same difference: American Iraq and Soviet Afghanistan

As the "the Naughties" come to close one has to wonder if the world has become better, worse of indifferent, we as a people (in the west) have become used to the American occupational wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan (and the subsequent (sometimes daily) casualties that go with them), the former one has to wonder with detailed hindsight was a wise move to any stretch of the imagination.

The policy of using direct military might to promote an ideology over a third nation was something that drove the Americans to arming the Afghan Mujahideen rebels against the Soviet Army when they intervened on behalf of the socialist Afghan government in Kabul on Christmas Eve in 1979.

Regardless of the fact that 1,000,000 Afghans were slaughtered during the Red Army's nine year presence in the country the truth is from their point of view their comrades were being slaughtered since these rural dwellers of Afghanistan where being armed with high-tech portable anti-tank and anti aircraft guns, something that one their position couldn't take lightly.

Now lets look at Iraq since 2003:

The US had it's fair share in the killings of millions in Central America the same time the Soviets were doing their deeds with the Afghans, but when a third party arms insurgents (in this case Iran to insurgents in the Shia south of Iraq) the Americans don't take this too kindly when they feel the hurt it can cause:



What is different in this case however is the fact that the United States invading Iraq and the Soviets intervening in Afghanistan was that the US went in with the ideals of promoting freedom and democracy, however ended up bogged down in a bloody war with thousands of Iraqis fighting an occupational power for their own freedom instead of having their country transformed into a geopolitical platform for the countless cooperation's to promote their free market ideals.

Well over a million Iraqis have been killed in the past ten years, and probably a million more from the ten years before following the sanctions imposed after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

The Iraq War has proven over the years that the US Army isn't fit for what it's doing there and most Iraqis resent them for what they have done, the same as the rural Afghans did with the Soviets back in the 1980's, making it okay (in one sense for the Americans) to arm the Taliban of its day, of which Ronald Reagan called:

"the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers"

The dissidents of which American forces in Afghanistan are saying is the main threat to eventual peace and democracy spreading across the region!

The Solution:

The western world should adopt a limited government when looking at countries such as Iraq (and Iran) and under the United Nations if necessary the powers of west (and east) should intervene unilaterally to secure regions directly threatened by these so called rogue states, instead of empires from both sides of the world competing on spreading ideals into indifferent countries and in turn ending up being hypocrites in their own modern history.

the consequences of an attack on Iran

Iran has recently rejected the IAEA-backed proposal regarding it's nuclear program, with the major failure of nuclear talks (that started last October) from both sides.

Along with this Israel has been the biggest hypocrite of all time calling for the disablement of Iran's nuclear program by force "if required", whilst ignoring the fact that they themselves illegally possess nuclear weapons of their own.

A preemptive long range strike (probably primarily against the Nantanz enrichment facility) by the Israeli Air Force sadly still isn't a far cry from reality.



Which most likely will be in the former of an Operation Opera style attack primarily using Israeli F-15's and F-16's.

However regardless of how serious this attack is on the Iranian public (even if the attack is only meant to knock out a few compounds) I somehow doubt the current regime in Iran will treat it like the Syrians did on a recent Israeli air strike against them.

Iran geographically lies on in western Southeast Asia and most of it's eastern border is on the oil rich Persian Gulf, it is right in the centre of Eurasia which is as put by Dick Cheney "the fertile choke point of civilization."

If attacked for stupid and arrogant reasons by Israel, if Iran then chooses to prevail (rightfully so) this could result (very likely) in disastrous consequences.

The first response would probably be a retaliatory missile strike against Israel using Shahab 3 and Sejil 2 ballistic missiles.



These will probably be launched at neither Israeli air force bases where the attacking planes originated from or at Dimona where Israel's own nuclear weapons are stored rather than at major Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv and Haifa, however this could change regarding the circumstances of the Israeli attack.

However one has doubts that Iran will repeat recent history, such as the Scud strikes from Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1991, which saw 32 missiles launched mainly at Tel Aviv and Haifa, two people were killed in these strikes, several were wounded and quite a lot of property was damaged, but in the end it was nothing compared to what it was built up to be.



The days following an Israeli attack (regarding what voices are speaking in Tehran) would probably see increased attacks from groups such as Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon against Israeli forces in the Shebba Farms.

