http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uk-T46soz8

Ellen Bork
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Ellen Bork is acting executive director at the Project for the New American Century, a conservative policy organization based in Washington, D.C. Ellen is the daughter of Robert Bork, a former judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and failed Reagan Supreme Court nominee.
From 1996 to 1998, Bork was the Senior Professional Staff member for Asia and the Pacific at the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. From 1998 to 1999, she served as counsel to Martin Lee, Chairman of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, and from 2001 to 2002, she was a fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Center in Brussels. In the mid-1980s she served in the Department of State and Department of Education and then with the International Republican Institute.
Bork earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. She has served as an election observer in Cambodia and Indonesia. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the The Wall Street Journal Asia, The Weekly Standard, Humanitarian Affairs Review, and The Forward. She writes a column for the New York Sun, and is a contributor to Fox News.

Pretty impressive.

I watched the Youtube strip, it was good, I didn’t see anything wrong there, or course we are looking at things from opposite sides. But it all looked above board to me. Political folks out of power go to think tanks, that is one of the main purposes of them, to warehouse the people out of power and still give them a soapbox until it is there turn again. They came up with a plan that was sound but too radical so they scaled it back a bit, that sounds rational. I’m going to see if I can find the text of those reports and put the three and four word pictures in context. But this didn’t seem over the top. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were fairly truthful in this piece.

It’s not Iraq’s fault we invaded Iran, what did I say that would make you think that? It’s Iran’s fault they said they want to kill us, it’s Iran’s fault that they are supporting the killing of American soldiers in Iraq, but not that we invaded Iraq. They are the next obvious target in this war, but their actions will determine if we have to invade, nothing else. I’m not sure where I said anything about using nukes on Iran, but it is an option.

You are right about China to a point, I was totally against Nixon opening trade with them. I was fairly young when he visited the Chinese, I guess I would have been a freshman in high school. I didn’t even realize what a conservative was at time, let alone that I was one. Still I was very much against it, I was wrong. Now I didn’t want to bomb them, but I didn’t want to be their friends either. Now I’ve been their, loved the people and the countryside and can say I have good friends there. Go figure. Still don’t trust Communists.

Knarly,

I’m a little torn on attacking Iran, the best thing to happen would be a revolt from within, but if that doesn’t happen I would rather attack right now from a strategic standpoint, but I am enough of a realist to understand that would be disastrous from a political standpoint. So I’m afraid we will wait for another Pearl Harbor or 911. If it doesn’t happen maybe I’ll have friends in Iran too. It’s kind of up to them.

I wouldn’t wait for the UN to approve anything but my parking voucher.

It sounds like, to lend your support to attacking Iran, you need something more concrete than another imaginary “Gulf of Tonkin” attack. I wonder if a “misunderstanding” like the following would suffice for you… http://ussliberty.wordpress.com/2007/12/09/%e2%80%9ctreason-on-the-high-seas%e2%80%9d/ or if you would wait for a full international investigation of such an incident and UN approval to react, or would it again take something bigger, like another “New Pearl Harbour catalyzing event” before you would approve of America declaring war on Iran?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxz06SwfnlU (I like the scary background music.)

So it is now Iran’s fault we invaded Iraq and let Osama bin Forgotten go free?
I know Rove is trying to sell the line that the Dems pushed poor georgie into this counterproductive Iraq debacle, but please… will reality *ever* intrude on rwnj fantasyland? signs point to no

Peacenik? No we just aren’t as blindly aggressive and stupidly dogmatic as the average rwnj. At least you make more sense than TV or lefty mcfrootloop… same narrow worldview tho, just nicer prose. Using nuclear weapons on Iran will guarantee we are hit by a terrrrist nuke. The genie will be well and truly out of the bottle.

If you would have been Nixon’s advisor, he would have bombed China instead of opening them up to the West. nucking futs

I agree with you that invading Iran at this time would be a big mistake, but I do think it is inevitable in the next 5 years or so. I hope I am proven wrong. I think Iraq was justifiable for a number of reasons but Iran isn’t at this time. But at some point they will do something that will justify it, maybe attack Israel something like that. Unfortunately I am afraid the decision to deal with them decisively will come after the deaths of several if not many thousands of innocent friends. I would love to come to you peaceniks with hat in hand saying you were right and I was wrong, but I don’t have much confidence that will be the case.

A pre-emtive attack on Iran would be a big mistake, because what is it that you are pre-emting? According to Bush now, post knowledge of the new NIE, it is their “desire” to obtain the knowledge to make a bomb. Sure go ahead and attack that amorphous “desire to obtain knowledge to make an atomic bomb” just be sure to keep track of the collatoral damage because they’ll by adding up the tally for you Americans at The Hague; compensation to be paid in cash and retribution to be paid by severe sentencing for the worst of war crimes. Attack a sovereign nation based on lies and justice will, sooner or later, be served upon you the transgressors. You should not be promoting such violence as an attack on Iran. Just because other rwnj commentators are leading the call to attack, that does not lessen your responsibility to refrain from inciting state violence upon another sovereign nation.

Gary Brechers second part on the Kurds is better, but it is more interesting if you read the first part first, as you are doing. I like Brecher’s writing too, and yes: I put on lots of filters when reading his stuff, and when finished the filters are so clogged they are thrown out. It’s a fun read though.

I watched “Iraq in Fragments” yesterday (documentary filmed in 2004 - 2005). Not a great film, except for how it raised my understanding of the immenseness of the country and the power of various rulers from the perspective of the common man’s life and hopes. The part on the Kurds was most promising. The best they can hope for is autonomy within Iraq and retention of the region if Iraq is split up; however thier claims on Turkey and Syria will cause them grief for a long time.

