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Joe Lieberman
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant
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46 Responses to “Joe Lieberman”
Iran already is at war with us and has been since 1979. Iran is responsible for killing our troops in Iraq, its constantly making threats, funding and arming terrorists, developing nuclear bombs while threatening to annihilate Israel every other day. But in the “through the looking glass” worldview of opinion makers and liberals, it is not Iran which is warmongering, it is Joe Lieberman, and American self-defense is turned into aggression.
Iran is an enemy of our own making. If we would live up to our responsibility as a democracy and support democratic governments rather than undermining them and installing dictators sympathetic to US economic interests rather than the interests of their own people, then Iran would be an ally right now.
Anyway, even if military option was necessary, we do not have the capacity to take on such a task now since we are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best course is diplomatic, and despite our poor position thanks to this administration and the neocons, success is still possible. War is only necessary when both sides have their heads up their rears. I think it would put us in a wonderful position if we actually pulled our head out and looked around and actually see the farce of all the warmongering. Peace is possible, but at least one side has to want it first and offer it to the other.
Laura – Lets go back to 1953 when we and the Brits overthrew Iran’s elected Prime Minister and installed the Shah. Is that when we declared war against Iran?
I cannot think of a country with which the U.S. has so consistently botched its relations than Iraq. We’re talking Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. Extraordinary!
Anybody hear that the Joe Lieberman party has asked for his resignation from his own party?
It’s not America’s self defense Joe is worried about.
In fact, you allude to who’s defense we are talking about previously in your comment. But then forget your talking point and slip up.
Ashen Shard, we didn’t make Iran into our enemy. Iran has been our enemy since the islamic revolution and the taking of our hostages in 1979. BTW we can thank your beloved Carter for that. WAKE UP PEOPLE! Why are you defending this genocidal, hitler wannabee in Tehran?
davebo you are delusional. The Iranian regime is responsible for killing our soldiers in Iraq and you defend them. The left is sick and morally depraved, and doesn’t realize who our enemies are. All you have to do is see how the Iranian mullahs treat their own people to know what kind of a global danger it represents. You won’t face the truth until a terrorist nuke, supplied by Iran, detonates in one of our cities. But your hatred of Israel supercedes your survival instinct. Once again we see why the left is so utterly contemptible.
Senior American military officers understand the threat from Iran:
What the hell happened to the link?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181228588702&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
No senior military advisors recommend bombing Iran. Our intel is faulty and we would be unable to follow through with reinforcements if they attacked our forces in Iraq.
The Israeli lobby and the neocons have been pushing Bush to attack before he leaves office. They know he and Cheney are the only ones who are foolish enough to go for this. I did read somewhere that Pace was replaced because he did not want to attack Iran.
The cartoon is stupid as well as predictable, sadly.
As to Iran itself, the routine #1 annual state sponsor of terrorism, the USA, the UK, “colonialism” [sic], the Shah, are not to blame for Iran’s current government nor for Islamic fanaticism, which is hardly restricted to Iran’s government and some of its people. (Nor are the USA, the UK, “neocolonialism” [sic], Israel, etc., ad nauseum, to blame for Muslim sectarian violence in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.) Iran is meddling not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan, and Iran threatens other nations in the Middle East.
Those most against standing up to Iranian aggression (they will accuse the US of being “aggressive” instead) will be the first to complain later if additional Iranian acts have unpleasant consequences in the West.
It was said:
We removed a dictator formerly sympathetic to such interests (while being sympathetic earlier to Soviet interests) and sought democracy — in Iraq.
Don’t be naive. Democratic governments require peoples and cultures that are compatible with and seek such governments.
BTW, I offer no apologies for wanting to prevent a nuclear holocaust of Israel. Any decent person would want to prevent such a horror. Whoever has a problem with this can kiss my ass.
kimrit, did you actually read the article?
Laura- no one has gone on record publicly in an American newspaper. They have gone on record against an attack. But as I said, Bush and Cheney have been determined to do it anyway and Lieberman has been in their camp all along. Pace may have been replaced because he didn’t support the idea.
K. Ritter:
Hopefully you read the story at the link Laura posted. There are a number of options if the use of force were necessary, including the remote blockade operation. (Iran might block Hormuz anyway.) Air strikes would be employed most likely if the nuke sites were to be struck. The same is true for terrorist training camps. We aren’t talking here about a large-scale invasion, in a nation much larger, with a population much larger, with mountains.
As to retaliation by Iran other than in Iraq:
…
If US forces strike Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran will respond by triggering an all-out regional war, Iranian officials said last week in an interview with the Defense News weekly.
