It is amazing to me that our government has the balls to act outraged at Iran’s use of cyberwarfare against Saudi Arabia and anyone else that is supporting America’s ongoing undeclared war against Iran. We are systematically destroying their economy. We have wiped out the savings of their middle class by causing hyperinflation with our economic sanctions. We have worked with Israel to murder Iranian scientists. WE released the stuxnet virus into Iranian computer systems, destroying hundreds of centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility.
The United States intitiated this war on Iran and now WE’RE outraged that they are fighting back. The hypocrisy of Panetta’s words is breathtaking to behold. Even sadder is the fact that 99.5% of Americans don’t even know we are at war with Iran. They will know when Iran is able to bring down our electrical grid or destroy one of our nuclear facilities. How dare they fight back. They’re supposed to cow down before the great American empire.
I’ve got news for the oligarchs running this show. Countries around the world are tiring of our bullying and bribery. We are an empire in decline. The rot is evident to anyone with a brain. The Chinese, Russians, Iranians and other countries around the world are not going to take it anymore. Our only hope would be withdrawing as the policeman of the world and adapting our economy to the new reality. There is no chance this will happen. The hubris of the ruling class will result in the inevitable fall of the empire.
US warning reflects fears of Iranian cyberattack
By LOLITA C. BALDOR | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s pointed warning that the U.S. will strike back against a cyberattack underscores the Obama administration’s growing concern that Iran could be the first country to unleash cyberterrorism on America.
Panetta’s unusually strong comments Thursday came as former U.S. government officials and cybersecurity experts said the U.S. believes Iranian-based hackers were responsible for cyberattacks that devastated computer systems of Persian Gulf oil and gas companies.
Unencumbered by diplomatic or economic ties that restrain other nations from direct conflict with the U.S., Iran is an unpredictable foe that national security experts contend is not only capable but willing to use a sophisticated computer-based attack.
Panetta made it clear that the military is ready to retaliate — though he didn’t say how — if it believes the nation is threatened by a cyberattack, and he made it evident that the U.S. would consider a preemptive strike.
“Iran is a country for whom terror has simply been another tool in their foreign policy toolbox, and they are a country that feels it has less and less to lose by breaking the norms of the rest of the world,” said Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and now in private law practice. “If anybody is going to release irresponsible unlimited attacks, you’d expect it to be Iran.”
National security experts have long complained that the administration needs to be much more open about what the military could and would do if the U.S. were to be the victim of cyberattacks. They argue that such deterrence worked in the Cold War with Russia and would help convince would-be attackers that an assault on America would have dire results.
Panetta took the first steps toward answering those critics in a speech analysts said was a thinly veiled warning to Iran, and the opening salvo in the campaign to convince Tehran that any cyberattack against America would trigger a swift and deadly response.
“Potential aggressors should be aware that the United States has the capacity to locate them and hold them accountable for actions that harm America or its interests,” Panetta said in a speech in New York City to the Business Executives for National Security.
And while he did not directly connect Iran to the Gulf cyberattacks, he warned that Iran’s abilities were growing.
Security analysts agree.
The presumed Iranian cyberattacks hit the Saudi Arabian state oil company Aramco and Qatari natural gas producer RasGas using a virus, known as Shamoon, which can spread through networked computers and ultimately wipes out files by overwriting them.
In his speech, Panetta said the Shamoon virus replaced crucial system files at Aramco with the image of a burning U.S. flag, and also overwrote all data, rendering more than 30,000 computers useless and forcing them to be replaced. He said the Qatar attack was similar.
“This one worries me,” said Richard Bejtlich, chief security officer for the Virginia-based cybersecurity firm Mandiant. “I’m not an alarmist, but when I saw that 30,000 computers at Saudi Aramco got just deleted, that was a big deal. You don’t see the Chinese government, you don’t see the Russian government, or even their patriotic hackers go out and delete anything for the most part.”
From the Iranians’ point of view, however, attacks against the U.S. may be justified because American sanctions leveled on the country for refusing to cooperate with international norms on its nuclear program have hit Iran hard. Tehran also believes that the U.S. and Israel were behind the Stuxnet cyberattack that forced the temporary shutdown of thousands of centrifuges at a nuclear facility there in 2010.
As a result, said Bejtlich, Iran already believes it is at war with the U.S.
Frank Cilluffo, , a former special assistant for homeland security to President George W. Bush, said U.S. authorities have suspected Iran of trying to plot cyberattacks against American targets, including nuclear plants. And he said that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps appears to now be trying to bring some of the patriotic hacker groups under its control, so it can draw on their abilities.
“Iran has been doing a lot of cyber saber-rattling,” said Cilluffo, now director of George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute. “What they lack in capabilities, they more than make up for in intent.”
Tehran has not made any public comment on Panetta’s comments, but the Iranians routinely report the discovery of viruses and other malicious programs in government, nuclear, oil and industrial networks, blaming Israel and the United States.