Major attacks against British and American soldiers in their bases in the south of Iraq from Shia sympathizers (some 13,000,000 of them in the south of Iraq), several of whom are in underground groups just waiting for their moment to strike, this could see the American and British soldiers in the regions dying after fighting against unbelievable odds from the masses directly backed by their neighboring Iran.

And last but far from least.



If Iran feels continually threatened after a first strike and if the United States continually backs Israel after it's preemptive attack Iran will probably to the best of it's ability close off and burn the oil reserves in the Persian Gulf, along with devastating attacks that could destroy oil refineries in the Emirate countries, attacks against Saudi Arabia could be very likely if they turn a blind eye to Israeli F-16's flying through their air space to strike Iran!

Following such attacks oil at $100 a barrel would look like an unbelievable bargain!

At the end of the day western hypocrisy and one sided support for Israel will be to blame for the acts Iran will be forced to carry out to ensure it's self defence!

if the majority had ruled

Cast your mind back to 1991, the Soviet Union was on verge of collapse, Germany was reunited after nearly half a century, Bush Senior announced a New World Order was coming upon us, also there was a war going on in the Gulf, in January 15th the infamous Operation Desert Storm begun, the power structure in the Middle East was about to change drastically.

By the time the ground offensive begun against Kuwait the Iraqi military had suffered major damage, the Iraqi fighter jets that weren't destroyed in their concrete bunkers had flown to Iran, Iraq's long time enemy, the Iraqi Army were bombed on its retreat, the highway was hit with everything they had from the air, F-15's, B-52's, AV-8B Harriers, A-6's and A-10's, with so many casualties inflicted it became known as the Highway of Death.



Iraq was virtually defeated, Kuwait was liberated, and in the south of Iraq the Shia majority that had been oppressed for Saddam for so long led an anti government uprising, this was led by the perception that the power of President Saddam Hussein was weak at the time; as well as by heavily fueled anger at government repression.

The rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution disbanding the Iranian military led Saddam in one way in an attempt to launch a large scale invasion of Iran, in one way this solidified Khomeini's revolution and led to thousands joining the Iranian military and launching an offensive war by 1982 against Iraq, his main ideal was to export the revolution to Saddam's oppressed Shia majority.

Having the majority of people is one of the basic fundamentals of democracy, if the Americans had seen eye to eye with those attempting a rebellion history for both of the countries could have been drastically different.

Saddam managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives.

George HW. Bush later had this to say:

"I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (...) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein."

We all know the history of the Iraq war that started in 2003 twelve years after all of this, it had been admitted by Colin Powell that if they had taken out Saddam the Iraqi military in the aftermath may have been too weak and Iran and Syria would have had a good chance at gaining more power and dominance in the region.

If these rebellions had been successful Iran would have surely had some input around the holy city of Basra which they had made several unsuccessful attempts to capture in the 1980s in human wave attacks Iraq may have been split into two states, Basra to the south, and the region of Mosul to the north (which was mainly inhabited by Sunni Muslims).

Regardless what these states would have done afterwords what was admitted by Colin Powell begs the question that even if one of the main roles in today's occupation of Iraq is really to promote democracy and the ideals of the majority.

On the other hand



The idea of bringing a war to a dramatic end by taking out the leader was in fact tested in the opening salvo of the 2003 invasion, known as the Dora Farms strike, it involved two F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers dropping four enhanced, satellite-guided 2,000-pound Bunker Busters GBU-27 on the compound, complementing this attack was a further four Tomahawk missiles fired from destroyers in the the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Saddam Hussein was not present nor were any members of the Iraqi leadership or Hussein family. The attack killed one civilian and injured fourteen others, including nine women and one child.

It was later discovered that Saddam hadn't even visited the area since 1995!

the psychology behind the 'Military Industrial Complex'

It's been a long time since America fought a war where it was under any serious threat, and that was World War II, following that war mainland USA was left virtually unscathed after emerging victorious.

However the threat in 1940 was the biggest direct threat to the United States in recent history:



In the liberation of Western Europe the Americans were on the side of common decency and actually liberating the European people from oppression.

The same cannot be said about the war against Imperial Japan, it was high in cost of not only military hardware and the recovering US economy but also on human life, half of Japan was burned and then the two famous nuclear bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were executed, most likely to deter the Soviets!