“Ballistic missiles would be fired in masses against targets in Persian Gulf states and Israel,†one Foreign Ministry official said. “The objective would be to overwhelm US missile defense systems with dozens and maybe hundreds of missiles fired simultaneously at specific targets.â€
Read more here, including good reader remarks.
“If US forces strike Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran will respond by triggering an all-out regional war, Iranian officials said last week in an interview with the Defense News weekly. ”
That is why this is total madness. I thought that’s what we were trying to avoid. You really trust this administration to handle three wars simultaneously?
Our intel is as poor as it was in 2003 when we sought Iraq’s WMD’s. Their nuke sites are in highly populated centers which would result in massive civilian casualties. This is my worst fear come true- George Bush will break America’s greatness in an effort to protect Israel.
The Islamic Revolution occurred due to our policies which negatively effected the Iranian people. We supported the Shah over democracy in Iran because democracy was not in our economic interest and thus turned a majority of the Iranian people against us. If we had supported democracy in Iran, the hostages would never have been taken, there may have still be an Islamic Revolution but Iran would definitely not be our enemy, and would likely be an ally.
DLS:
Good reader remarks for the article you link to?!! You mean the ones about nuking Tehran, etc. & turning all of Israel’s enemy’s countries into parking lots?!
Laura:
Most sane human beings would like to prevent a nuclear holocaust of anyone, not just Israel. Preemptive nuking of any country will unleash world Armageddon. Do you honestly think that any other nuclear countries would sit it out. Would Pakistan stand by watching other Muslims nuked? Then India would respond with their nukes setting off the whole chain of dominoes. Ultimately, no one would be any less dead or around to tell the tale of the aftermath. You aren’t, by any chance, one of those folks that wish to bring about the apocalypse or the Rapture or anything like that, are you? Because you sure sound that way to me.
Where’s Chris today? This thread really ought to be pulling some caustic rhetoric out of him.
Let’s try this bait……….”bom, bom, bomb Iran……oh, take this Ahman……..oh, bomb Irannnnn”
Oh, and btw Laura…
Telling people to “kiss my ass” does nothing for your argument. In fact, it tends to show that you can’t support your argument any other way.
You bet! Sheer entertainment — and it’s not 100% anti-Iran (or pro-Israel), either.
Ahmedinnerjacket and his buddies in Iran are.
So may well be some in Pakistan. And then there’s always fatalism or flippancy, such as the Pakistani general who said about a nuclear war with India, “Why not?”
Put chemicals on Iran’s oil facilities! Set Iran’s oil fields on fire! Make Kuwait’s environmental situation in the earlier war benign by comparison.
DLS said:
So let me get this straight….
The answer for taking care of insane guys like this is to be insane ourselves & nuke them before they have a chance, however far off, to maybe follow through on their rhetoric?!
How does that not make us just like them?! Doesn’t that also make us go down in history for starting world Armageddon instead of the insane guys? Oh wait, there won’t be any history since everyone will be dead…I get it!
K. Ritter:
We have no proof of that, and have evidence to the contrary, namely the reversal of the no-dialogue position (yes, it could be dishonest and merely going through the motions prior to a strike), as well as the administration’s energy industry ties in addition to the situation with Halliburton and Iran (a stronger set of reasons to rule out an insistence on war).
I suspect the Bush people believe at this time that “regime change” in Iran is too difficult, as well as that they probably fear they are unprepared for all the consequences if they were to strike Iran. OK, so I’m assuming some amount of intelligence in effect here, which may be a stretch, but Cheney, for example, is hardly a dummy, and we all know he has kept his ties with Halliburton.
I’ve discussed long ago the threat of Iran and missile attacks, and among the examples, Iran’s threats to attack oil installations elsewhere in the Gulf if Iran is attacked. Now, if we wanted to try to force Iran to reduce its misconduct, a primary thing we would want to do would be to cut off Iran’s oil revenues, which fund its terrorist and illicit WMD and missile activities. But if Iran disrupts oil from elsewhere in the Gulf, what does that do to our calculations to strike at Iran’s oil?
Then with Hormuz, along with laying mines, all that’s needed is to have one or more “accidents” lead to ships being sunk in the Strait. That’s in addition to the use of anti-ship missiles as well as Iran’s speedboat navy (fast boats that are heavily armed), all items much better than they were in the 1980s.
Presumably the Bush people are well aware of these things.
Anna said:
Well, you’re saying that; I’m not. Air strikes on missile and WMD sites and attacks against threats to Gulf transit are hardly the same as nuclear destruction of whole cities and areas, as Iran has threatened to do to Israel on a number of occasions.
I left this intact not to refute any claim that we are as bad as Iran (which is false, obviously) but because there are many in Iran who feel that way, about Israel, and as some of us have tried to remind others, the arithmetic is perfect even if Israel caused many times the number of casualties that were caused to Israel by Iran and possibly other nations at the same time. As long as Israel is destroyed, it is worth the cost, in the minds of Israel’s enemies, for the result is a victory.
