Cool. I'm trying to GAF what muslims, chinese, africans, and euroscum are watching. Okay, I'm going to try to give even one f now....ready?
Posted on 05/09/2026 6:22:24 AM PDT by Libloather
The man who ran security at 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the 1996 Atlanta Games — where a bomber killed two and wounded more than 100 — warns that Iranian “sleeper cells” are likely plotting attacks during next month’s World Cup, as federal officials race to secure the 39-day competition.
“I’m fairly confident there are Iranian sleeper cells or surrogate sleeper cells, and this would be an incredible opportunity for sleeper cells to attack,” Former LAPD Deputy Chief Bill Rathburn told The Post.
His comments came after the feds warned about Iranian “prepositioned sleeper assets” in the US while the war with Iran raged. The fighting is down to a simmer after the US launched strikes on Iranian targets Thursday following attacks on three US ships in a response President Trump called a “love tap.”
Chris Swecker, who ran security for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, held in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, also pointed to Middle East turmoil as a concerning threat factor.
“There’s an animation around the sport to begin with,” said Swecker, who served as assistant director of the FBI. “You’ve got the presence of foes coming to the World Cup from different parts of the world. It’s not like it can escape the radar of terrorist organizations. It’s right there front and center.”
He cited the threat from “card-carrying terrorist cells, as well as the influence those that have been radicalized on the Internet.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
East Rutherford NJ, although the literature will probably say "New York".
Don’t care.
I care about the fact that it happened in my lifetime in the largest portions of living generations
Otherwise you open that slippery slope to everything from asinine reparations to descendants of black American slaves to Mexico demanding we return the Southwestern United States to them, and the infinite variations that exist throughout all history in every land around the globe occupied by humans.
America has done more to help every country on Earth, probably in all of history, to free them and provide financial support when it is needed for everything from humanitarian to military, and has globally reduced the persistent burden of poverty all over the world that exists now, and has always existed in a greater degree than it does today.
That is how “the greatest Country in the World comes off”. That is how.
Because we are a nation governed by laws, run by humans, and humans are not infallible contrary to what Leftists (and some on Free Republic) like to imply. Evil, sin and error are built into us, and we try as a nation (or at least our Founders did) by taking that into account and accepting it. Leftists (and some on Free Republic) want to take the 10% of our history in which we SHOULD feel shame (such as the abandonment of South Vietnam and the betrayal of Chiang Kai-Shek at the end of WWII) and use that to say that exemplifies what is good in this country and what we stand for.
If you want to be part of that crowd and piously intone that 10% to paint our entire country and history with a blackened brush, I can’t help you with that.
But if you are an American citizen and you do that, you take the boundless opportunities this country has given you and generations before you (not to mention others all over the world who have benefited from our inbred generosity and largesse via the spread of freedom) then there is no reason for us to discuss this further.
You occupy the ground you feel you have, and I will occupy mine. I can face God with with the ground I occupy, even with its flaws.
Not at all.
If we weren't engaged in violence against Iran, none of what took place in either 1953 or 1979 would matter to me or anyone else.
But we are engaged in violence against Iran, and we are engaged in violence against Iran on the flimsiest of pretenses, none of which hold up to any scrutiny.
The argument, here and elsewhere, seems to boil down to the number of Americans who were apparently killed by Iran by "proxy"; this argument relies on an awful amount of either stupidity or willful ignorance to have any merit. We're asked to believe that Iran woke up one day and decided it would be a good idea to support terrorists who acted against American military personnel and interests. (They just woke up one day and decided it would be a good thing to do.)
So we're left with either starting the US-Iran calendar in 1979 to ensure Americans don't learn the background of the story, or to acknowledge the background of the story and hope that Americans jump on the bandwagon nonetheless because (cue Elmo voice), "'Murica special!".
Thanks, but I'll put myself in the America First camp with that first America Firster, George Washington.
