Posted on 01/22/2005 6:11:42 PM PST by nwrep
USAF RF-4s used to fly over Russia through Iranian Air Space
Thanks for pointing out my mistake: it should be 12/7/1941, of course
In his memoirs, "Present at the Creation", Dean Acheson (Sec'y of State under Truman) expressed a lot of respect for Mossadeq.
I think that Guatemala was a similar situation, where the Eisenhower administration overthrew a democratically elected leftist who probably was benign.
In contrast, Eisenhower forced the British, French, and Israelis to withdraw from their take-over of the Suez canal from Nasser, a real bad guy.
Jewish scholarship has a bitter saying about King Saul: "Because he was kind when he should have been cruel (to King Agog), he ended up being cruel when he should have been kind (to David)."
Maybe U.S. was cruel when it should have been kind (Mossadez, Arbeniz), and ended up being kind when it should have been cruel (Nasser, Arafat, Khomeini).
The soviets were bogged down in Afghanistan by fighting doctrine, not aircraft to aircraft dogfights or anti-ship missiles launched form their Kresta and Krivak class destroyers or their Alpha's or Oscars or Foxtrot subs we spotted in the Arabian Sea and Indian ocean.
Remember, India was friendly to the Soviets then, so was Yemen and a few other places.
http://rescueattempt.tripod.com/id4.html
I have a page there on some of the soviets that were following us around then. It was a matter of who shot first when it came to the big guns, not a matter of who had the better fighting man.
Much is exaggerated about how the average soviet soldier would surrender at the sight of a single American armed with an M-16, people forget the Russians braved the coldest winters to slaughter the NAZIS, living off wallpaper paste.
If they came to fight, and since we were on their borders, I would expect them to fight and fight hard to keep us away from their borderrs, just like we would for the Mexico scenario.
They only had 100,000 troops in Afghanistan then anyways, first invasion force was about 10,000 troops, they built up slow.
What I meant with my original post was heavy weapons, nukes, and ship to ship missiles.
Yes, but some of us fully expected it, with the history of attacks (suppose 1993 WTC had succeeded, for example). The author shouldn't use his own lack of forethought and understanding as support for an argument that we should have done something different a quarter of a century ago.
Not that I think Carter gets off the hook for Iran, but the author is being ridiculous to say this wasn't predicted (I have witnesses to my personal predictions of it, for example--both the WTC target and the planes as suicide weapons--and didn't Clancy predict something similar?). At least, however, they are now realizing that the Super Bowl, pipelines, tunnels, and other sites are potential targets.
If irrational behavior were a legitimate reason to topple a foreign head of state, then any nation in the world would have been well within its rights to topple the U.S. government at any time from January 1993 through December of 2000.
The first pajamahadeen :^)
touche'!
Plus, j carter didn't try and renegotiate the lease we had with the Panamanian government, so the lease ran out. NOW we have a chinese company "controlling" both ends of the Panama canal.
Hutchison Whampoa, if I remember correctly. Bad news.
(Are you in WA state too?)
No, but I did go to school there.
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