While Panetta’s warnings received high marks from security experts, those people also were quick to say that much more needs to be done.
The U.S., said former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, must lay out the rules of the road and figure out what kind of proof authorities would need before taking action.
“We still have work to do,” said Chertoff, who is now chairman of the Chertoff Group, a global security firm. “Will we take action to preempt something rather than simply retaliate, and how early and how much warning will we need before we take that action?”
He noted that most conflicts arise over misunderstandings, when one side doesn’t realize what the other will do if provoked.
The administration has repeatedly warned of the cybersecurity threats, particularly against critical infrastructure such as financial networks, transportation systems and utility companies. More recently, the White House has been considering using the president’s executive power to encourage critical industries to better protect their networks because legislation to do so stalled in Congress.
“While the message has been sent over and over again it doesn’t seem to have acquired urgency across the board,” said Chertoff. “We need to make it clear that this is not just background noise you have to deal with, but that it really strikes at the fundamentals of our national security.”
Ron says:
I guess our military needs enemys so they can justify theyre exsistance.
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13th October 2012 at 1:09 pm
Thunderbird says:
Cyber Attacks can be eliminated by disconnecting industrial computers from connection to the internet. We are experiencing unintended consequences from centralized control over our systems. Going to war with another country because of our own stupidity has no justification.
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13th October 2012 at 1:15 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
Would you rather we fight with guns and bullets or by disabling a computer somewhere?
Dude, get a clue, radical Islam is at WAR with us, the West, and have been for 1300 years.
Most of the cyperattacks actually originate from our good friends in China. Remember that a lot of sensitive technology went there under Clinton, including radiation hardened computer chips for satellites. Many cyberattacks come through Iran as Iran has become essentially a proxy state state for China and Russia. The mullahs are, temporarily, aligned with the commies as their interests are, temporarily, aligned – a take down of the West, starting with the US.
The US made a terrible mistake 20 years ago by letting all these “grad students” come study computer programming at US universities as well as by outsourcing so much computer component manufacturing to China. Ya buddy, that “free trade” thingey is working out so well, ***eyeball rolling**.
So now, in the face of a cyber threat that the US fed.gov CREATED IN THE FIRST PLACE, the “answer” is to put the fed.gov in “charge” of the internet. Can this story get any Orwellian?
I might remind you that the internet is the LAST bastion of free thought left on the planet. It is locked down in those wonderful countries like IRAN, China, Russia, part of their efforts to totally control their populations.
However, let now your heart be troubled, Obama is marching right along with these guys. See his EO here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/06/executive-order-assignment-national-security-and-emergency-preparedness-
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 1:38 pm
Administrator says:
Hope still believes the U.S. is the bright shining light of democracy on the mountaintop. Starving 75 million Iranians and destroying their life savings is worth it in Hope’s warped world. You sound like a Fox News neo-con commentator. Pitiful.
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13th October 2012 at 1:43 pm
sangell says:
Admin and others have to realize there are wars within wars. Were the US to pull a British style withdrawal from ‘east of Aden’ the Shia/Sunni struggle for supremacy in the Persian Gulf littoral would not end, it would intensify. China is not yet able to project military power on a global basis and thus the worlds oil supply would be left in the hands of Sunni clerics based in Saudi Arabia or Ayatollahs in Tehran. We’ve seen how that plays out when the US lost its strategic relationship with Iran when the Shah fell. The Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein seeking to take advantage of Iranians weakness and isolation in the wake of their Shia clerical revolution invaded Iran. The USSR seeing the same thing moved into Afghanistan.
If the US in increasingly independent of Gulf oil supplies, the rest of the world isn’t. China, Europe, Japan and India rely on Gulf oil to power their economies. The US role is to keep that oil flowing. Unfortunately that means we have to play the role of global superpower and keep a lid on regional rivalries. There is no one else who can do it.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 2:12 pm
Stucky says:
HZK
History101
Pure and holy Western missionaries — VS. —- dirty scumbag heathen Natives
Proselytizing religions who want to spread (force) their crapola beliefs on others will always be at war with each other, and the rest of the world.
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13th October 2012 at 2:13 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
Admin, I would rather have American ideals and principles, as envisioned by our founders NOT the corrupt cronyism and double dealing that our US policy has become, as the predominant meme in foreign affairs than the Chinese or Russian one, or heaven help us, the radical Islamic one.
Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian world view is under lethal attack, get with the program. America, as flawed as she currently is, should be the leader in that fight, not as under Obama, ass kissing the dictators of the world in a pathetic attempt to get them to “like us”.
We need to lead by being true to our founding principles. Unfortunately, we do not, hence the blowback
Case in point: Were was our government during the Green Revolution in 2009-2010? These were ordinary Iranians standing up for democracy and an end to the Islamic theocratic state. Obama was silent. Why? Because he, and most of our state department, are ideologically allied with the Statists and totalitarianism. Not a peep as young Iranians were beaten within an inch of their lives by the Benj mercenaries. Not a peep as the Occupy folks, WHOM OBAMA endorsed, were beaten to an inch by the police.