Cool. I'm trying to GAF what muslims, chinese, africans, and euroscum are watching. Okay, I'm going to try to give even one f now....ready?
Go ahead and jump up on your pious pedestal there-you’ll be happy.
Had a bunch of cousins book on Cunard for two weeks. Coming back next Friday. Want to pick their brains on what to to take/not to take. We’re flying in early to stay one night before the trip so we’re going to go to a Walgreen’s in Seattle to buy a lot of toiletries.
Best wishes on you trip.
Are you on a Cunard?
Write back quickly.....flying tomorrow to Seattle.
Thank you as well.
I acknowledge that the position of “Iran is more bark than bite” carries risk. Indeed, arguably Clinton took a “what, me worry?” approach during the 1990s with the Cole and his personal escapades, and we saw where that landed.
And, again, Iran taking hostages from the embassy was effectively an attack on American soil. I remember most of my teen classmates were all for nuking Iran. We wanted blood. We got nothing. You are right….we were at our nadir in the Cold War at that time, and Reagan needed to rebuild our economy.
Add Beirut to that mix and the leaders of Iran get no pass from me. Obama sending $100bn in banknotes to Iran was the latest injustice. So I get your position.
All that said, for me the facts just don’t line up to Iran being this almost nuclear power or grave threat to freedom. Yes, Iran can bomb anything within about 2,000 miles of their borders, and have launched missiles. But Iran comes across as an attention whore. They can’t even deliver running water in Tehran.
Perhaps even MORE problematic is that this feels like every other lie we’ve been told - Iraq and WMD, Covid, Global Warming, Ukraine needs money, and so on. As I wrote elsewhere, Iran has been 2 months away from getting a nuke for the past four decades. Yet Godot never comes.
Yes, monitor Iran. Spy on them. Broadcast VOA programming into the interior of Iran. Take defensive action. Protect our borders. And stay out of forever wars overseas. And pray that the good people of Iran do the right thing.
We may not agree on everything, but we are agreed that Iran’s leadership is NOT an innocent bystander or friends. Thanks for listening.
;-)
I always appreciate discourse with you, because it is evident that there are things we disagree on, but...as your post illustrates, there are things that we do have in common, so I don’t have to resort to insults such as questioning your conservatism or principles.
We have disagreements.
I understand the points you make, but in my opinion, because we are dealing with nuclear weaponry I have to stick to my guns on this.
Sure, Iran has a lot of bark, more than it has bite right now, and I am not worried about Iran lobbing a nuclear tipped ballistic missile at us. But I am worried about them thinking they are clever enough to escape scrutiny if they use a proxy to deliver a nuclear weapon via a containership.
For me it boils down to this: Iran may indeed be all bark.
But it is like having a guy on your street who murdered a neighbor, but got off on a technicality. Before he murdered his neighbor, he would shout at the guy that he was dead meat, he was going to kill him, so on and so forth. And that went on for years until the police cars showed up in front of the guy’s house to arrest him after the discovery of the neighbor’s body in his house.
So, you watch all this going down, the guy threatening him, the neighbor ending up dead, and then the guy who murdered him ending up back living in his house due to some legal loophole.
And then the guy takes a dislike to you. He begins glaring at you as you drive by, thinking you are the one who ratted him out or something like that. Your dog ends up carved up in the woods near your house, and the guy makes comments to you indicating he took pleasure in hearing your dog had been butchered. And he yells up the street at you things like “You better watch your back or you’re going to end up like your filthy dog...”
I tend to take those kinds of people seriously the same way I take the Islamic Republic of Iran seriously.
So I understand you might not see it the same way I do. But I have learned that there are people in this world who make threats, and aren’t deterred by being caught and punished.
And I see Iran the same way.
Thank you for the reply, and the analogy. It’s very helpful.
And, again, I have zero love for Iran’s leaders. The good people of Iran, my heart goes out to them. I know a few who immigrated to America; good people, and no love lost for their former leaders.
