A thread that merits its own posting

My posting on Iran earlier today got someone by the name of "Doug", who is actually a Las Vegas talk show host, a little bit peeved. He commented twice in response to my posting, both of which I addressed succinctly (his two posts are first, followed by my comments which are interspersed with his). I thought that the entire exchange merited its own heading, with the headline being the final posting (NOT by me, but by someone who is obviously much more clever than I am). That last one is an absolute scream:

Doug said...
BHG: Let's see................It has been pretty much established that Iran is funding the terrorists

Doug: No it hasn't. We have been offered no proof what so ever of "Iran's" involvement in Iraq. The Bush administration keeps saying so, and the conservative, corporate controlled keeps repeating it (like they did all the administration's 'gloom and doom' 'mushroom cloud' Iraq dishonesty), but no, it hasn't been "established" at all - only to partisan right wingers desperate to believe an inherently dishonest Bush administration.

And let's face it. "Iran" is the proper name for a country. "Iran" can't do anything. Only people can. So the question then becomes, WHO in Iran is the Bush administration accusing of being involved in Iraq. Citizens? Or members of the government? And if government, how high up in the government? All valid questions that unfortunately you are just not willing to challenge this administration on. You're happy just to accept their word, when they haven't told you the truth about anything yet. To accuse "Iran" of doing anything is just plain sloppy and stupid.

BHG: the terrorists (or as Michael Moore calls them, "freedom fighters") in Iraq.

Doug: And Moore is correct. Again, the Bush administration has been calling everyone who resists their Iraqi occupation "terrorists" to keep garnering support for their overall, equally idiotic 'war on terror.' The reality is - and this has been backed up by the military commanders on the ground - only 3-5% of the insurgency is from 'foreign fighters', which I'm sure would fall under your definition of 'terrorist', and al-Qaeda is only part of that. The overwhelming majority of the insurgency in Iraq comes from Iraqis who resent being invaded, occupied, raped, tortured and killed, and use whatever means are available to them. Why would detonating a car bomb that kills American soldiers warrant the title of 'terrorist', while a 500 pound bomb that kills Iraqis not? The results are the same, except... we invaded them. So when they fight back, they're 'terrorists'?! Again, stupid, nationalistic, unrealistic and dishonest thinking. The word 'terrorists' had been so overused and abused by this horrible administration, I am amazed it still has power or influence over you.

BHG: It is now becoming pretty much unequivocal that it is also supplying the Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan: Doug: See above response to it being 'established' that Iran is involved in Iraq. And please think and ask questions. You appear pathetically partisan and inherently stupid when you say things are general consensus that clearly are not.
December 26, 2007 2:10 PM

Doug said...
BHG: I'm not saying that we need to invade Iran, but would it really be that impossible for a superpower to knock out Iran's weapons plants? It's nuclear facilities? It's refineries (the few that it has)?

Doug: Probably not, but the overall question no-one asks is, what makes you think you have the right TO knock out ANY-thing in Iran? Jesus. What is wrong with you people? Y'all profess to be these devout, right wing Christians, and yet you shamelessly promote and cheer lead war. Who would Jesus bomb? Are you so dense you really believe Iran would nuke Israel? For Christ's sake, there are half a million Jews living in Iran presently, and one of Iran's members of Parliament is a Jew. If Ahmadinejad is such a 'Jew killer', why wouldn't he start with the Jews in his own country? Or perhaps you can't grasp that he feels it necessary to pander to the minority, religious right wing nuts in HIS country... just as Bush panders to you in this country. Bottom line? ALL religious, right wing nuts are crazy, both in Iran and here in America. You think you're better because we have bigger bombs? Jesus Christ. Wake up. You embarrass yourselves.

December 26, 2007 2:20 PM

Bald Headed Geek said...
Wow, I attracted the attention of an actual talk show host. Well, it's always nice to be read..........I guess. I'll deal with your comments in reverse order. First of all, I thank you for stopping by my blog, regardless of whether you agree with me or not. Second, I'm not going to resort to name-calling, as you have done at the end of your comment. It does nothing to further debate. Rather, it debases it. Now, on to the comments:

BHG: Let's see................It has been pretty much established that Iran is funding the terroristsDoug: No it hasn't. We have been offered no proof what so ever of "Iran's" involvement in Iraq. The Bush administration keeps saying so, and the conservative, corporate controlled keeps repeating it (like they did all the administration's 'gloom and doom' 'mushroom cloud' Iraq dishonesty), but no, it hasn't been "established" at all - only to partisan right wingers desperate to believe an inherently dishonest Bush administration.