Where’s Chris today?
I’d like to see him comment on something related to the Shah, someone treated horribly by the world once he was out of power and a political liability because so many nations were dependent on oil from Iran.
I’d like to see him justify the attitude of leftist France, who was willing to harbor Khomeini but refused to admit the Shah.
Laura said:
In a sense we can, though it shows how bad the revolutionaries were in Iran as well as how bad people in so many other nations behaved toward the Shah, Carter’s USA included. (This is in addition to failure to support the Shah when he was needed and even crack down on extremist violence in the country to prevent a revolution, or simply overlooking how bad things really were in Iran and within the ruling group.)
bureaucratic blindness
We had our embassy attacked and the hostages taken specifically in retaliation for Carter’s decision to reverse an earlier no-admission position and to admit the Shah temporarily into the USA for medical care (the Shah had cancer, and though he had a French doctor, France would not admit him).
Nobody wanted to admit the Shah after he had fled Iran; he was seen as a political liability and someone whose admission would expose the admitting nation to terrorism or cutoff of oil from Iran. (Anyone admitting the Shah was presumed, in the lunatics’ eyes, as protecting and preserving Western colonialist rule and intrigue in the Middle East and rest of the Third World.)
Though Carter advised against it, Anwar Sadat admitted the Shah to Egypt, where the Shah died eventually. Carter felt that Sadat (who had already signed a peace treaty with Israel) was placing himself in more jeopardy by admitting the Shah (something Carter originally was reluctant to do himself, and whom Carter pressed to leave the USA as soon as possible). Sadat was assassinated later.
DLS- You’re right there is no hard proof. But Cheney has been behind the hawkish preemptive policies that we’ve been following all along- at odds with Rice. A few months ago there was a build-up in the media that was almost exactly like the one before we invaded Iraq- remember when the Iranian officials that were captured in Iraq?
Chris could give you better support for that position. I am not good at links, but I have read in various sources that the Israeli lobby has had high hopes that Bush/Cheney would carry this out. Lieberman seems to be their little lapdog on the issue.
K. Ritter:
I agree we haven’t done nothing. Frankly, Iran is so dangerous it may override oil interests, as did Hussein when he invaded Kuwait (and threatened to seize the Saudi oil fields and the two seaports that were so important to transport of our military assets afterward). We have warned we would use force against Iranian terrorists in Iraq, kill them if merited. We have sent carriers to the Gulf, not in response to any current Iranian threat to shipping, but if anything in readiness if air strikes on missile and WMD or terrorist-logistics targets in Iran were to be conducted.
Lieberman is certainly pro-Israel (which makes him one of the more sane Democrats when it comes to foreign policy, rather than treating the Israelis as the Czechs were treated at Munich). I’m certain Israel would love to see us remove a developing existential threat as well as a threat to others in the region and to security of oil supplies, which would be the likely reason emphasized (along with the Iranian support for terrorism in Lebanon and the territories against Israel as well as against Iraq).
I believe reluctance to be “Israel’s bigger stick in the region” is why we have refrained from attacking any targets in Syria when Syria has been caught before supporting terrorism in Iraq. Either that or we are simply overwhelmed in Iraq; choose whichever explanation seems more logical to you.
K. Ritter:
Maybe, maybe not. Admittedly we have no evidence, do we, of improvements?
Their nuke sites are in highly populated centers which would result in massive civilian casualties.
Bushehr isn’t. Not so sure about Natanz. Obviously location in civilian areas is a game Iran would play. Who is responsible for those casualties, really? (Just as who is responsible, really, when terrorists in the Middle East hide among the innocent, use ambulances for transport, etc.? Or when military assets are hidden as was done by Hussein, in historical sites, or when terrorists use schools, hospitals, and mosques to support their operations?) The nuclear and other facilities are probably duplicated (redundant) and dispersed and we may not get them all.
Still, what should we do, nothing? Everyone bashed Israel when it bombed Osiraq in 1981 (before the reactor went hot, something other nations are not concerned about) and was relieved when Kuwait was invaded. Should we do nothing now and suffer more later? At what cost, to do something now? I don’t know “the” answer but it seems to me we should properly direct our attention at who is the party in the wrong here, Iran, and what it is doing that threatens and harms its neighbors.
Anna said:
“Preemptive nuking”
Note that if it’s the most suitable asset for the purpose, there’s nothing wrong with the USA using tactical nuclear weapons to destroy hardened or deeply buried targets. It’s hardly the same as using a megaton-plus weapon to blast huge portions and to burn even larger portions of metropolitan areas.