If you beef is that the US no longer is the shining beacon on the hill, I concur. I just think that we should RESTORE our country to those values and be TRUE to them.
The only people putting the Iranian people at risk is their government by their government’s insane policies.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 2:22 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
@Stucky:
History Lesson Assignment: Please provide evidence for forcible conversion to Christianity in the last 400 years.
And ask Nick Berg how horrible Christianity is compared to radical Islam.
This happened in 2004, not 1692.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 2:28 pm
Administrator says:
Hope
You crack me up with your founding father bullshit. Here is what a couple founding fathers thought about your neo-con interventionism and policing the world because we know what’s best for other countries and their people:
“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.” – George Washington’s Farewell Address
“peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” – Thomas Jefferson
“In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken part, nor does it comport with our policy, so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded, or seriously menaced that we resent injuries, or make preparations for our defense.” – James Monroe
Your ability to think that we can continue to spend $1 trillion per year policing the world and desire for fiscal responsibility shows a mental defect that really needs to be looked at. Maybe one of your colleagues can do some electro-shock therapy on you to resolve this ridiculous notion. Your contention that radical islam is an imminent threat to America is beyond laughable. I’ll keep an eye out for the Iranian Navy the next time I’m in Wildwood. I’m sure an invasion is imminent. Maybe a suitcase nuke has already been placed in NYC. LOL.
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13th October 2012 at 2:39 pm
Stan says:
Adminstrator,
We are indeed hypocrites. We are very much full of shit in this country. But so is Iran and Russia and China.
Yesterday I played hookie from work. Today we are having a feast ! Pot Roast, potatoes, carrots, peas, corn on the cob, broccoli with cheese on it, (melted cheese) and big fluffy rolls with butter, and for desert, tator tots a la mode.
Adminstrator, I thought you might enjoy this from Zero Hedge.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-10-13/rise-mu
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13th October 2012 at 2:48 pm
Administrator says:
Hope
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi killed Nick Berg. He was born in Jordan. Shouldn’t we be invading Jordan?
The 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Not one Iranian among them.
Your hysterical rants about Iran are baseless. They haven’t invaded anyone. Hussein invaded them and we supported him. More hypocrisy. It never ends.
You should stick to your preparations and leave foreign policy to smart people like Ron Paul.
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13th October 2012 at 2:48 pm
Administrator says:
Stan
Another good article from Bruce Krasting. BBES
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13th October 2012 at 2:54 pm
Administrator says:
American principles – a lesson for the world
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13th October 2012 at 2:59 pm
Administrator says:
Radical Islam is destroying the world. We need to give those ragheads a dose of good old American democracy and justice.
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13th October 2012 at 3:00 pm
Administrator says:
THE AMERICAN WAY
In 12 deadly strikes, American drones kill 123 civilians, three al-Qaeda men in the tribal areas of Pakistan in January 2010
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13th October 2012 at 3:04 pm
Administrator says:
We spend 100 times more than Iran per year on war and they are supposedly a threat to us? It’s beyond laughable.
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13th October 2012 at 3:11 pm
Colma Rising says:
^^^BBES^^^
Good to see you remember that, Administrator.
Not only is the “slow motion collapse” idea a pure speculation, it’s a rancid and selfish desire based on an “I’ll be dead so fuck it” attitude.
Posturing for a third world war is belligerent and off the scales in its scope for destruction and for what?
Rubber dog shit? Glazed eyed “told you so’s” from self-fulfilling bible-thumpers? Old glory waving from Mexican-crafted “Furd Pick M Ups”? Fat, retarded scooter blobs? A “way of life”?
BBES and so do their Xer Mini-Me’s for that matter.
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13th October 2012 at 3:14 pm
bb the troll says:
IT is nice to have someone defend WESTERN CIVILIZATION and THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN world view. HOPE i know this may be to soon to ask but WILL YOU MARRY ME?
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 3:29 pm
sangell says:
Often overlooked by some when discussing how ‘peaceful’ Iran is are its proxy armies in Lebanon and Gaza and now military ‘advisors in Syria. Then there is the shadow war with Israel where every now and then some Iranian explodes in Thailand or South America. Islamic nations do not fight their wars with soldiers in uniform on a battlefield when they face the outside world. They are too weak though Iran and others are trying to build conventional ( and nuclear) forces comparable to those the rest of the world possess.
If I had my way I’d want the US and Iran to have the sort of relationship we had in the 60′s and 70′s where Iran was our guy in the Gulf. They are the great regional power and Iranians, despite their ayatollahs, are not the religious fanatics so common in the rest of the world. As a note aside, we have the same problem with the Christian right in this country. The average white church going American is not as off the deep end as Pat Robertson and others who speak in their name. The Iranians have the same problem only their Pat Robertsons actually run the country. But we are where we are and the Saudi’s and the sheikhs and emirs of the Gulf have reason to fear Iranian power because there is this Sunni/Shia divide. Until we get a different regime in Tehran we are not going to have good relations with that country and we can’t just let the Iranians do as they please to the smaller and weaker Sunni states in the region.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 4:03 pm
Administrator says:
sangell
We were run by a religious zealot for 8 years. His name was Bush.
