Iran trying to take over Southern Iraq?

[SUBMAN1]

I guess they are an opportunistic type country.

A very interesting read - shows the Iraqi army is now a force to be reckoned with. This op was Iraqi from beginning to end without US involvement, and they put 30K troops on the ground without problem to do the op. They even fielded aircraft of their own. This wouldn't have happened last year. Maybe it is getting close to a time when the US can pull out of Iraq.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04102008...852.htm?page=0

-S

[bradclark1]

Good for them but they still let the bad guys walk after though.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by bradclark1

Good for them but they still let the bad guys walk after though.

SOunds to me like 1600 to 1700 of them weren't doing so hot!

-S

[PeriscopeDepth]

They are not trying to take it over...yet. They are doing the same thing we would be doing if someone we considered not so friendly had taken over Canada.

PD

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by PeriscopeDepth

They are not trying to take it over...yet. They are doing the same thing we would be doing if someone we considered not so friendly had taken over Canada.

PD

Hardly. I'd guess you would have a whole army crossing the border to liberate the Canadians!

[Brag]

I wonder what this guy was smoking while he wrote the article

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Brag

I wonder what this guy was smoking while he wrote the article

Elaborate please? Iran's involvement of troops can be found in multiple articles right now, so I believe him. Here is an example about speed boats in the gulf, and at the bottom, they mention Iran's involvent in Basra again - http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

Seems to be an internationally known thing.

-S

[Brag]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Elaborate please? Iran's involvement of troops can be found in multiple articles right now, so I believe him. Here is an example about speed boats in the gulf, and at the bottom, they mention Iran's involvent in Basra again - http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

Seems to be an internationally known thing.

-S

Iran maintains contacts with all factions in Iraq including the Greenzoners. They are the ones who negotiated the cease fire in Basra. To which Maliki reps traveled to Qum for the talks.

This guy sounds like a White House spinner.

When it comes to patrol boats, Iran constantly patrols along it's coastline and right up to the middle of the Straits of Hormuz. You can't navigate through the area without seeing them on a daily basis.

We have seen an enourmous ammount of exageration about Iran by the present administration and a few camp followers. These are the same people who invented the WMD in Iraq -- their credibility is totally bankrupt.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Brag

Iran maintains contacts with all factions in Iraq including the Greenzoners. They are the ones who negotiated the cease fire in Basra. To which Maliki reps traveled to Qum for the talks.

This guy sounds like a White House spinner.

When it comes to patrol boats, Iran constantly patrols along it's coastline and right up to the middle of the Straits of Hormuz. You can't navigate through the area without seeing them on a daily basis.

We have seen an enourmous ammount of exageration about Iran by the present administration and a few camp followers. These are the same people who invented the WMD in Iraq -- their credibility is totally bankrupt.

I guess you also believe that the World Trade Center thing was a conspiracy. I'd probably add in there that you probably think the Holocaust was a lie, and I bet you think the US never landed on the moon either, huh?

That's about the jist of what I get from your post.

-S

[PeriscopeDepth]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

I guess you also believe that the World Trade Center thing was a conspiracy. I'd probably add in there that you probably think the Holocaust was a lie, and I bet you think the US never landed on the moon either, huh?

That's about the jist of what I get from your post.

-S

Are you kidding? He sounds pretty reasonable to me.

PD

[mrbeast]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

I guess you also believe that the World Trade Center thing was a conspiracy. I'd probably add in there that you probably think the Holocaust was a lie, and I bet you think the US never landed on the moon either, huh?

That's about the jist of what I get from your post.

-S

Think its more a case of what were you smoking when you wrote that post?

How do you get that jist from Brag's post? Seemed pretty thoughtful and reasoned to me.

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

I guess you also believe that the World Trade Center thing was a conspiracy. I'd probably add in there that you probably think the Holocaust was a lie, and I bet you think the US never landed on the moon either, huh?

That's about the jist of what I get from your post.

-S

Actually Subman, given your previous rants and posts, he seems more reasonable than you.