From then on America took to introducing its free market to the rest of the world setting up military bases overseas and riding on the high seas in massive aircraft carriers, intervening where it served their "National interests".

Such interventions were over economic greed and in several cases bankrupted other nations, but to this day the idea of a foreign army invading was always the threat if America lapsed in securing its far away foreign security interests.



This has seen it develop into a hyperpower with a greater military than the old Roman, British and Russian empires!

But even after promoting democracy militarily in recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan (over 7,000 miles from the US) Americans don't consider themselves a militant nation, however when one looks at the hard facts its hard to ignore the fact that it really is!



The United States may be the sole hyperpower and may be the only superpower left in the 21st century to influence an ideology as the Soviets once had, however in trying to secure the vast resources in Eurasia a whole ocean away to serve their hefty economic needs may lead to a costly war with Iran and Pakistan.

During the 1990's it failed to reach the top of the global market and meantime several new economic superpowers such as China, Brazil and India have emerged.

As the US continues to send its army into the 'empire graveyard' that is Afghanistan while suffering serious economic burdens the eastern world is once again gone down the road of autocracy and communism.

Bottom Line: If the US continues such expensive oversea wars and military developments while swindling the budget it could see itself collapsing entirely in a manner similar to that of the Soviet Union, if this does happen not only may the North American continent be plunged into it's own 'Dark Ages' period of uncertainty, but with a new power in the east rising it may not be able afford the rich capitalistic society it had thrived on.

If this does happen and the world gradually goes down the road reform of the best option available the last years of the United States in history will be seen as wasteful and irrelevant, regardless of how big their military was!

Iraq's slip on power

Following an eight year war with Iran Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in deep debt, although he came out of the war claiming to be a winner the truth was the countries economy had taken a hard blow, the war had been a blow to his forces and he owed billions in war debts to his southern Emirate neighbors.

However following the war with Iran the Iraqis (or Saddam at least) was opting to make Iraq a regional military super power making plans to rebuild his military

It owed $65 billion in unforgiven debts to Kuwait, which in those years was depressing other oil states since it was overproducing oil selling it for under the price required by OPEC, this further devastated the Iraqi economy, that along with the fact that due to history Kuwait was technically part of Iraq and had been given statehood on ignorant strategic purposes by western powers.

During this postwar time (1988 to 1990) the Iraqi regime had big plans regarding their regional power in the future, especially regarding improving their air power as a potent weapon of terror and a tool for destruction of enemy economies. Aside from purchasing around 140 MiG-29s (137 were eventually ordered and built, but less than 40 delivered) and 36 Su-24 fighters from the USSR (intended to replace obsolete MiG-23MF/MLs, Tu-16s, TU-22Bs, and MiG-25RBs) the IrAF was also showing immense interest in obtaining Su-27 Flanker and Mirage 2000 fighters.

As well as this Iraq was financing the development of a conventionally armed version of the French ASMP supersonic cruise missile, and the development of the MAA-1 Piranha heat-seeking air-to-air missile in Brazil, both of which were eventually planned to enter production in Iraq too. The basic problem with all these projects was money: Iraq was so starved of finances that negotiations for Mirage 2000s were dropped in 1989, because the French insisted that Iraq had to first pay its debts. The collection of MiG-29 interceptors was also slow, Baghdad instead turning to Moscow and negotiating for Su-27s. Eventually, all the projects were stopped due to the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 which was Iraq's final attempt to stop the country going into economic collapse, after (in a view opposed to in the west) Iraq annexed Kuwait renaming it the 19th province of Iraq.



While in the west it was blown out of proportion, after launching Operation Desert Shield the US convinced the UN to veto Iraq, a coalition was built up in Saudi Arabia under the pretext of defending it and that Iraq was ready to attack (they were digging in around Kuwait City).

Starting on January 17th Iraq's economic and military problems were about to get much worse, the start of the stupid TV war Operation Desert Storm had begun, several units of the Iraqi air force flew to Iran to avoid destruction by the coalition onslaught of aircraft sorties and cruise missile strikes.



Iraq in retaliation only managed to fire 32 Scud missiles at the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa killing two civilians and a few at Saudi Arabia in one case killing 28 soldiers in a barracks in Dhahran.