Uhh........yeah, it HAS been well established. I trust what soldiers who have served in Iraq and to whom I have personally talked over what you have to say. I trust General Petraeus over you. End of story.

And let's face it. "Iran" is the proper name for a country. "Iran" can't do anything. Only people can. So the question then becomes, WHO in Iran is the Bush administration accusing of being involved in Iraq. Citizens? Or members of the government? And if government, how high up in the government? All valid questions that unfortunately you are just not willing to challenge this administration on. You're happy just to accept their word, when they haven't told you the truth about anything yet.

If you want to quibble with me on semantics, fine. I can amend my post to say "THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT" if it will make you happy. Iran (okay, IT'S GOVERNMENT) has been at war with the United States since 1979. I commend Mark Bowden's "Guests of Ayatollah" book to you. I think that you would find it informative and enlightening.

To accuse "Iran" of doing anything is just plain sloppy and stupid.

See my comment above.

BHG: the terrorists (or as Michael Moore calls them, "freedom fighters") in Iraq.

Doug: And Moore is correct. Again, the Bush administration has been calling everyone who resists their Iraqi occupation "terrorists" to keep garnering support for their overall, equally idiotic 'war on terror.' The reality is - and this has been backed up by the military commanders on the ground - only 3-5% of the insurgency is from 'foreign fighters', which I'm sure would fall under your definition of 'terrorist', and al-Qaeda is only part of that. The overwhelming majority of the insurgency in Iraq comes from Iraqis who resent being invaded, occupied, raped, tortured and killed, and use whatever means are available to them. Why would detonating a car bomb that kills American soldiers warrant the title of 'terrorist', while a 500 pound bomb that kills Iraqis not? The results are the same, except... we invaded them. So when they fight back, they're 'terrorists'?! Again, stupid, nationalistic, unrealistic and dishonest thinking.

You're simply wrong. What is the source for your comment that the "overwhelming majority" of insurgents are Iraqis? I can dig up any number of MSM (which is hardly friendly to the Bush 43 Administration) articles which concede that the majority of these so-called insurgents are foreign-born.

The word 'terrorists' had been so overused and abused by this horrible administration, I am amazed it still has power or influence over you.

BHG: It is now becoming pretty much unequivocal that it is also supplying the Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan:

Doug: See above response to it being 'established' that Iran is involved in Iraq. And please think and ask questions. You appear pathetically partisan and inherently stupid when you say things are general consensus that clearly are not.

Again, I'll leave the personal comments aside; I don't know you, you don't know me. If you want to discount everything the current U.S. Administration says, fine. What's the Canadian agenda here?

BHG

December 26, 2007 2:29 PM

Bald Headed Geek said...

BHG: I'm not saying that we need to invade Iran, but would it really be that impossible for a superpower to knock out Iran's weapons plants? It's nuclear facilities? It's refineries (the few that it has)?

Doug: Probably not, but the overall question no-one asks is, what makes you think you have the right TO knock out ANY-thing in Iran? Jesus. What is wrong with you people? Y'all profess to be these devout, right wing Christians, and yet you shamelessly promote and cheer lead war. Who would Jesus bomb?

You obviously don't read my blog all that often, or all that carefully. I am not Christian.That said...........no one likes war. I wish that everyone would just get along with each other, but that's not the way of the world. It never has been, either. Nations, like people, have interests. Those interests frequently clash. Again, to refer back to my earlier respons, I will take the words of General David Petraeus over left wing talking points anyday.