You go for too many assumptions. You were ready to pounce the minute you read the name "Iran". You seem to be the opportunistic one here. Brag brings up several good points. I especially like the one about the WMD's. Bush has made too many wild claims about these people. He told us Saddam had WMD's. No WMD's to be found. He told us Iran was making nuclear weapons. Nuclear program has been offline since 2003. He told us Iran was training insurgents. Really? Did the same sources on the last two things give you this story, too? All the more reason why we should follow you without question like the good little patriotic citizens we are... :rotfl:

He's just looking for war, and so was Cheney, though Cheney always wanted a Middle-Eastern conflict since Old Man Bush took power (though OMB has more sense than his son; Cheney moved in on Bush, Jr. and played him like a violin).

[Wreford-Brown]

[quote=Stealth Hunter]He told us Saddam had WMD's. No WMD's to be found.[quote]

If you want to kill a million people with conventional weapons you need a huge armoury to hide them in. If you want to kill a million people with WMDs you may only need a few barrels, and there's a lot of desert to hide a few barrels in.

If Saddam had WMDs then we may never find them, and in 50 years when the barrels have deteriorated enough to start leaking, no-one in the West is likely to care about a few dead bedouin, even if we find out.

[Trex]

Without getting into the US administration's desires for war, or lack of them, there are some curiously overlooked facts.

1. Saddam did have a huge WMD programme pre-Gulf One. Chemical, nukes, biologicals - the works. He spent untold billions developing the abilty to spread mass death around his region.

2. He had repeated;y used them both in war and in crushing internal dissent. This was not a man reluctant to use a last-ditch weapon.

3. His cooperation with agencies such as the IAEA was, let us say, less than forthcoming. He lied, he hid, he insisted that his people had to be questioned with his secret police present, he seized discovered documents and returned them with chunks cut out. Inspectors were denied access to huge facilities across the country under the excuse that they were 'presidential palaces'.

4. Although it appears that the Iraqis did in fact destroy their WMD stock, they were far less than forthcoming WRT providing proof of this.

5. The Iraqis had definitely continued to work on long-range missiles, specifically banned under the Gulf One treaty and which, given their high CEP, were best suited for delivery of WMD.

All in all, a reasonable man might take Saddam's behaviour as that of a man trying very hard to hide something.

The irony of Saddam's fall is that he could have - at any time up to the day before the USA moved in - stopped the whole thing by simply saying, "OK, we have changed our minds. Sorry for the previous problems. Come on in now and look for yourselves. Your inspectors can go anywhere. We will provide the records you want. You can have unrestricted access to our scientists. We have nothing to hide and are willing to prove it. How can we help you?" Faced with that (and of course real subsequent cooperation), the legs would have been cut out from under even the most rabid Saddam-hater in Washington. Instead, he stonewalled, dodged, lied - and died.

Not much sympathy for Saddam from this end. He was a vampire and deserved everything he got. It's just a pity Washington didn't do much thinking about what had to happen post-Saddam before they launched. Another Marshall Plan and Iraq could have been an R&R choice for tired Yank troops. And it would have cost far less than the war.

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by Trex

The irony of Saddam's fall is that he could have - at any time up to the day before the USA moved in - stopped the whole thing by simply saying, "OK, we have changed our minds. Sorry for the previous problems. Come on in now and look for yourselves. Your inspectors can go anywhere. We will provide the records you want. You can have unrestricted access to our scientists. We have nothing to hide and are willing to prove it. How can we help you?" Faced with that (and of course real subsequent cooperation), the legs would have been cut out from under even the most rabid Saddam-hater in Washington. Instead, he stonewalled, dodged, lied - and died.

I'm not sure on this one.
What we've found out about the coercive intelligence regime in Washington leading up to the war leads me to believe that it was going to happen one way or the other.
Also, the amount of people in the run-up to the war saying there ain't any weapons, tells me that the whole idea of WMD was a pretext, an excuse. You can't go to war without public support, so you run around keeping the same couple of phrases really close together, "saddam....9/11.....al-qaeda". Overt stating isn't required.