Comments Posted By Frank Martin
Displaying 11 To 20 Of 23 Comments
3RD ANNUAL (AND FINAL) REQUEST FOR DONATIONS
you know, if you offer to set up a webcam and a dunk tank and have terry sit in it and for a 10 dollar donation, the contributor will get three throws in which to "dunk terry", your donations will skyrocket.
Well, it may not be a great idea but it beats the hell out of a totebag...
Good luck Rick!
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 4.06.2007 @ 16:22
I think whats shocking to the press is for them to find a CIA operation thats involved with bringing down a government besides the US government.
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 23.05.2007 @ 08:55
I WISH WE COULD HAVE AN ELECTION LIKE THAT
We did have an election like that.
In 1980.
You know what makes it especially sweet is how that insufferable Dominic DeVillepan is nowhere to be seen. That guy could out-Kerry John Kerry.
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 7.05.2007 @ 09:31
you know rick, if you were to make a web site and make that stuff up and then attribute it them, they would cry out that they had been libeled.
You really cant make up that sort of idiocy.
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 31.03.2007 @ 18:43
IRAN TRIES THE OLD "BAIT AND SWITCH"
This whole thing strikes me as odd. It is clear that the limeys were purposely ambushed, its clear that it was the Iraninan goverment that planned and executed the 'snatch and grab'.It wasnt an accidental incursion.
But to what purpose? its a big risk on the part of the Iranians. They have to weigh the very real risk that Britain may be able to snatch their people right back, leaving Iran in a very bad place indeed.
Britain may secure Iranian assets in retaliation. Bandar Abbas is a port - the primary port for Iran, ports can and often are - blockaded or "quaranteened" as JFK would say.
Britain may capture Iranian commerical aircraft as they fly into the UK and impound them for any number of legal reasons. Without too much trouble, I'll bet they could get the legion of mid level immigration officials throughout the EU to have a bit of a work slowdown when it comes to processing paperwork for Iranian interests.
Again, there are lots of ways to get someones attention that dont involve precison munitions.
Its a big risk as well if some Iranian mid level staffer decides on his own to take things to a new level and harm the hostages or decides on his own fire off one them big expensive anti ship missiles they bought from china at just the wrong time at just the wrong ship.
Its a big risk if the world community were to come out against iran and start pulling their embassy staffs as well since they can no longer be sure of their safety. Now to be sure, all countries will act in their own self interest, but im not sure the mullahs want to become the north korean cote d'azur. Oil or no oil, if you cant be given assurances that your people and property will be respected, you just dont do business there, no matter how much baksheesh is involved.
If you as the government of iran know these things about your situation and you procede anyway, its because youve weighed the risks and you dont care. Your goals and eventual potential reward will override the fear of what might happen.
That tells me that this is a very different situation from what weve seen before.
They are not looking for an opportunity to negotiate, they really are looking for confrontation. That is what they are seeking here, but only under their terms.
My question is "why"?
I smell fear here on the part of the mullahs, and its not fear of England, but fear of something closer to home.
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 29.03.2007 @ 13:10
I think taking hostages to act as human shields only works as a strategy if the hostages are civilians. We have plenty of examples of cases where countries were attacked with our military folks on site as POW's. We only tend to hesitate when our civilians are on site.
That said, the most significant part of this whole thing is that this is the first time Ive seen Iran do 'hostage taking' as formal state policy. Usually there is a polite layer of third parties wrapped around the action to give Iran a fig leaf to hide behind, but in this case its clear that this is the actions of the Iranian governent itself that has taken this action. This is state policy for iran, not those troublesome kids at the University, which is something all the other states in the world will surely notice.
If Iran can do this to Britain without fear of reprisal, what chance does Poland, Japan, Argentina have to not get their embassys overrun at the wrong moment?
This is more like the USS Pueblo incident than anything else. The only odd thing is that in this case the Iranians seem interested in the one thing that hostage takers arent interested in, and thats an escalation of the situation. THey seem to be very much trying to make Britain overreach or overreact.