Are you so dense you really believe Iran would nuke Israel? For Christ's sake, there are half a million Jews living in Iran presently, and one of Iran's members of Parliament is a Jew. If Ahmadinejad is such a 'Jew killer', why wouldn't he start with the Jews in his own country? 500,000 Jews in Iran? Really? Since when? Even anti-Semite in Chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acknowledges that there are only about 25,000 Jews in his country (minus the 40 or so who escaped to Israel over this past weekend.The problem I see with what you are seeing is that you simply don't acknowledge the mentality of the Iranian regime. You need to read a little bit more about Shiite apocalyptic thought (of which Mr. Ahmadinejad is a disciple). Or perhaps you can't grasp that he feels it necessary to pander to the minority, religious right wing nuts in HIS country... just as Bush panders to you in this country.

Again, I am NOT a Christian, and if you read my posts in total, you'd realize how disappointing he has been to me. I'm not a huge fan of his. But, why let facts get in the way of a good rant, right?

Bottom line? ALL religious, right wing nuts are crazy, both in Iran and here in America. You think you're better because we have bigger bombs? Jesus Christ. Wake up. You embarrass yourselves.

Really? When Christians start flying planes into buildings in Riyadh in order to kill office workers, then I'll start considering your false moral equivalency.BHG
December 26, 2007 2:41 PM

GM's Corner said...

BHG... fun ain't it? On the other hand, just because someone is a talk show host doesn't mean he is smart, it just means he is probably entertaining and I've certainly found his comments here to be so. Ludicrous, but entertaining none-the-less.Besides, if you can piss him off that easy, just think about the state of his mental health when the Dems tank in November. ;-)
December 26, 2007 3:11 PM

American Power said...

BHG: This Doug here doesn't know what he's talking about. U.S.forces captured Iranian operatives working inside Iraq:"Multinational Forces Iraq and the Iraqi military continue to attack the Iranian-backed Special Groups while interdicting weapons flowing from the neighboring country. Fifteen members of the Special Groups were captured in Baghdad on Sunday. The US military has disclosed the identity of the Qods Force officer captured in the northern Kurdish province of Sulimaniyah on September 20, and has stated Iran is sending portable surface-to-air missiles to Shia insurgents."
See Long War Journal:http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/09/captured_iranian_age.php

Also, nation-states are ruled by a leadership who acts in the name of the citizenry. The scare quotes around "Iran" demonstrate a sorry ignorance of world politics. Michael Moore has no credbility whatsoever.

See "The lies of Michael Moore":http://www.slate.com/id/2102723/

I'm not amazed that guys like Doug identify with the terrorists, which explains the attempted delegitimization of the term.

As for Iran supplying proxy groups? That's what Tehran does, in Iraq:http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2006/05/iran-supplied-al-qaeda-in-iraq-with-aa.html

And in Somalia, aid which then shifts to support al Qaeda's global operations: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2006/11/irans_involvement_in.php

As for "rights"? There are no "rights" in power politics, except the right to act for self-preservation. Nations rely on self interest, from Thucydides to Machievelli to Kissinger, scholars through the ages have accepted fundamental axioms about how states interact. Iran's going to do what it thinks is in its interests, and the U.S. has legitimate interests in protecting American and allied security.

Don't waste much time on this guy, BHG! Old Doug is not only clueless, but an embarassment to not only to himself, but to thoughtful liberals who can at least make a decent argument.

December 26, 2007 3:48 PM

Wilbur Underhill said...

BHG: You are way too nice. Yes, name-calling and expletives can debase the discussion, but I like a debased discussion. You keep arguing the facts with a leftist terrorist-pimp like Doug, and I'll go ahead and return the punch.

That having been said....

Let's look at the past 40 years of treachery by our home-grown, back-stabbing bolsheviks like Doug, and one realizes that there was never an enemy of this country that they never sided with. The Soviet Union? Misunderstood victims of American aggression & imperialism. The North Vietnamese? Ditto. The Stalinistas? Same script. Bin-Laden, Al-Qaeda and the current crop of head-chopping jihadists? You guessed it. All helpless victims of the oil-obsessed, war-mongering, BushitlerhalliburtonJesusfreak plutojunta. After all, America is the Fourth Reich, and Christianity is the National Socialism which drives it, right? No enemies, and no terrorists, only those wild-eyed, Bible-waiving followers of the Nazarean who have brought endless war & devastation upon those, poor, oppressed, peaceful indigenous desert nomads.