After the first 100 hours of the ground war the American led coalition ground forces stopped at the Euphrates, Iraq had been blown to tatters and most of the world held economic sanctions against them, Saddam was left in power to stop Iran and Syria becoming too powerful over a weak Iraq, which is how they had left Iraq, a weak enemy that could come under threat from their biggest potential enemy in the neighboring region (Iran).

In 2003 the US went the extra mile and went in to personally overthrow Saddam, which led to a rather violent war which has only cooled down in the past year or so, the Iraqi people had a real street thug as their president for the latter half of the 20th century and paid heavily for it after only ever maintaining a brief grip of power that a nation of its size and wealth deserved!

the 'Stinger' threat

In the 1980's when the Soviets had a large military force in Afghanistan the CIA armed the Mujahideen with FIM-92 Stinger missiles. These missiles are portable easy to carry and can be fired from the shoulder at low flying warplanes and helicopters.

These weapons were used but not very much appreciated by the Mujahideen who are reported as saying they weren't half as good as they were made out to be.

When the Soviets pulled out the US made desperate attempts to try and buy back all of the Stingers still in the hands of the rebels, apparently several hundred were left in the rebels handed since the war with the Soviet Union ended in 1988, they were described as easy to use as a point and shoot camera by an intelligence officer and were being handed out to the rebels like candy during their fight against the Soviets.

Thirteen years afterwords the United States and Britain launched a war into Afghanistan, there was a fear at the beginning of this war that the Taliban would use some of these weapons primarily during the initial aircraft sorties which consisted of 25 F/A-18 Hornets launched from the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.



However no such attack even happened and no missiles were even fired at coalition aircraft (that we know of), so are these Stingers and other such loose MANPADS a real threat to civil aviation?

An SA-7 portable SAM like the Stinger (although not half as good) hit the left wing of a DHL Airbus A300 cargo plane taking off from Baghdad which resulted in a fire and complete loss of hydraulic flight control systems.
However the plane luckily managed to land safely.

Other such attacks have downed several coalition helicopters in Iraq but no major aircraft, and it is unknown whether these portable SAM's originated from Afghanistan (more than likely most if not all were carried out with regular RPG's or SA-7's).



However what did grab my attention a few weeks ago was when in New York City a group of Americans had acquired a Stinger missile and said they would shoot down a commercial airliner, however they were arrested by the FBI and the Stinger was found to be inoperable.

So the Stinger threat that is often cited as an improbable threat, an examaple of how easy it is to create scary scenarios out of whole cloth, but what could be a threat would be Iranian made MANPADS.



It was often rumored that some of these such Stingers were neither smuggled or simply given to Iran, and that Iran could simply reverse engineering the technology to make their own variant, while I'm not aware of such Stinger variants the Iranians do make their own MANPADS named Misagh-1 and 2. The Misagh-1 is an all-aspect passive infrared homing system. It is a variant of the Chinese QW-1 Vanguard missile system, the Misagh-2 is an upgraded version with an infrared seeker, an effective range of 5000 meters, a maximum altitude of 3500 meters and a maximum velocity of Mach 2.

These weapons would be very dangerous in the hands of terrorists and would do more than sting helicopters and larger airliners when they are taking off and landing!

While no such weapons have been used by the Iraqi insurgency as of writing it is a possibility and much more credible and dangerous than the Stinger threat that has been looming under commercial aircraft for the past 20 years!

does Shock and Awe actually work?

During World War II Nazi Germany crushed Western Europe in the early days using their Blitzkrieg tactics that was basically working their military of airplanes, tanks and infantry to correct precision to get the best results.

They failed to crush England in this way and nearly had the Russians defeated after they arrived at the gates of Moscow in 1941!

There have been no wars as big as the Second World War since, but the modern day Blitzkrieg (or lightning war whatever you want to call it) is very similar to the Shock and Awe thesis written by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade in 1996.

Shock and Awe is a designated doctrine to completely paralyze the enemy and destroy their will to fight, a bit like the Blitzkrieg invasion of Poland except with late 20th and early 21st century weapons.

The idea for a country like Iraq would be to incapacitate its command and destroy its infrastructure and physically and emotionally break the enemy having him surrender or his remaining forces being crushed.

