two of the Iranians were in this country on an invitation extended by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit to Tehran earlier this month. It was particularly awkward for the Iraqis that one of the raids took place in the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, who traveled to Washington three weeks ago to meet President Bush."

That is from the same article you mentioned in your post. Don't lie because you wan't to scare people into believing your BS.

Im a little confused now, are these captured Iranians freedom fighters? or insurgeants?

LN,

If you read MZA330 AKA Sambo the Suicide Bomber's post, you'd think that they were Freedom Fighters, however, he only believes Aljizeera and no one else...as you can see for yourself.

In one sentence he accuses Mark(l)of lying that the four Iranian's were guests and in the pasted paragraph it says that two were guests.

You cannot believe anything this guy posts. He's dillusional and will always side with the terrorists.

Here's another article supporting Mark's post.

WASHINGTON // U.S. troops in Iraq detained at least two Iranians and released two others who had diplomatic immunity in an exercise that the White House says could support its charge that Iran is helping fuel the insurgency there.

Two of those detained were visiting as guests of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, his spokesman said.

The White House confirmed the detentions.

"We suspect this event validates our claims about Iranian meddling, but we want to finish our investigation of the detained Iranians before characterizing their activities," White House spokesman Alex Conant said yesterday.

"We will be better able to explain what this means about the larger picture after we finish our investigation."

He said that a routine raid on suspected insurgents netted the Iranians. Two had diplomatic immunity and were released to the Iraqi government, which then released them to Iran, Conant said.

"We continue to work with the GOI [Government of Iraq] on the status of the remaining detainees," he said. "That investigation is going well."

The incident comes at a delicate diplomatic time. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is trying to expand his country's role in Iraq as a counter to U.S. influence in the Persian Gulf region. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has resisted pressure for a diplomatic push that would involve all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria.

The New York Times reported yesterday that U.S. forces were holding four Iranians, including some seized at the compound of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the largest Shiite bloc in Iraq's parliament, who met with President Bush this month at the White House.

The Times said U.S. forces also stopped an Iranian Embassy car last week and detained two Iranian diplomats, their Iranian guards and an Iraqi driver. The diplomats were later released by Iraq, it said.

"Two Iranians who are in Iraq at the invitation of the president have been apprehended by the Americans," said Hiwa Osman, Talabani's media adviser. "The president is unhappy about it."

Osman had no further details. At the White House, Conant declined to characterize the Iranians' activities until the investigation is concluded. "

A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation, confirmed that Iranians had been among those detained during recent operations against people planning attacks against coalition forces and Iraqis.

The United States has accused Iran of supplying money, weapons components and training to Shiite militias in Iraq, as well as technology for roadside bombs, the biggest killer of American forces in Iraq.

Iran says it only has political and religious links with Iraqi Shiites.

Late last month, Talabani visited Iran for two days of talks with government officials to seek their support in quelling the raging sectarian violence in Iraq.

Iran, a Shiite Muslim country, has considerable influence among Iraq's Shiite majority - elements of which have been blamed for the bulk of the recent attacks.

Talabani is a member of Iraq's Kurdish minority, but he had close ties with Iranian officials before Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

They're so afraid that Demcracy will take hold that they'll go to great lengths to prevent it. Including buying off Aljizeera.

Most likely because when people find out how great it is, they turn on the liars that misled them...such as Ahkmadeenijibjab. You know, the terrorist that was partly responsible for holding our guys hostage in 1979.

Meh! Ahmadinijad is imploding as we speak both domestically and regionally. Talk of Saud petrol production influence combined with his general unpopularity spell the beginning of his end. No American bombs will have to fall in Persia to end the Iranian want for nukes. Let's not meander off into overly dramatic conclusions, shall we?

Prog,

No one likes or wants war, but how much will it cost if iran hands off a nuke which is detonated in NYC or LA. We are already at war with iran. Are we going to be like a prior administration and refuse to admit the war until we get another 9/11. Why do you say President Bush has lost credibilty. Just prior to the last election, the New York Times confirmed that saddam hussien was one year away from an atomic bomb. Although it does not fit the lib media narrative, we stopped a real threat from someone we had to go to war with previously and who it was inevitable that we were going to have to go to war with again at some point. I don't care what the french think.

Bigfoot, I have wondered for years why we have not used the tactics used by Pershing, and by the Brits, regarding the use of cultural taboos to make death meaningless to the self-styled martyrs.

I've thought it might be productive to announce that our science is so precise we can identify even the smallest pieces of human remains, and that when a bomb kills people, the remains which are not found to belong to the victims will be buried in a nice jar of pig fat. Seems to me I read once that a Muslim can't go to heaven if his body is defiled in such a way.

My brother, who is a conservative by nature but got sucked into the BDS thing a long time ago and can't find his way out, told me that once upon a time, when the Brits were fighting a similar kind of hit and run war with Muslims, they captured 100. They killed one, and then while the others watched they brought in a dump truck full of pig carcasses, blood, and offal, and dumped it on the body. They then told the surviving prisoners to go home and tell everyone what happened to people who crossed them.

One of those urban myths, perhaps, but of interest. I do know that the British Empire was brilliant at using cultural taboos to their advantage. In different wars, they cut down dramatically on thefts of weapons by the enemy by announcing that the guns were packed in either lard or beef tallow, depending on whether they wre fighting in India or the Middle East.

I know perfectly well why we can't use these taboos ourselves---they are too "insensitive" and not politically correct Personally, I can live with weepy and insulted "victims" of insensitivity much more easily than with body bags coming home, or accounts of innocents slaughtered as they worship. I'm sure that even if the troops were to spead rumors of pork being used as weapons some poor delicate flower of jihadism would be on Al-Jazeera whining about the bigotry and brutality of the Great Satan, and there would be hell to pay.

I just ate some Iraninan/American ShishKaBob, and they didn't cook it as well done as I would've liked.

Oh well, it's not worth going to war over. :-)

OK, let's take a little informal poll.

Does ANYONE think that Stan is older than, say, 11? OK, I might go as high as 13, but that's a stretch....

Posted by: Almiranta at December 26, 2006 11:37 PM

GO FOR IT!!!!

I just ate some Iraninan/American ShishKaBob, and they didn't cook it as well done as I would've liked.

In that case, I hope it was chicken, and I hope you get sick from it.

Almiranta, Stan's probably not even her real name, and she's probably 11...

Negative 3 and losing credibility.

Stupid *ELEPHANTS*
See 'em holding each other's tails

Yep..he's three!

Maybe when he went in for his booster shots last week, they injected him with meth or Somatotropin.

Either one would have the same effect.

(spam alert)
Navydad continues to *WHINE* -
> Yep..he's three! Maybe when he went in for his booster shots last week, they injected him with meth or Somatotropin. Either one would have the same effect.

It is only a matter of time before we have to deal with the real Iranian government. The pres. of Iran is not the real leader, it is the ayahtollahs, the gov't is just a facade. the supreme ayahtollah makes all the decisions, the pres. is just a puppet. there is a hundred years war going on around us and we refuse to see it. islamic jihadists will not rest until the whole world is converted or dead. the u.s. must eradicate these people or assimilate. these are the choices. there is no appeasement or talking, it is kill or be killed or become one of them.