I’m guessing you were a big fan of the invasion of Iraq. I bet you believed they had WMD. I bet you think we won.
Who is threatening whom?
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13th October 2012 at 4:16 pm
Administrator says:
sangell
You need a little reality lesson from Ron Paul:
“I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy. Senator Robert Taft didn’t even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy –no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There’s a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.
US foreign policy was a “major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East –I think Reagan was right. We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we’re building an embassy in Iraq that’s bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.
I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we’re over there because Osama bin Laden has said, ‘I am glad you’re over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.’ They have already now since that time –have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don’t think it was necessary.
I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there. I mean, what would we think if we were –if other foreign countries were doing that to us?”
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13th October 2012 at 4:26 pm
Administrator says:
sangell
I’m guessing you are a big fan of Ronald Reagan.
Do you remember the 1983 terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut? 241 marines were killed.
What did Reagan do?
He withdrew all of our forces three months later. He was a smart man. They hate us because we occupy their land and bomb them.
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13th October 2012 at 4:35 pm
sangell says:
I was in favor of toppling Saddam Hussein, which was accomplished in two weeks then turning power over to some Iraqi general with a warning he keep terrorists under control or we’ll find another guy who will. Same thing with Afghanistan. Get rid of Mullah Omar because he allowed OBL to set up camps there. Find another Pathan dictator and tell him you run the country in accordance with your traditions just don’t let some Islamic terrorist group launch attacks on US forces or will stick a Tomahawk ALCM through your palace window.
Bush actually won the war on terror when the US Army entered Baghdad. He was just too stupid to see that. Moammar Khadafy calls up the British and says he’s had enough of being a terrorist and turns over his WMD program to the British cause he didn’t want to end up like Saddam. He reforms himself and instead of bombing discotheques he starts partying in them with Silvio Berlusconi. Every towelhead leader from Morocco to Malaysia was in awe of American power. Then Bush goes on ruins everything by trying to build a Switzerland on the Euphrates river and reveals America’s achilles heal. We are terrible occupiers. We don’t like casualties and we won’t
do it the only way it really works and that is inflict horrific casualties on the civilian population if one American soldier is killed. You don’t evacuate Fallujah if they are offering resistance. You seal the civilians in it and then level the place so there won’t be another Fallujah.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 4:45 pm
Administrator says:
sangell
Why were you in favor of toppling someone who wasn’t involved in 9/11 and had gotten rid of his WMD?
He hated bin Laden and he hated Iran. There was a balance of bad guys that worked fine. Toppling Hussein allowed Iran to influence what happened in Iraq and allowed terrorists a place to inflict casualties on the U.S.
The irrationality of neo-cons is left open for all to see. Neo-cons are as bad as ultra-liberals that love the welfare state. Neo-cons love the warfare state and have no qualms bankrupting the nation by invading sovereign countries without a declaration of war.
If Ghadafi fell into line, then why did we just overthrow him?
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13th October 2012 at 4:56 pm
sangell says:
We had to make an example of him. We didn’t get Mullah Omar or OBL because of military incompetence. We used Afghan troops in Tora Bora when we had a brigade of US troops in Kabul.
Saddam had also been behind some kind of half assed plot to kill Dubya’s father so it was personal and Dubya probably also had some kind of ‘dad’ issue in that he was going to finish the business his father, stupidly, had left unfinished on the advice of that Pentagon general Colin Powell and kill Saddam Hussein. In fact, leaving Saddam in power poisoned our relations with Tehran who didn’t for a minute believe that mumbo jumbo on UN mandate and all that. They figured we left their #1 enemy in power as our cats paw.
Be that as it may, the point was we had to show the Islamic world there would be awful consequences if there were further terrorists attacks on the US. Clinton had done nothing in response to WTC #1, Khobar Towers or the USS Cole. We had legitimate ground to go after Saddam for violating the 1991 ceasefire agreement ( I never understood all the WMD stuff Colin Powell ( there’s that idiot again) keep going on about. Maybe it was because the British either believed it or needed if for their domestic political reasons but I digress.
The point needed to be made that not only could the United States military drive into any Islamic
capital we chose, we would if the Islamic world didn’t crack down on their religious hot heads and Allah help the next Muslim leader who allowed some Osama bin Laden type to operate on his territory if a bomb exploded in the US. Saddam met all the criterion. He was a tyrant who let terrorists stay in his country. He’d violated the ceasefire so we had legal cover to invade and Baghdad was a major Arab capital with symbolic value throughout the Muslim world.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 5:27 pm
Administrator says:
A little more Ron Paul wisdom for the thick headed numbskull neo-cons:
“My point is, if another country does to us what we do others, we’re not going to like it very much. So I would say that maybe we ought to consider a golden rule in — in foreign policy.