K. Ritter wrote:
I did read somewhere that Pace was replaced because he did not want to attack Iran.
Actually, we can look toward the Dems, if anything, for wanting to complicate things, as well as to lack of support by the Republicans (avoiding Bush???).
White House sought to avoid political fight; Lukewarm support from Republicans
There’s a rumor going around that Robert Gates is the Secretary of Defense. We’d like to request official confirmation, because …
. I’m in favor of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but why entwine this issue and revisitation of past Iraq decisions now with withdrawal from Iraq or other current policy decisions regarding Iraq?
the Dems
DLS- I haven’t seen justification that Iran is more dangerous than Pakistan. Yes the Iranians may be arming the Taliban- the way the Soviets armed North Vietnam and Cuba- we didn’t attack the USSR.
The WMD ruse was a hoax in 2003, and this could be again now. Saddam boasted about having WMD’s in much the same way Ahmadinejad is boasting . And I have no confidence that this effort wouldn’t be as bungled as the first two wars have been with Bush and Cheney in charge of it.. We would end up with all-out regional war.
BTW, I didn’t feel sorry for the Shah- he was a brutal dictator in the same way that Saddam was- but he was a dictator that was friendly to our government.
K. Ritter:
Unfortunately, the Iranians not only pursue terrorism, but some may someday seek what should be avoided.
If Iran were sanely governed, it would no longer seek hostile but good relations with the USA, which has long offered peace to it. We even might see even small gestures which would be appreciated, such as one I can think of that would be touching if Nancy Reagan approved and attended its dedication if she were still alive. (Hint #1: Peggy’s Cove. Hint #2: “Dead on!”) Are you surprised I would envision such a thing? Do not be.
With all due respect, DLS- when have we offered peace to Iran? We haven’t had diplomatic relations with them since the hostage crisis. They know they were on W’s short list for “regime change!
Nancy Reagan is still alive, and I am not well-educated enough to get your hints.
If the Bush administration could not prosecute an effective war in Iraq, why would anyone think we could do a better job with Iran?
Exactly- what I was trying to get around to. Where’s the fire?
Let’s be honest here. Hostilities between the United States and Iran didn’t start in 1979. They go back to 1953, the year our CIA worked to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadegh and replaced by the Shah of Iran (see Operation Ajax). Mossadegh wasn’t a saint, but he was democratically-elected, and neither he nor anyone in his government didn’t anything to provoke hostilities with the United States.
The U.S. backing of the Shah of Iran was one of the major causes of the 1979 Revolution and the subsequent occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
It’s interesting how proponents of war with Iran conveniently leave out this bit of history.
Nick Rivera nailed it; the US assisted overthrow and put Shah in place; it was a profound interruption of an ‘emerging democracy.’ I’m old enough to remember it. Old as dirt. Arghhhh. Oh, that’s another post … lol
dr.e
DLS said:
and
I am not the one advocating the use of nukes, it’s the likes of Laura and the commenters you were so entertained by that would love nothing better than to use the biggest megaton nukes they can to do to Iran what Iran wants to do to Israel & “wipe it off the map”. How are those people any different in their insanity from the insanity in the Iranian government? Both groups want annihilation, the only difference would be the target. The bigger picture on that, though, is once you get a nuclear holocaust going, everyone with nukes will end up joining in thus bringing on Armageddon. Guess for the insane the idea of MAD is, well, mad.
K. Ritter said:
Or I’m just too oblique. I’m referring to the Swissair 111 memorial located at Peggy’s Cove. During the 1980s, we shot down an Iranian airliner. Our government refused to apologize for this. A memorial as part of eventual reconciliation is not out of the question.
Here, K — more material follows. Note that “Dead on!” was what the young man said who fired the missile from the US naval vessel at the airliner, upon impact. It was an error — we thought it was a suspicious aircraft and could have been a military aircraft. Film of the shootdown was made publicly available.
The Swissair 111 memorial site I have visited, which made me think then of the Iranian airliner shoot-down a few years ago
The other memorial site
The shootdown event (Washington Post)
“I will never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” — VP George Bush (A good Iranian account)
US-Iran conflict since 1953
Anna:
nothing better than to use the biggest megaton nukes they can to do to Iran what Iran wants to do to Israel & “wipe it off the mapâ€.
Well, first of all, Iran and Israel are hardly morally equivalent, nor are the defenders of Israel versus the enemies.
Second, I’m not advocating the big stuff, except maybe for the purposes of spectacle someday. (That or saving this planet from an incoming asteroid, say.) “Small is beautiful” when it comes to nukes; multiple smaller nukes accomplish much more than a single large nuke.
Third, we aren’t even the “worst” offender about such things: [the winner]