Ullman said this before Operation Iraqi Freedom:

""You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted."

During the buildup before the Iraqi invasion it was repeated that they would be employing Shock and Awe, Iraq was to be an easy test for the US military applying Shock and Awe, the Iraqi's had barely any air power, gaining air superiority would be very easy, defeating ground forces would be challenging but hitting high command and points of communication across the country would divide enemy forces and convince them resisting wouldn't be fighting but be suicide.

Following the theory the invasion begun:



Limited bombing to try and instantly take out Saddam Hussein commenced, these failed however, one area the Dora Farms was hit with two F-117's backed by four Tomahawk cruise missiles, this resulted in one civilian killed and another four wounded and it was then revealed Saddam had never visited the area since 1995!

On the 21st of March 2003, the main bombing campaign by the US and their allies began. Its forces launched approximately 1700 air sorties (504 using cruise missiles). Coalition ground forces had begun a "running start" offensive towards Baghdad on the previous day. Coalition ground forces seized Baghdad on 5 April, and the United States declared victory on 14 April.

So in comparison it took shorter than the invasion of Poland by the Nazi's, a lot less people were killed in the invasion to ratio than the invasion of Poland.

The shock and awe air bombing campaign didn't seem to break the Iraqi people, many continued with their daily lives, working and shopping, as the bombs and missiles continued to fall around them. According to some analysts, the military's attack was perhaps too precise. It did not trigger shock and awe in the Iraqis and, in the end, the city was only captured after close combat on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Ullman was one to criticize the way the invasion was carried out, the initial invasion did not instantly crush the Iraqis will to fight like the theory, the coalition having to seize the city of Fallujah in April of 2004 is a perfect example of how the rapid dominance theory failed in that war!

a reason Saddam may have claimed to have WMD's

In 2002 George W. Bush listed his axis of evil, in these included Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the next year a series of lies proposed that Iraq had WMD's including the material to build a nuclear bomb, this resulted in large scale coalition invasion led by the United States and Britain to overthrow Saddam Hussein constituting direct regime change.



A claim made by George W. Bush in recent years and up until he left office stated that he had to invade Iran since Saddam claimed he had WMD's "until the end."

Was Saddam threatening Iran with WMDs?

Iraq was a powerful nation up until 1991 when the US and Britain blew the shit out of it and then installed heavy economic sanctions that resulted in the deaths of one million Iraqi's, Iraq was now a third world country broken backed country while Saddam clung on for power.

Now that Iraq was weak Iran might have a likely chance of militarily annexing the Shia population (most of the south of Iraq) into the Islamic Republic, this is what Saddam feared and the reason he launched the invasion of Iran in September of 1980.

So Iran in say the mid 1990's up until 2001 were at least prepared if not preparing to somehow take out Saddam and military annex the south of if not all of the broken backed Iran, a Tom Clancy book followed this scenario written in 1996.

Saddam had plans to develop nuclear weapons up until 1991 when his country was blown back to the stone age, his military from then on had little air power, his Republican Guard was still large and had several tanks but as the 2003 invasion proved very unorganized and dissolved very easily since they weren't coordinated to their full strength.

So to stop Iran from attempting an invasion if Saddam threatened the use of a nuclear bomb against an Iranian city in retaliation for any Iranian attack, there is no proof that the nuclear program was even continued since 1991 since there were no weapons found since the 2003 invasion when the United States took direct control of the country.

So was it a word game between Saddam and the current Iranian regime that led to George Bush repeating the smoking gun as a mushroom cloud that was an excuse for his stupid invasion to overthrow Saddam?

It is a weird scenario but is one that makes a lot of sense!

a policy of throwing resources at the problem

I the past 60 years since World War II ended America hasn't really prevailed in any war where they had a landslide victory even though they had an abundance of well more advanced arms than any of their adversaries, I will cite Americas wars since the war in Korea in the 1950's:

Korean War (1950-1953)

Victorious early on in the war the American forces managed to defeat the stretched out defending Koreans bringing the war up north until the Chinese (with no air support) with tanks and artillery overrun the American forces forcing them back to the 38th Parallel were Korea is divided with until this day.