We endlessly bomb . . . these countries and then we wonder — wonder why they get upset with us? And — and yet it — it continues on and on.
This idea that we can’t debate foreign policy, then all we have to do is start another war? I mean, it’s — it’s warmongering. They’re building up for another war against Iran, and people can’t wait to get in another war. This country doesn’t need another war. We need to quit the ones we’re in. We need to save the money and bring our troops home.
The military is behind me more than the others,” said Paul. “I get twice as much money from the active military duties than all the other candidates put together. So they’re saying that I’m on the right track. They’re sick and tired of those wars. They’re sick and tired of the nation- building and the policing activity.
This is why I bring up the ‘the golden rule.’ If we don’t want people to ban oil imports to our country, why should we do that to another country?”
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13th October 2012 at 5:30 pm
Administrator says:
Those damn Muslims sure learned a lesson from our making an example of Hussein. The example was that we’ve spent $1.4 trillion, so far, of our children’s money and put it on a Chinese credit card.
Have the Muslim nations fallen into line after we made an example of Hussein? No blowback. Right?
I suggest you study up on the decline of the Roman and British empires. I’ve done a few articles about them.
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13th October 2012 at 5:35 pm
DaveL says:
“We have, and continue to be, in a national State of Emergency. As a result, we can suspend Habeus Corpus, we can suspend the 4th amendment for all citizen soldiers. And more importantly, WE CAN SUSPEND BELIEF!”
This has been a public message brought to you by the Fedaral Govenment through the same funds that provide for Big Bird
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13th October 2012 at 5:43 pm
sangell says:
I thought I made it clear I thought Bush was nuts to stay in Iraq. I basically agree with Ron Paul on this. Its not our job to tell the Iraqi people what kind of government they must have. We were there to overthrow Saddam Hussein to show the Muslim world they had to stop harboring terrorists on their territory. We did that and it worked. Khadafy abandoned his terrorist activities. Muslim leaders everywhere told their security agencies to round up al Qaeda types. Bush threw all of that and the sacrifice our soldiers made by staying on in Afghanistan and Iraq. We looked 10 feet tall when we just blew into Baghdad in two weeks! When, with nothing but air power, we destroyed the Taliban.
You don’t casually throw an aura of invincibility away. The Israeli’s did that in Lebanon and it has cost
them severely since.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 5:59 pm
Administrator says:
There were no terrorists in Iraq until we invaded the country. Hussein did not allow Al Queda in Iraq.
The terrorists arrived after we took Hussein out.
Aura of invincibility? Did we earn that mantel from our success in Vietnam? We failed in Afghanistan and moved onto Iraq and failed there. Next we’ll fail in Iran. Libya and Egypt are going splendidly.
You don’t agree with Ron Paul. You think shock and awe was a brilliant strategy and we should have destroyed all of Baghdad’s infrastrcuture and then walked away. You seem to think the citizens of a country are just pawns or collateral damage. It’s a warped mindset.
You would go batshit if one bomb exploded in any US city. Iraqis and Afghans get blown up every single day and you don’t lose a wink of sleep. Hypocrisy.
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13th October 2012 at 6:10 pm
a cruel accountant says:
Admin for Pres.
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13th October 2012 at 6:23 pm
sangell says:
RE: Marine barracks. Yeah, Reagan withdrew the troops from Lebanon but he sent the USS New Jersey back and for first time since the Vietnam war those 16 inch guns opened up on Shite terrorists who were behind the suicide bombing. Hundreds were blown to pieces by the guns. A salvo of 30 rounds were delivered to the Syrian command post in the Bekaa Valley and they took out the top Syrian general in Lebanon as well as several other Syrian army commanders.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 6:45 pm
sangell says:
Hot debate. What do you think?
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13th October 2012 at 6:51 pm
U.S. HYPOCRISY IS BREATHTAKING TO … – The Burning Platform | Comparescales.com says:
[...] the original here: U.S. HYPOCRISY IS BREATHTAKING TO … – The Burning Platform This entry was posted in Platform Scales and tagged a-third-world, and-for, and-off-, burning-, [...]
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13th October 2012 at 7:16 pm
Administrator says:
Sangell
So we won that battle in your mind? Another feather in our cap. We sure showed them ragheads who was boss. LOL
According to Robert Fisk, a major motivation for the bombing was the ill will generated by the Multinational Force (MNF) among Lebanese Muslims, especially Shiʿa living in the slums of West Beirut and around the airport where the Marines were headquartered, as they saw the MNF siding with the Maronite Catholics in their domination of Lebanon. Muslim feelings against the American presence were “exacerbated when missiles lobbed by the U.S. Sixth Fleet hit innocent by-standers in the Druze-dominated Shuf mountains.” There was a growing feeling of frustration inside the Muslim and Druze community in Lebanon with US direct backing of Israel in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and other pro-Israeli factions within Lebanon. These factions had been responsible for multiple attacks committed against the Muslim and Druze Lebanese population.