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 29.03.2007 @ 09:43
INTERNAL REFUGEE CRISIS LOOMS IN IRAQ
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/24/sprj.irq.aid/index.html
more to follow. I do remember the issue of the un refugee camps because for me it was a key indicator for how well the war was going. I was shocked in both the iraq and afghanistan battles that the flow of refugees seemed to be towards the countries where the fighting was going on, not the other way. If you watch any footage from world war ii, refugees clog the roads, block progress of the armies. In both iraq and afghanistan, were never say that happen. it struck me as odd.
It also struck me as odd, that the un built these large refugee camps, and no one seems to have used them. ( maybe thats no longer true, which is what im trying to find out)
Also, while I agree wholeheartedly the premise that people should be helped(seriously I do) I offer a number of other reasons why this phenomenon might be occuring not at the beginning as one would expect, but 4 years after the start of the war.
1. under saddam, people could not leave the country, even if they had the means. to do so might endanger the rest of their relatives that were still in iraq.
2. under saddam people could not leave if they wanted to or were allowed to due to the enforced poverty of the iraqi state. Now, due to a significant uptick in the iraqi economy( the most under reported story of the last 5 years...), they can leave and are doing so. Theres now a sort of natural 'surge' for people who have wanted to leave for some time, but couldnt. sort of like lifting off the lid of a pot just before it boils over.
3. many of the new refugees might in fact be not iraqis - but palestinians. palestinians, while given favored status and where in iraq in large numbers during the saddam regime have fallen into great difficulties throught the region. rahter than say that they were palestinian, which at one time might have brought favor in various refugee campes, they now say they are iraqi. why pretend to be omething youre not to garner sympathy? happens all the time in every culture on earth. you do what you have to do to survive. if being 'palestinian' gets you food, water and a place to stay, sure youre a palestinian. if being iraqi gets you the same thing, fine. so be it.
4. Sensing that iraq might soon be the active battlefront of a war between iran and saudi arabia, many people are trying to avoid what would surely be a very nasty conflict before it happens. For similar european reactions, check out 'silesian insurrection' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_Insurrections)
people sometimes have a sense for things that goes beyond the politics.
5. saddam was a brutal dictator, and a dictatorship cannot be run by small numbers of people. I have to believe that bureaucracies throughout iraq under saddam used every form of extortion knon to man to keep their power over the local populance. I have to assume that now that saddam is - in the words of the mayor of munchinkland "very clearly dead", that theres more than a fair amount of "get even"-ism going on through the countryside against the people who used to run the banks, the dmv, the local car lots, the ater and power company, who all were in some small way a small part of the apparatus of the regime. Since the middle east work on a family and tribal basis much more than the modren west does, it would not be enough to say ' I didnt do anything" in my defense, because if lets say my uncle was the local gandarmerie under saddam, I assume that the natual law of "get even"-ism would apply to me as well. It would tend to make me want to go "somewhere else" for a bit until things calm down. hence, i too fall into the category of 'refugee'.
I'm not saying help shouldnt be given, im not saying things might not be bad, im saying that the picture of what is actually going on might have more layers to it than initially meets the eye.
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 21.03.2007 @ 23:57
I apolgize for not bringing my source to the dance as it were, but i remember the story from the initial days of the war, because of stories of "iraqi hospitals being left unguarded" and so on. American Military tried to get help for the civilians at the UN refugee camps that were assembled on the border, only to be turned away because the people in question werent refugees - despite the war, they intended on staying in iraq. I also remember it being an issue in relation to the discovery of the 'childrens prison' on samarra.
I will spend some time going through the "halls of google" to find any sign of the reference.
I would also like to add that its estimated that about 1 million afghani refugees left the pakistan frontier to return to afghanistan after our actions there.
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 21.03.2007 @ 18:49
The UN established a refugee camp in 2003 on the border with syria for the expected flood of refugees from Iraq. The camp was expected to house 50,000 iraqis.
It went completely unused. American Military officials tried to get its facilities to house various groups,but were rebuffed by the UN officials who ran the camp at the time.
What happened to it since then?
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 21.03.2007 @ 18:10
I would use the word "quagmire" to describe the condition of the democrat political "surge", but that would be cruel.
Comment Posted By Frank Martin On 15.03.2007 @ 17:52
