Beef-eating surrender monkeys?

Bob from Virginia

I agree with your assessment of GW Bush. He had more than enough common sense to see Obama was an empty suit. As soon as Obama was elected he should have taken Iran's nuke plants, knowing full well Obama never would..

Sam ARMSTRONG

There are times when I like old sarko...

Jason from AZ

Correction: Iraq, indeed, was the "wrong war." It is indisputable that deposing Saddam Hussein's secular regime only strengthened Iran, an Islamic dictatorship that is the world's largest importer of terrorism around the world.

Moreover, by wrongly claiming Iraq had a nuclear weapon program and allowing the US to become bogged down both in Iraq and Afganistan for so long, Bush became impotent to do anything about Iran's nuclear program - and the Mullah's know it.

Now, Iraq is slowly becoming a client state of Iran, and Iran is well on its way to becoming a nuclear power. Melanie, you were right to place the blame squarely on Bush, but Obama certainly isn't trying to rectify the situation, although perhaps it's too late anyway.

John Billot

I don't think Israel will be sitting down wringing it's hands. I suspect they have "insurgents" in place to "remove" any such weapons establishments. Perhaps it's because they know they are definitely in the front line as it were. No doubt all the usual yoghurt knitters will throw their arms up in disgust.

Linda Smith

"Iran is committed to the destruction of the non-Islamic world and will use nuclear weapons to bring that about."

Islam is first and foremost a missionising ideology. The long range rockets equiped with nuclear warheads that Iran tested this week could be used to hold countries hostage: "Convert or die."

Iran wants Israel under Islamic rule - to wipe Zionism off the face of the map - this can be achieved by blackmailing, say, the UN: "do what we want or we'll nuke country x, y, or z.

Iran flaunted their long range rockets to the world this week. All they need now are a few nuclear warheads.

Jerimiah

If I recall correctly, France has been on the side of chatting with such folks for a long time. It's good to see them stepping up, if that's what they're actually advocating.

Suki

Turn "genocidal mullahs into inter-faith outreach workers humming Beethoven's Ode to Joy".

Quite. And in the background of this crowd scene is Rod Liddle with Jeremy Bowen hoist on his shoulders, celebrating the fact that Bowen has failed to report this.

Butterfingers Bowen, eh, Rod? Still, never mind the facts. Let's just pour another drink and toast the BBC's wilful pig ignorance.

GaryO

I’ve come to the conclusion that many in the influential media and politicians both here in Europe and US actually want Iran to have the nuclear bomb. US is the biggest hypocrite of them all – look at how it is now all jumping up and down about the Pakistani’s bomb, yet it could have nipped the whole project in the bud years and years ago but instead chose to turn the blind eye to. It is inconceivable to think that US, with its close relationship with Pakistani military and intelligence service, cultivated since the beginning of the cold war, was unaware of pakistani’s nuclear ambitions and ultimately its proliferation by Pakistanis to some of the most dangerous regimes in the world.
The 5+1 meeting is just a show. It is the betrayal of Israel and the free world. This is the Wannsee Conference redux.

John Edwards

In reality the public disclosure of the construction of a nuclear facility which the US and its allies already knew about years ago changes nothing.

US intelligence still says there is no hard evidence that Iran is actively seeking nuclear weapons. Iran has also agreed to an inspection of the plant.

It is of course absurd to criticise Iran which has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and allowed inspections while remaining silent about Israel which has refused to sign the treaty and refused all inspections but is known to have a stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Matthias Kuntzel has a somewhat negative view of Islam and is hardly an authority (Google him and see for yourself!).

I'm not an expert on Islamic thinking either but perhaps someone could explain why the Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should issue a fatwa (religious decree) back in 2005 that "the production , stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire such weapons".

Suki

John Edwards: "It is of course absurd to criticise Iran which has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and allowed inspections while remaining silent about Israel which has refused to sign the treaty and refused all inspections but is known to have a stockpile of nuclear weapons."

No. It's not absurd at all because the Iranian leaders believe there is a place in heaven for them if they die fighting against their enemies. When you link that to their open wish to wipe Israel off the map, it puts them in a very different category from Israel.