Colonel Timothy J. Geraghty, the commander of the marines in Beirut during the incident, has said that the Marine and the French headquarters were targeted primarily because of “who we were and what we represented;” and that, It is noteworthy that the United States provided direct naval gunfire support — which I strongly opposed — for a week to the Lebanese Army at a mountain village called Suq-al-Garb on September 19 and that the French conducted an air strike on September 23 in the Bekaa Valley. American support removed any lingering doubts of our neutrality and I stated to my staff at the time that we were going to pay in blood for this decision.
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13th October 2012 at 7:18 pm
Administrator says:
sangell
The US New Jersey fired 300 shells haphazardly killing hundreds of innocent people. This was done four months after the bombing while we were high tailing it out of Beirut. Yeah, we kicked their asses. America is #1.
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13th October 2012 at 7:24 pm
Administrator says:
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13th October 2012 at 7:25 pm
Colma Rising says:
^^^Mullet-Clad Middle-America^^^
I bet dude was surprised and shocked when Rod Halfred of Judas Priest came out of the closet
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13th October 2012 at 7:37 pm
sangell says:
Sometimes you’ve got to do what needs to be done or accept the consequences. Certainly, e.g. Maronite dominated Lebanon was a happier more prosperous place than when the PLO, then Syria and now Iran run the place. Where does the west draw the line? You can retreat but if your enemy pursues you you are only buying time.
The Islamic worlds ‘grievances’ are not political. They are religious. They blow up their own religious shrines and slaughter ‘innocent civilians’ as a matter of course. They exploit our morality not because they approve of it but because it allows them to divide us. In fact, they copied the tactic from our own ‘civil rights’ movement and admire American black racial solidarity. Just as blacks can commit any outrage upon whites but weep crocodile tears when a Trayvon Martin gets what’s coming to him so too the Muslim will blow up a school bus full of Israeli school children and then act as if the most barbaric crime imaginable has occured if an Arab youth gets shot to death in the crossfire between their ununiformed fighters and Israeli troops.
I grow weary of those who look but do not see. Islam is not a force we can reason with. It is a force that must be dealt with until, at some point, they leave the medieval world and enter the modern one. Iranian clerics talking gibberish about the 12th Imam or Saudi wahabbist clerics fuming about infidel blasphemy just cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons anymore than we could allow some bible thumping fanatic screaming about the book of Revelations to command a ballistic missile submarine.
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13th October 2012 at 10:02 pm
Novista says:
Admin
I bet sangelli has framed pictures of Sherman and Sheridan on his wall.
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13th October 2012 at 10:07 pm
Kill Bill says:
I grow weary of those who look but do not see -Sangell
And what of those who do not think?
How so has these battles expanded your freedom?
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13th October 2012 at 10:54 pm
Jimi d says:
There most probably would be no “Islamic” threat to the USA if we would only stop sticking our fucking noses into their affairs.
The USA “installed” the Shah of Iran after a USA backed ‘ coup d’etat ‘ – The USA did this because the former regimen Nationalized the country’s oil industry. We backed Saddam Hussein – A BRUTAL DICTATOR. He was our friend until he would no longer listen to “his masters” ! Then we had to go rid Iraq of “weapons of mass destruction”. What a fucking joke ! Do you have any idea of the number of innocent civilians (men, women, and lots of children) killed in Iraq because of us ? The USA even funded Osama bin Laden in his fight against the Soviets. Then, he turned on us – probably for a good reason.
How can anyone blame the ‘others’ for hating the USA ? Their hate of us has been bestowed upon them BY US and OUR ACTIONS ! It all started with our treatment of the Native Americans, which we genocided WHOLESALE !
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13th October 2012 at 11:05 pm
Persnickety says:
Look, Guys, we’ve been trying to get this Iran War going for 20 – TWENTY!! – Goldarn freaking years. Something just ain’t right. Them Ay-rainians must have some sort of anti-provocation protective field, and man, dude, it’s really harshing my vibe. I’m not even buzzing as much as SSS from the nasty inability to get a reaction out of those heathen Aryans. (Sure, them are Aryans, just ask the Nazis, why do you think it’s called Iran instead of Persia?*) For Jehovah’s sake, we shot down one of their civilian airliners and killed 100′s of them in cold blood, err I mean easily preventable accident – and even THAT didn’t provoke a shooting war? Now we’ve declared economic war on them with the currency, banking and insurance embargo, to go along with the longstanding trade embargo. WTF is it going to take to get them tanned Aryans to shoot back at us and give us an excuse to blow them the fuck up? Seriously, WTF?
*Yes, seriously, for real. Look it up if you doubt me.
