[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Proud Marie

I dont get it

you might need more phosphorus in your diet

[Confusion is Dante]

(quoted from Atari2600: About iran...hopefully we can mount a covert operation to assist the youth of iran that are growing weary of shi'ite fundamentalist controls.)
Whoa!! Atari can form intelligent thoughts?????
I'm down for this..............I'll accept anything other than Israel going in....

[Proud Marie]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

you might need more phosphorus in your diet

alright! i got bananas today! o wait those have potassium. The only thing i know that has phosphurus is urine, and thats not gonna happen.

[atari 2600]

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200607...tes-rise.htmll

excerpts:

By liberating and empowering Iraq's Shiite majority, the Bush administration helped launch a broad Shiite revival that will upset the sectarian balance in Iraq and the Middle East for years to come.

The mantra "one man, one vote," which galvanized Shiites in Iraq, is resonating elsewhere. The Shiites of Lebanon (who amount to about 45 percent of the country's population) have touted the formula, as have the Shiites in Bahrain (who represent about 75 percent of the population there), who will cast their ballots in parliamentary elections in the fall.

Since 2003, Iran has officially played a constructive role in Iraq. It was the first country in the region to send an official delegation to Baghdad for talks with the Iraqi Governing Council, in effect recognizing the authority that the United States had put in power. Iran extended financial support and export credits to Iraq and offered to help rebuild Iraq's energy and electricity infrastructure. After former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Shiite-led interim government assumed office in Baghdad in April 2005, high-level Iraqi delegations visited Tehran, reached agreements over security cooperation with Iran, and negotiated a $1 billion aid package for Iraq and several trade deals, including one for the export of electricity to Iraq and another for the exchange of Iraqi crude oil for refined oil products.
Iran's unofficial influence in Iraq is even greater. In the past three years, Iran has built an impressive network of allies and clients, ranging from intelligence operatives, armed militias, and gangs to, most visibly, politicians in various Iraqi Shiite parties. Many leaders of the main Shiite parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Dawa (including two leading party spokesmen, former Prime Minister Jaafari and the current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki), spent years of exile in Iran before returning to Iraq in 2003. (SCIRI's militia, the Badr Brigades, was even trained and equipped by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.) Iran has also developed ties with Muqtada al-Sadr, who once inflamed passions with his virulent anti-Iranian rhetoric, as well as with factions of Sadr's movement, such as the Fezilat Party in Basra. The Revolutionary Guards supported Sadr's Mahdi Army in its confrontation with U.S. troops in Najaf in 2004, and since then Iran has trained Sadrist political and military cadres. Iran bankrolled Shiite parties in Iraq during the two elections, used its popular satellite television network al Aalam to whip up support for them, and helped broker deals with the Kurds. Iraqi Shiite parties attract voters by relying on vast political and social-service networks across southern Iraq that, in many cases, were created with Iranian funding and assistance.



Iraq's liberation has also generated new cultural, economic, and political ties among Shiite communities across the Middle East. Since 2003, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, coming from countries ranging from Lebanon to Pakistan, have visited Najaf and other holy Shiite cities in Iraq, creating transnational networks of seminaries, mosques, and clerics that tie Iraq to every other Shiite community, including, most important, that of Iran. Pictures of Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Lebanese cleric Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah (often referred to as Hezbollah's spiritual leader) are ubiquitous in Bahrain, for example, where open displays of Shiite piety have been on the rise and once-timid Shiite clerics now flaunt traditional robes and turbans. The Middle East that will emerge from the crucible of the Iraq war may not be more democratic, but it will definitely be more Shiite.

---

to all my doubters & naysayers...read it & weep.

