Posted on 03/11/2007 8:09:37 PM PDT by blam
Iran gets America in its sights
By Damien McElroy in Baghdad
Last Updated: 2:19am GMT 12/03/2007
When nations as estranged as America and Iran hold face-to-face meetings for the first time in years, choreography matters as much as the words exchanged across the table.
At a much-anticipated security summit in Iraq at the weekend, both the speeches and actions suggested Iran was not giving friendly signals to the United States. After a long day of diplomatic exchanges in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzhad, the US ambassador to Iraq, struggled to find words that cast the encounter in a positive light.
It was, he said, a "businesslike" meeting with "lively discussions".
Yet as he entered the press room in the Iraqi foreign ministry, his Iranian counterpart walked out.
A man claiming to be a journalist who was part of Teheran's delegation, circulated a transcript of the Iranian speech inside the talks. He wore the type of windcheater fashionable in Teheran since the extremist politician Mahmoud Ahmedinejad became president.
Iran's primary demand was a call for a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq. Did Iran state that America's presence in Iraq was the cause of terrorism? "Yes," the Iranian said.
Did Teheran offer any concessions that would flow from an American timetable for withdrawal? "No," he said, with a smirk.
The Islamic Republic's many points of disagreement with the country it officially derides as the "Great Satan" have coalesced into a low-level war in Iraq.
Iran is accused of supplying Shia insurgents with the training, finance and deadly munitions to kill American troops.
American forces in turn have detained Iranian operatives it accuses of belonging to the al Qods force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Iran insists the detainees enjoy diplomatic immunity and should be released, but America retorts it is holding no diplomats in Iraq.
Iran's demand for US troops to begin withdrawing from its neighbour was met on Saturday night by President George W Bush with a commitment to increase the number of American military personnel by 4,400 servicemen.
The Baghdad summit, the first to be held in the city since 1990, was short on achievements.
One important aim was to work toward securing Iraq's borders from infiltration, but in the end delegates could not even agree on the location of the next meeting.
Turkey has offered to host foreign ministers next month but Iraq is holding out for a return to Baghdad.
If the meeting is held in Istanbul, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, will attend, setting the stage for a highly symbolic meeting between cabinet officials from Washington and Teheran.
Two well-aimed projectiles - one hit a flat roof annexe to the main ministry building - appeared to have destroyed the Iraqi case.
Intense security was imposed for the meeting, with the majority of delegates flown in and out on a chartered jet.
With a direct mortar hit the extremists made clear the distance between international diplomacy and the determined streetfighters who have enfeebled the three-year old Iraqi government.
Despite the talk on Saturday of improving security in Iraq, at least 58 people were killed yesterday across the country in a wave of suicide bombs.
In the bloodiest attack, Shia pilgrims were targeted by a car bomb in Baghdad after returning from ceremonies marking the religious festival of Arbaeen in the city of Karbala. Police said 32 people died and dozens more were wounded when their convoy was hit by the explosion.
* The Iraqi High Tribunal yesterday denied reports that the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death has fled to Britain to seek political asylum. Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman and his family had in fact been "on vacation" in London since December, the court said. "
A huge delaying tactic by Iran...cloud the issue, and keep building nuke capability. Who is kidding who here? This whole "negotiation" is beyond troublesome.
Iran has the U.S. in its sights about the way a deer has a hunter in its sights.
KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Right between the minarets.
Or maybe it could be that Iran is looking through a telescope and seeing a mile square asteroid coming right at it.
"Rock The Casbah".
Didn't Bush say that he doesn't negotiate with terrorists?
They keep doing this. It is not the purpose of the American Military, or the Iraqi Military, for that matter, to prevent suicidal madmen from harming themselves and others.
Their purpose is to stabilize areas and deny territory to the enemy.
The targeting of civilians serves no military purpose. When it no longer serves any purpose, it will stop. That may depend on whether newspeople and agencies decide that it is not good for anyone that they support evil.
Here's what really happened:
"To emphasize the improving security in Iraq, several fruitless suicide bomb attacks were conducted without achieving a single tactical benefit."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAkfHShATKY
Yeah, baby!
Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shakin to the top
The sheik he drove his cadillac
He went a cruisnin down the ville
The muezzin was a standing
On the radiator grille
Chorus
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy casbah sound
But the bedouin they brought out
The electric camel drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the shareef
Had cleared the square
They began to wail
Chorus
Now over at the temple
Oh! they really pack em in
The in crowd say its cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
The temple band took five
The crowd caught a wiff
Of that crazy casbah jive
Chorus
The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the casbah way
As soon as the shareef was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare
As soon as the shareef was
Outta their hair
The jet pilots wailed
Chorus
He thinks its not kosher
Fundamentally he cant take it.
You know he really hates it.
You do realize that a literal mile-sized asteroid would impact with an energy of over 1 million megatons? This is, shall we say, overkill? You don't want to be anywhere near such an event, and in this case, `near' would mean on the same planet.
Then I got my meaning across. Iran does not want to be on the same planet with an angry America either.
oh i'm scared now
should read, iran grabs tiger by the tail
Rofl! Allahu fubar!
I'm not sure, but he did say "Islam is a religion of peace!
Yeah, let's go bomb another country.
People don't learn. John Quincy Adams said We do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. This "interventionist" and "pre-emptive war" policy is hardly conservative. We thought Iraq would be manageable, and now we have a regional conflagaration which will disintegrate the moment we leave. We've exacerbated tensions, and with Iraq and Iran naturally uniting over time based on their Sh'ite roots, we've created a bi-polar standoff between them and Sunni countries led by Saudia Arabia. In short, we've got a powder-keg, and no it wasn't like that when we got there.
Let's keep looking at Iran as the next villains, and particularly their easily stereotyped leader. Let's scoff at diplomacy and somehow perceive their nuclear intentions as having any consequence on our mainland. Meanwhile China is having a field day watching us constantly distracted while they increase our trade deficit (and bury the dollar, which means our buying power), and unite the middle east and russia against us in the Shanghai collective.
We have to stand up for our security but war is not always the answer. Most of all, I am troubled that we are not more concerned about our nation's intelligence gathering abilities (or interpretative abilities) and have not done a thing about the 9/11 recommendations. I'm not happy about the WMD debacle, and it seems as if people are willing to buy whatever the govt. is selling still.
I've grown to distrust our foreign policy establishment, which seems to make decisions whoever is in power. Dems supported the Iraq war with their votes, and voted for the reauthorization. We may have written off conservatives who talk about "America First", but that really does mean "America First" and not "Israel First" or letting foreign entanglements lead us into a war that's costly in lives and resources.
We are doing the right thing by finishing the job in Iraq. We have Afghanistan to return our attention to, while focusing diplomatic efforts on N. Korean and Pakistan. We do not need a wider war in the middle east, and this sort of villainization of Iran and its leaders will only encourage that. The real world is far more nuanced.
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