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13th October 2012 at 11:49 pm
sangell says:
Iran’s a different animal. Read the accounts of the Iran/Iraq war. Saddam got it wrong and he had been murdering Shites for years.
Not saying all Iranians are like this, they aren’t but there rural villagers who believe Ayatollah crap and it doesn’t take a whole lot them percentage wise to change the nature of a war. Kamikazes did that in WW2. They had a few thousand of them but they went after military targets- to their credit. If you’d asked a Japanese navy pilot to crash his plane into the Empire State Building he’d have looked at his commanding officer as if he were insane.
Unfortunately, we aren’t dealing with Japanese Naval Officers ( who were going to be shot down anyway) circa 1945. We are dealing with Shia Muslims who actually believe they will be rewarded in heaven for blowing themselves and innocent people up.
We get along pretty well with the Japanese now. We like their products, their fashions and Iwo Jima was something that happened long ago ( even if one of the most terrible fights in human history). We forgave and received forgiveness for those horrible events that are still within human memory. Muslims don’t see it that way. We remember 1492 as the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Muslims remember it as the year they lost Spain and Islamic supremacy.
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13th October 2012 at 12:34 am
Administrator says:
I grow weary of false storylines, fear mongering, and stupidity.
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13th October 2012 at 7:57 am
Administrator says:
Sangell still fighting the good fight against Admin’s facts and reality based assessment.
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13th October 2012 at 7:59 am
flash says:
Admin, Bush is no religious zealot .He is a simple POS liar.
A true Christian does not make up a story about a midnight walk on the beach with Billy Graham and him leading them to Christ.
Billy Graham does not dispute Dubya’s tale, but he does say he can’t remember it happening.
IMO, Bush merely used Christianity to secure the vote of the morons on the right who do not understand that Christianity and power-mongering are not compatible.
#3 -Thou shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.
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13th October 2012 at 8:02 am
Jimi d says:
flash
No, a TRUE Christian burns non-believers at the stake ! FUCK organised religion !
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13th October 2012 at 8:34 am
Persnickety says:
“No, a TRUE Christian burns non-believers at the stake !”
And we get to the debate over what “true” means…
But it brings up a point I’ve been wanting to make. While horrendous crimes have been committed in the name of Islam in the last 50 or so years, they truly pale in comparison to the crimes committed in the name of Christianity half a millennium ago (and more recently), particularly with the various Inquisitions (and the Reconquista, closely related to the Spanish Inquisition). Sure, that is a very long time ago, but Christians should not pretend that their chosen faith is all pure white innocence.
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13th October 2012 at 9:46 am
Stucky says:
“While horrendous crimes have been committed in the name of Islam in the last 50 or so years, they truly PALE IN COMPARISON to the crimes committed in the name of Christianity half a millennium ago ..” —Persnickity
Absolutely untrue ….. IF one measures this in fatalities.
Crusades — that’s the biggie, right? Look up the total fatalities. You will be shocked at how relatively small it is. Same holds true for the Inquisitions. The Salem Witch trials …. Pfffft, a statistical blip. And so it goes.
Now look up how many died from Islam. Just like before I switched to my phone to Vonage …. HUGE!!
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PS. Of course, the numbers of people killed by Christians will be heavily skewed depending on how one classifies events. When the Spanish Conquistadors pretty much wiped out the natives of South America, was that political or religious? Same with the settlers of North America.
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13th October 2012 at 10:19 am
Stucky says:
“Please provide evidence for forcible conversion to Christianity in the last 400 years.” — HZK
Well, Hope, we have advanced morally since then. We no longer need religious religion as an excuse. The new religion is Democracy. See for yourself;
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13th October 2012 at 10:22 am
Anonymous says:
…even atheist are beginning to get it.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/06/god_and_the_ivory_tower?page=0,2
Moreover, the chief complaint against religion — that it is history’s prime instigator of intergroup conflict — does not withstand scrutiny. Religious issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history; only 123 (7 percent) were religious. A BBC-sponsored “God and War” audit, which evaluated major conflicts over 3,500 years and rated them on a 0-to-5 scale for religious motivation (Punic Wars = 0, Crusades = 5), found that more than 60 percent had no religious motivation. Less than 7 percent earned a rating greater than 3. There was little religious motivation for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts or the world wars responsible for history’s most lethal century of international bloodshed.
Indeed, inclusive concepts such as “humanity” arguably emerged with the rise of universal religions. Sociologist Rodney Stark reveals that early Christianity became the Roman Empire’s majority religion not through conquest, but through a social process grounded in trust. Repeated acts of altruism, such as caring for non-Christians during epidemics, facilitated the expansion of social networks that were invested in the religion. Likewise, studies by behavioral economist Joseph Henrich and colleagues on contemporary foragers, farmers, and herders show that professing a world religion is correlated with greater fairness toward passing strangers. This research helps explain what’s going on in sub-Saharan Africa, where Islam is spreading rapidly. In Rwanda, for example, people began converting to Islam in droves after Muslims systematically risked their lives to protect Christians and animists from genocide when few others cared.