I tend to be an absolutist in terms of “just war” and self-defense. Saint Thomas Aquinas laid it out very nicely. A big reason why I like Aquinas (aside from him being right….!….) is that it keeps me (or, if we followed him, the USA) from getting enmeshed in forever wars and foreign entanglements.
Following Aquinas, however, restricts my desire for vengeance. Do I want to annihilate Iran for 444 days and Beirut? Yup. But just as I don’t support reparations for the sins of yesteryear, I can’t turn around and say after 47 years let’s wipe out Iran finally.
I recognize fully that I’m usually in the minority, in part because My Tribe doesn’t really subscribe to Aquinas’ approach and views. And, again, that’s ok. We agree on 95% of everything else.
Using your analogy, I liken it to living in Pennsylvania and a cottage I owned in Mississippi getting taken over by a cult with some relatives in the cottage. After 444 days the relatives come back to PA. The cult take over the government of Mississippi. They then bombs a second home of mine in Illinois and kills hundreds of relatives. For whatever reason, I never retaliated. But as far as I’m concerned, the cult is a mortal enemy. They’re dead meat if they cross into PA.
Over the ensuing 45ish years, the cult running Mississippi has never come to PA and actually their ordnance they can’t even make it past Tennessee. The cult takes credit for sundry murders and deaths of Pennsylvanians over the years, outside of the borders of PA. They keep doing bad things in Tupelo and go on Shortwave radio threatening The Great Satan that is the Keystone State. For some reason, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama don’t do anything about the cult leaders in Mississippi, although Florida started launching tomahawks from the panhandle recently. That makes me smile.
Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania things are going well. We re-elected governor Tonald Drump, who was a governor before. We have stopped citizens of New Jersey from illegally entering PA. Prices have stabilized. Normalcy has returned. We may actually get some domestic policy changes that we’ve needed for decades, especially if we can hold the Republican majority in Harrisburg.
I heard Florida wants to bomb Mississippi but good. Go for it. But PA won’t send ordnance or men to Tupelo. And I’ll be peeved at Gov Drump if he risks losing all that we have to support Florida.
Again, I appreciate this discussion and remain open to dialogue, I get your points and will continue to ponder them. Thank you.
And we can agree or disagree. And I can do that because I think you are sincere in your underpinnings. I often cannot do that with others who I feel are less sincere in those foundations of belief and are instead politically motivated rather than ethically motivated.
Like you, I also subscribe to "Just War" and self-defense. But I have concluded that many humans will rationalize (because rationalization is a mechanism that human beings are fully conditioned to be expert at, as this image below illustrates:
I keep in mind that my ideological opponents all fully believe that whatever God they believe in is with them, even if it was only the silly Pastafarian Flying Spaghetti Monster God. I am trying to find my way to Christ, and it is the consistency I have found in the Bible and Christ that compels me to believe in what Christ stands for, and intellectual consistency that makes Christianity such a fine force for good in this world. It is hard for me to argue against a religion that tells me if I sincerely repent of my sins and believe in my heart that Christ is my Lord and Savior, I could be accepted into heaven where I could theoretically meet the likes of Jeffrey Dahlmer or Barney Frank there.
I have to admit it blows my mind. And in dwelling on it recently, I did find myself praying for Barney Frank, that he might repent of his sins and find Christ.
Because if there is hope for the likes of Barney Frank or Jeffrey Dahlmer-there is hope for me.
The bottom line is, I do believe in the Just War concept and self-defense, but I try to remember everyone else does too.
I am all for subduing Iran because of who they are and what they do. I pray for regular Iranians, because I have known many and Iike them.
We can disagree on whether this move to take down Iran is right or wrong-as I have said, when I discuss it with you and others like you, it puts a governor on my passions...and in no way, in today's world, can I find anything bad about that.
Good talking to you, FRiend. Fight the good fight for what you believe in.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.