I’m not equating the two, I’m just saying there are some similarities. My point was narrowly confined to ‘you don’t have to be soul mates to be allies’. I could have used Russia and the US in WW II or any two of the tribes that banded together to put the hurt on Custer, history is full of these unholy alliances.

Afghanistan just happened to be the place the Taliban chose to operate from, just a place on the map. That portion of this war was the retaliation portion, Iraq and Iran are the preemptive part. I’ve given you my view as a rational adult can you do the same?

Knarly,

I’ve read about half of the first article and some of the second. I will finish tonight, it’s interesting, I don’t have a good grasp on the history of that area so this is fun. I like Brecher’s style (sort of). He writes about history sort of like Newt, they throw in a lot of details in a way that makes it less dull. The only problem with that is it also interjects a lot of their personal ideas into the story, not really a bad thing just another filter you need to use. I’ll be interested to see if he comes up with any conclusions of how to get the country of Kurdistan on the map without war. I doubt there is one.

Maybe you were yanking my chain when you said “I think you are mostly right.”, if you were, that’s ok, I bought it hook line and sinker, one of the reasons I read Brecher. If you weren’t messing with me, you need to get a backbone, giving me those very minor points didn’t hurt your arguments much if at all, and they were good points. Just because Inky rejects them without rebuttal doesn’t make them any less a good point. I know which side you’re on so I don’t expect you to come to my defense, but you can let Inky flail on his own, you just loose credibility jumping in there with him.

The other thing I can’t believe about you is you keep mistaking Zionists for Palestinians. According to Fox News, it was the Israelis who were dancing while the towers burned, and not in Palestine, but in a Jersey City parking lot. I’m not making this up, it was all reported in the mainstream press before it got buried, many of the links to the story are compiled here: www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html

Now, try to pay attention. Them 19 A-rabs were monitored and/or in contact with agents of the FBI, Mossad, and other intelligence agencies. The head of ISI wired Atta the hijacker $100,000; then some days (weeks?) later met with Bush Sr. on the morning of 911. Atta and the others had fun with their stacks of spending money, whether the cash came from ISI, bin Laden, or others too. The FBI reports they frequented strip clubs, enjoyed lap dances, etc. Pay attention now, this is where it gets tricky. How could these A-rabs have fooled the FBI into thinking they were enjoying such “pleasures” when in fact they were actually such fanatical-Islamists as to be suicide hijackers? It was all just a fiendish deception, no doubt masterminded by bin Laden himself, to conceal their real plans.

And the whole Iraq = Italy while Iran = Germany is ridiculous.
Also, I know it is out of fashion to point this out, but Iran didn’t perp 9/11.
They had spontaneous vigils all over their country in sympathy for the victims (the great Satan the USofA). They did not dance in the streets as TV or lefty mcfrootloop would have you believe (that was the Palestinians, but then facts have such a liberal bias).

So in your rightwing fantasy where does Afghanistan (you know, where Osama bin Forgotten is still hiding) fit into your dog-eared “us good, them bad” ww2 analogy? Let me guess: Japan! cuz Afghanistan has such a huge military industrial complex, a massive navy and had invaded other countries to ’secure the peace’?

So little time, so many rwnj-crappin-ma-pants-and-callin-it-courage fantasies.

On your topic of the shifty Arabs lying and cheating to win, I would add that all other peoples in the same boat would likely do the same. Gary Brechers two part feature on the Kurds illuminates that idea, have you read it? Part 1: www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=14150&IBLOCK_ID=35

Part 2: www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=14538&IBLOCK_ID=35

On your topic of the shifty Arabs lying and cheating to win, I would add that all other peoples in the same boat would likely do the same. Gary Brechers two part feature on the Kurds illuminates that idea, have you read it? Part 1: http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=14150&IBLOCK_ID=35

Part 2: http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=14538&IBLOCK_ID=35

And some bad news ( I doubt this would have happened now if the new NIE was kept secret): http://en.rian.ru/world/20071208/91488137.html

So now I’m confused, do you think your analogy is garbage or do you think Iraq and Iran were allies?

If Iran was the main concern all along, and if Iraq and Iran were not friends, wouldn’t it have been smarter to bring Saddam into the fray against Iran, diverting Iranian attention and tying up their western front?

The Jesus lovin warriors from USA could (1) provide air support (initially great air support so Iraq can advance rapidly, then later intentionally lackluster support so that the Iraq troop strength is weakened), (2) take out Iranian defensive infrastructure throughout the country and (3) seize the key strategic locations; then with Iran conquered and subdued, oops I meant to say “liberated and given its freedom”, and the Jesus warriors controlling the key Iranian assets and Iraqi forces mostly in the wrong country and worn out from a bloody fight (due in part to late air support at critical moments), then you could arrest Saddam (doing so at the victory celebration would be a nice Machiavellian touch) and execute him the next day while offering his generals the choice of following in his fate or gaining great riches by helping to enforce martial law.

Martial law would remain in place until all those pesky religious leaders can be rounded up and sent to Cuba.

Then you could install another Shah - no wait the Iranian people might remember that from last time. Maybe instead you could start holding free elections - no wait they might elect islamic radicals again (unless you could convince them to use American mmade black box voting systems, but I doubt they are that dumb). Looks like you’d have to occupy the country forever - no wait that’s not viable just ask Sun Tzu. Hmmm.

Perhaps you better rethink the attack approach. Maybe it would be best to just keep talking to the Iranians, to bring them around to our side by clever use of diplomacy, economics and other sensitive geo-pollitical tools; yes it seems like we are so far apart now but gradually without them even realizing it, perhaps Iran could become inter-dependent with the USA and the rest of the world. No wait, if you don’t attack Iran how are the major weapon manufacturers and military support corporations going to improve their price/earnings ratios? I guess you’ll just have to attack Iran anyway and remain mortal enemies forever.