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13th October 2012 at 10:30 am
AWD says:
The biggest threat to our national security is:
The President of the United States
The Congress of the United States
The House of Representatives
State governments
There are many military analyses that show this to be true. Our debt and spending are the biggest threats to national security, and it’s far too late to do anything about it. When the economy, the dollar, reserve currency status loss, in short, when everything collapses, which it will soon enough, it’s not going to matter about Iran, Saudi, the Middle East, China, Russia, or anyplace else.
We will not be able to buy any more oil, the military (the largest private consumer of oil in the world) will shut down. Our hubris will lead to our destruction. Well, it already has. Our military spending trying to rule the world has bankrupted us, as has the welfare entitlement state. It’s the same thing that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, only it’s going to be much worse here.
China does make sensitive defense products, products we don’t even make here anymore. They are holding more than $2 trillion of our debt. We are on the short side of the equation, but continue acting belligerently. That little thing called karma is going to be a bitch. When the rest of the world, the world that holds our debt, decides to flush us down the toilet economically, it’ll be over folks. Dumping dollar assets and treasuries will wipe us out, without a shot being fired. We are living on borrowed time (literally).
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13th October 2012 at 10:46 am
Administrator says:
Romney on the Middle East: Obama, but Worse
by Adil E. Shamoo, October 13, 2012
Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute, while trotted out as a major rejection of the current administration’s approach to the Middle East, mostly just rehashed President Obama’s policies, albeit with more hawkish bravado. But Romney’s speech also included a host of faulty assumptions about Arabs and Muslims, indicating a potentially reckless misunderstanding of America’s relationship with the Muslim world.
Romney purported to be shocked that some Muslims reacted violently against the United States after the release of a video insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Romney and his key foreign policy advisers apparently do not recognize that anti-American sentiment was already sky-high among Middle Eastern countries, with nearly all the polls indicating single-digit approval ratings of U.S. policy in the region. The small group of genuinely extremist organizations like al-Qaeda takes advantage of this deeper reservoir of anti-Americanism in the broader society, a phenomenon that Romney and his advisers don’t seem to comprehend. Certainly, there’s a reason we do not see comparably violent demonstrations from Muslims in Europe or the United States.
I am glad that Mr. Romney recognizes that most Arabs are not violently anti-American and mourn the loss of the U.S. ambassador in Libya. Romney correctly states that there’s a regional “struggle between liberty and tyranny, justice and oppression, hope and despair.” But Romney, like many conservatives and liberal interventionists, fails to recognize that U.S. foreign policy in the region has been a primary driver of this despair. We continue to support oppressive dictators in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Bahrain, in addition to our invasion of Iraq and our naked support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Against all reason, Romney wants to send U.S. troops back to Iraq, where the unjustifiable U.S. invasion and occupation have already caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and caused untold destruction. Never mind that the Iraqis did not want our troops then and certainly do not want them now. If Romney is worried about al-Qaeda in Iraq, maybe he should tell our friends in Saudi Arabia to stop bankrolling them.
On Afghanistan, whatever else he says, Romney’s policy is ostensibly synonymous with Obama’s: bring most of the troops home in 2014 as planned. In North Africa, Romney says he will put strings on U.S. aid to Egypt. This is not so different from the Obama administration’s policy, since U.S. aid to the civilian government of Egypt is so small ($0.25 billion) compared to U.S. aid to the Egyptian military ($1.25 billion).
Mr. Romney and his advisers would like us to send arms to the opposition in Syria, which he hopes will go to the right group. The Obama administration is already sending supplies and facilitating arms distribution from our allies. However, we should not forget that the arms the United States sent to the Taliban in the 1980s are being used against us today.
Romney says the United States must “prevent [Iran] from acquiring nuclear weapons capability.” The only nuance he added to the Obama administration’s current policy is the word “capability.” Since the word is amorphous and can be interpreted many different ways, Romney’s policy is ambiguous at best, but also could be risky. If Romney’s bar for capability is so low as to oppose Iran’s production of radioactive isotopes for medical use, it could well be that President Romney plans to go to war with Iran post-haste.
Finally, Romney endorsed the two-state solution in Israel-Palestine. This is exactly Obama’s policy but contrary to Romney’s own cynicism about the issue captured in the infamous “47-percent” video in May.
Most of Romney’s pronouncements on the Middle East are old and tired policies merely dressed up in hawkish new garb. The most disturbing element is the campaign’s utter misunderstanding of Arab history and the roots of anti-American sentiment in the region. Without understanding the present, how can Romney expect to shepherd in the future?
This article was originally published at Foreign Policy in Focus.
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13th October 2012 at 9:18 pm
U.S officials believe Iran is behind cyberattacks | Bazaar Daily News says:
[...] U.s. Hypocrisy Is Breathtaking to Behold (theburningplatform.com) [...]
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13th October 2012 at 2:08 am