As for the phony terrorist threat, we know that Adolf Bush remote-piloted those planes into the WTC buildings anyway. Or maybe you got a big laugh when your terrorist friends (oh, I'm sorry, I mean your freedom-fighter friends) gave the Great Satan what was coming to it back in '01. After all, every time one of you America-hating communist pieces of shit blasphemes Christ in one of your government-funded "art" exhibits, Catholic mobs pour into the streets to lynch college professors, right? I know, we're so out of control-- if we could only do something about that pesky & annoying religious freedom thing in the 1st Amendment, we'd have Doug leading the dhimmi thought police in making wahabbism the national religion in the name of cultural diversity, complete with wife-beatings and honor killings. Hey Doug, when you're not sucking the dick of radical Islam, go see what happens to a Jew who enters Saudi Arabia. Or someone who's found possessing a rosary or a Bible by the Kingdom's religious police. Question-- when was the last time someone was sentenced to death in a Christian-majority country (or Israel) for converting to islam or another minority faith? Oh, I forgot about the current leftist psycho-drivel on Islam-- it's excused from acting pluralistic (and civilized) because they have a right to be offended over the existence of non-muslims. Who cares if the holy qoran wasn't really flushed down a toilet? The very existence of non-dhimmi Christians and Jews justifies the occasional muslim world-wide riot and a few acts of revolutionary liberation (like offing some American imperialist occupiers, or, say, flying a jumbo jet into a big, imperialist sky-scraper full of little Eichmanns). Hey, that little 11 year-old girl on flight 175-- being blown to smithereens was some groovy revolutionary justice, right? Maybe you and Pete Seeger can collaborate on a song about it, eh? Oh, I'm sorry, I keep forgetting. It wasn't Mohammed Atta's pals who were up to some mischief on September 11, it was Bush behind the remote controls....

Hey Doug-- Go fuck yourself. Drop dead. Maybe one of these days the country will wake up to the threat posed by the jihadists and their Vichy-pimp friends (like you) on the American Left, but I'm not holding my breath. Hmm, my rosary-praying, conservative Catholic mother is the moral equivalent of wahabbist belt-bombing Jew killers? Take your nihilistic leftist moral equvalency and shove it up your ass. I'm not interested in a debate with you-- unlike BHG, I'm not going to debase myself by engaging in a civilized exchange with a neo-bolshevik gulag commissar-in-the-making who cheers our enemies to murder our troops (one of whom included a friend of mine-- KIA on April 27, 2007, by one of Doug's freedom-fighter friends), and who cheers my country's defeat. Hopefully, this misbegotten country will start taking treachery and enemy collaboration seriously again, but methinks that will require Doug's freedom-fighter jihadist comrades-in-arms to do something really horrendous in this country-- damn, I keep forgetting, there are no terrorists; only Bush, Cheney, Israel and consevative Christians are the terrorists! Oh, well. Still, I look forward to the day when the pimps for jihadist Islam like Doug are recognized for who they are-- pimps for jihadist Islam. But really, all kidding aside-- when Doug's freedom fighter friends deploy a nuke in, say, Milwaukee, maybe a good portion of us will awaken from our politically-correct stupor and turn some of the blame upon those who have been encouraging our enemies for the past six years. Hey Doug, ever think about taking your pimping-for-radical-Islam over to Al-Jazeera?? Maybe you can cover the assassination of some chauvanist Cahtolic nun in Somalia-- I know that would give you a real orgasmic Leninist thrill. Or maybe you could pass a few imperialist military secrets over to the freedom-loving quds forces? Since this country is so bad, why don't you put your America-murdering money where your America-murdering mouth is and really take up the revolutionary struggle with the other freedom fighters? Or should we just give peace a chance? Yeah, let's all groove to John Lennon's 'Imagine,' and maybe we can forget about Nick Berg's blood-curdling shrieks as al-Zarqawi was sawing off his head with a dull knife. Or maybe we can forget about how the jihadists forced Daniel Pearl to "confess" that he was a Jew before they decapitated him-- oh, silly me, I keep lapsing. It's only Christians who commit such wretched atrocities like that, not Doug's brave & courageous islamic freedom fighters! Oh, how obtuse I am!

What's the difference between Doug and Axis Sally? Axis Sally had the courage to act on her beliefs....
December 26, 2007 4:25 PM