[kingcoffee]

Originally Posted by Confusion is Dante

Honestly..............Saddam Hussein was funding terrorists in Israel. $20,000.00 to each family who sent a family member as a body-bomber to kill Israelis.........A war on terror is a war on all terrorism.
And.........if America doesn't do something about Iran's newly acquired nuclear power, in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty I might add, Israel will.
Let me put that into perspective:
If America goes into Iran......the Muslim world will look at that as "Those damned imperialists will never quit and we can't stop them...."
If Israel invades Iran.......There will be a major holocaust.
Israel has nukes, and may use them........Iran has nukes....and probably will use them.............
I, for one, do not want to breathe the fallout from that conflict.

Iran does not yet have nuclear weapon capabilities. They have been tinkering with nuclear power, but all intelligence indicates that the country is many years away from creating a nucelar weapon. I don't trust any country with nuclear weapons. Not even our own. It's a scary, scary technology that can only be used for evil and malice. I wish to God (Hendrix) that Einstein never helped develop that technology. I know he only did it to beat the Nazi's from getting it first, but damn. It still sucks.

[kingcoffee]

I know that the U.S. supports Isreal, but I don't think that this is always a wise decision. Isrealis may have put up with an enormous amount of bullshit over the years (thousands of them) but they are just as guilty of ignorance and prejudicial violence as the people they are constantly fighting with. I am so upset with the behavior of the people in the Middle East that it boils my blood. Thje disputes are so goddamn ridiculous that it blows my mind. It basically boils down to religious differences. I know that it is more complicated than just idealogical differences, but it keeps coming back to that particular conflict. I don't understand why people can act so violently for such terrible reasons. At times, it makes me think that it would be best if the people in that are just wipe dthemselves out completely so the war would just end. If there are no people, then there is no feudin and a-fightin'. But I know that this particular line of thinking is too pessimistic and wrong. Millions of innocents would die and that is not worth it. There needs to be a strong, manageable truce between Isreal and all the other violent, feuding nations in the Middle East. There also has to be a well-organized and proper extermination of Terrosrist and exteamist-minded organizations in the area that instigate and carry out terrorist acts. They are evil, twisted people that don't deserve to live. They should be tried for war crimes and put in the utmost maximum security prisons by the United Nations.

The problem wiht the Middle East problem right now is that the UN never gets invloved. And when they do, they are ineffective. The UN is too weak right now to get people to behave properly. No one is afraid of them so no one listens to them. The world is in a sad state and I can only imagine that it will get worse as people lose sight of realistic and peaceful goals and only serve their own selfish,vulgar desires. This includes Bush and his gang of War Criminal buddies. You know who I'm talking about. Bush will never really wrap things up in the Middle East. Because he doesn't want to. The more conflict in the Middle East means more money for he and his friends. He's such a greedy, evil fucker that he will actually allow millions to die so he can make billions. Sickening. Down right sickening. Bush is a terrorist.

[kingcoffee]

And kiss my ass to anyone who says otherwise. I don't care what anyone else thinks, especially the government. I hate the way this country is being runa nd I hate where this country is beinf run into: the ground. Bush and his cronies and practically destroyed all that was great about this country: ethe economy, the freedom of speech, the seperation of church and state and just out general freedoms. George W Bush is the worst thing to happen to this land since the arrival of white people hundreds of years ago. They wiped out almost all of the Native American people and Bush is trying to do basically the same thing in the Middle East. He doesn't care how many lives he destroys, as long as he gets what he wants: money and power. Fuck him.

[atari 2600]

Yeah, Einstein later regretted letting Szilard send the letters to FDR.

Yeah, Iran is years away from ICBMs.

Yeah, Israel is sometimes the aggressor.

Can't help but see that you have blinders on to the point though. That's okay. I just stumbled upon the recent article I posted excerpts of above & since it backs up everything I've been writing for years, I posted it. If you haven't been around for the history of our little political threads here, my last post may not make that much contextual sense.

A tidbit the author left out:
Our government has been in covert league with Shias ever since the Iranian Hostage Crisis & Reagan's inauguration; it's an unholy alliance that goes back way before Dubya.