Vietnam War (1964-1975)

After more bombs being dropped on North Vietnam than Western Europe in all of World War II, this causing a lot of damage didn't destroy the Vietnamese forces and when the Americans went into the jungle they ended up fighting an enemy that was everywhere and at the same time nowhere!

As the years progressed more died and Nixon bombed the north so hard that the bombs started overflowing into neighboring Cambodia!



The long and dirty war which saw over 58,000 Americans dead;
By 1975 the north were coming down hard on the south, Operation Frequent Wind was launched in Saigon evacuating the last of the Americans and a few hundred Vietnamese in a giant airlift before the communist north took the south of Vietnam, they had failed in their initiative which was originally set out over ten years earlier!

Operation Urgent Fury (1983)

The US invasion of the tiny island state of Grenada in the Caribbean because it was obviously a threat, the invasion consisted of 7,300 soldiers with heavy air support a against 1,500 Grenadian regulars and 722 Cuban military engineers, they achieved a quick victory, however some 19 American soldiers were killed and 116 wounded!

Operation Just Cause (1989)



George HW. Bush obviously had a "just cause" for launching Operation Just Cause the invasion of the third world state of Panama to oust the dictator Noriega, 205 US troops were killed while up to 4,000 Panamanian civilians were estimated to have been killed.

They achieved this with total air superiority of course and by using a land connection to its bases in the Canal zone!

Operation Desert Storm (1991)

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 the US responded with Operation Desert Shield launching a spectacular amount of air and naval power into the Gulf Theater, around 500,000 troops were also sent, below is a clip from the time showing what tactics were used;



Basically fire power over manpower, what this resulted in was the US bombing the Iraqis in Kuwait, hunting them out of their and then bombing them on the highway on their way home, they continued the war into Iraq bombing all of the major cities and destroying the nations military bringing it back economically to the stone age.

Economic sanctions afterwords starved tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians!

Well done America, you achieved a TV war and got to test your military in a fireworks show the size of a limited Vietnam!

War in Afghanistan (2001)



After 9/11 the US having total air superiority over Afghanistan proceeded to look for targets bombing caves and other suspected Taliban strong points, allied with a 19th century like cavalry the Northern Alliance they gave it air support while it took Kabul in late 2001.

The war has been on and off since then with the Taliban like the Viet Cong popping up everywhere and nowhere.

Currently Obama has launched Operation Tip of the Sword, the largest marine operation since Vietnam, I wonder if the same lessons learned from the Viet Cong will apply to the Taliban?

Iraq War (2003-present)



Thankfully the Iraq War seems to be drawing to a close, a 250,000 strong army covered by the air managed to cripple the Saddam regime, Iraq had its back broken in 1991 and wasn't able to recover since then because of the economic sanctions, yet insurgents did kill a costly amount of American soldiers since then.

Some 4,000 American troops were killed since George W. Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared 'Mission Accomplished'.


So basically we have established that America likes having the big guns on a battle and can defeat standing armies with it but when it boils down to conventional warfare against insurgents the American beast can get clogged down and dirty wars prove to be Americas fault since Vietnam, but they've seem to have adopted a policy since Vietnam of simply throwing more money and resources at a war, the Iraq War proved this to work eventually but after much cost in valuable dollars and more importantly lives!

P.S. Today marks the death of 93 year old former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, he served under President Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson, I would recommend watching the Fog of War documentary about him!

if only the US and Iran could get on!

It's been 30 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah, it would be an understatement to say that Iran and the US didn't get on, since then the Islamic Republic of Iran has sponsored groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas and since the end of the Imposed War have been building long range ballistic missiles (Shahabs) and been trying to develop nuclear energy.

Now judging from Operation Opera in 1981 an operation in which the Israeli Air Force bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor they are neither

a.) worried that the Arabs are trying to build nuclear weapons or
b.) think its fair they're the only ones with nuclear weapons or
c.) don't want the Arabs to have nuclear energy to power the homes of millions of people!



I've written what I think of Iranian missile tests before, if they want to test missiles let them, who are we to judge!

The last eight years also saw Iran surrounded by potential enemies, even though for a brief moment they helped the US against the Taliban, the Iranian backed Northern Alliance allied with the USAF which bombed them a route to Kabul so they could seize the capital city, not long after that 250,000 American soldiers led the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Husseins government, Iran became the sand in their underpants when they helped make mines for the Iraqi insurgency which could pierce through the armour of US Humvees on patrol.



The Iranian backed S'hia militia caused more coalition deaths in Iraq around the time of 2005 than any of the present Iraqi insurgents, to be honest with you I never saw a problem with this, I mean when the present regime rose to power in Iran the Americans and Europeans gave Saddam Hussein's Iraq weapons, chemical warfare shells which killed hundreds of Iranians instantly at a time, maybe this to them was pay back since the west wasn't talking to them.

And apart from that heavy sanctions from the United States and any Europeans found trading with Iran punished by America shows Iran is almost self sufficient in everything, but they have problems, such as keeping their passenger planes from falling out of the sky.

Apart from that if Iran and the west actually did get on we would have nearly twice as much oil to import as we do today from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, some 40% of the worlds reserves flows through the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian controlled waters and they have threatened to close that vital strait off if the US or Israel attack them, the world economy would be then crippled overnight!

And the sad truth is that Iran has the right to be this hostile towards the US especially considering the fact the revolution was because the CIA helped the Shah have dictatorial powers over the 70 million or so Iranian people for nearly 30 years!

For relations to normalize between Iran and the west they make these fair demands:



* That the United States accept the legitimacy of the 1979 revolution,

* Not interfere in Iran's internal affairs,

* Deal with the Iranian regime on the basis of "respect and equality."

* Lifting U.S. economic sanctions,

* End to U.S. military presence in the neighboring countries of Iraq and Afghanistan

* An end to one-sided support for Israel

and a fair reparation for damages caused to the Islamic Republic from:

* The US supplied chemical weapons responsible for the death of many of the 1,000,000 Iranians that died in the Iran Iraq War

* Damage caused from the anti Iran terror group the MKO.

* Release of frozen Iranian assets in the United States

* The shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by a US missile destroyer.

* US UAV overflights of Iranian air space

* An apology for the US backed 1953 coup.

* And reparation for the damage caused by US backed western economic sanctions.

The US demands border around the Iranians to stop trying to build WMD's, stop being a threat to its neighboring Arab countries (as if the US isn't a threat to world security and peace), to stop threatening to "wipe Israel off the map" (that lie is just getting old!) and to stop sponsoring terrorist organizations.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at that one, I think they are referring to Hezbollah, the organization Iran set up in Lebanon in 1982 because Israel was invading their country, when people defend their country against aggressive foreign invaders the politically correct term is freedom fighters!

Obama's role in diplomacy isn't singing 'Bomb Iran' but rather talking without addressing any of the points Iran wants to and further wasting their time and slowing down any hope of good US Iranian relations.

Maybe a good role of diplomacy would be to, start talking about what they want!

Cheney and the term hypocrite

"Recent occurrences in Georgia, beginning with the military invasion by Russia, have been flatly contrary to some of our most deeply held beliefs. Russian forces crossed an internationally recognized border into a sovereign state; fueled and fomented an internal conflict; conducted acts of war without regard for innocent life, killing civilians and causing the displacement of tens of thousands."

Does that not sound just a little bit familiar, this is coming from the same guy who was Vice President when a country (Iraq) which was clearly not a threat to the US, never attacked the US or threatened to attack the US and was a sovereign state then sent 130,000 troops across the world to invade it, does he not know what a hypocrite is?
Georgia was clearly more of a threat to Russia than Iraq could ever have been to the United States and that's fact!

He goes on to state that Russian troops conducted acts of war without regard for civilian life. Obviously he ignored the fact that Bush had targeted residential areas during his shock and awe campaign since the weapons of mass destruction could have been anywhere, they never found any after bombers had laid waste to Baghdad.

As far as conducting acts of war is concerned, could someone point out to Mr. Cheney that the invasion of a sovereign nation is probably the ultimate act of war? Occupying it for years, killing a million of its citizens and terrorizing much of the population for over five years may be business as usual for U.S. foreign policy, but that does not make those actions any less acts of war.

Also he said they had displaced thousands of civilians, (as opposed to the millions displaced in Iraq).
He also added Russia had given them no reason for them no reason for the invasion even though him nor Bush had given any reason for invading Iraq which was five years ago!