John Edwards: "I'm not an expert on Islamic thinking [I think we've just established that, John, but here we go again] either but perhaps someone could explain why the Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should issue a fatwa (religious decree) back in 2005 that "the production , stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire such weapons".

Yes. Of course. In Islam, there's a concept called taqiyya, which dictates that lying is acceptable if it advances the cause of Allah.

So what you have there is a total lie blessed by the fact that it helps Iran's leaders to promulgate the global Caliphate.

Instead of shooting your mouth off about Israel, while admitting your ignorance about Islam, why don't you get down the book store and buy a copy of The Koran and you might not need these things explained to you.

Finzi Holst

John Edwards pnders: 'I'm not an expert on Islamic thinking either but perhaps someone could explain why the Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should issue a fatwa (religious decree) back in 2005 that "the production , stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire such weapons".'

In reply I cite the FACT that Islam has as one of its principle tenets the the use of al-Taqiyya. To whit:

Al-Takeyya is a policy whereby a Muslim may lie, deceive or omit critical truths if it promotes the spreading of Islam AND the conquest of the non-Muslim world. According to William P. Welty, Ph.D., al-Takeyya/Taqiyya is:

'The Islamic principle of lying for the sake of Allah. Falsehoods told to prevent denigration of Islam, to protect oneself, or to promote the cause of Islam are sanctioned by the Qur'an, including lying under penalty of perjury in testimony before the United States Congress, lying or making distorted statements to the media such as claiming that Islam is a religion of peace and deceiving fellow Muslims when the one lying has deemed them to be apostates.' (1)

One believes Islamists at one's peril.

GaryO

Have you heard the latest? The clowns meeting in Geneva have given Iran a further three months to prove its peaceful intentions!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/6247900/West-gives-Iran-three-months-to-prove-it-does-not-want-nuclear-weapons.html

Augustus

The degree to which Iran has advanced its uranium enrichment programme will probably remain an unknown factor, and the international community will continue to be marooned in trepidation. No one will see what the ayatollahs do not wish to make public, recalling the disastrous outcome following the hide-and-seek dance with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Iran's nuclear progress is not new, nor is it news. What is new is the loss of a very powerful strategic negotiating tool that could have been used against Iran - the land-based European missile defence shield. When Obama backed off the deployment of the system he did so without gaining any known concession from Putin. Obama gave up a major negotiating card that could have been used to strengthen sanctions against Iran. But now, with China and Russia both providing Iran with enough trade through many more elections, no matter what sanctions the West might operate, Irans's path to becoming a fully-fledged nuclear power appears unobstructed. Expect also an increase in destabilizing activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, and further financing of terror. If Obama wishes to pursue a strategy of engagement and mutual respect, the violence against the Iranian people after the election should be enough indication that his wishes are just that - wishful thinking.

gary ashton

i'm sure the un will stand up to irans mad dictator and throw him a wet t bag. perhaps even offer him a seat as human rights chairman or something suitably insane.

Kiwi

“Sarkozy understands what some of those around Obama do not – that the free world cannot ‘live with’ a nuclear Iran. Those who say it can simply do not grasp that this is not a re-run of the Cold War. Iran is committed to the destruction of the non-Islamic world and will use nuclear weapons to bring that about.”

Absolutely correct; today’s world is not East versus West, it’s more about free nations against unfree nations. Free nations allow freedom of speech, demonstrations and peaceful protest. People of free nations come and go as they please, and are able to criticise their leaders. In unfree nations like Iran, protesters are gunned down, and people who speak up against their government are arrested and tortured by the police. Iran is not developing nuclear weapons to defend itself. Iran is developing nuclear weapons to kill people of free nations. Sadly, the majority of free nations are in denial concerning the threat they face, and are under the chronic misunderstanding that all cultural and international conflict can be remedied through apologies, procrastination, folk songs, Western guilt, and flamboyant sentimentality.

Tim

Suki's rabid hatred of all things Islamic or Muslim has always been obvious. The fact that she 'understands' the concept of 'Taqqiya' or 'Takkiya' indicates that 'she' is either an Islamic expert on the esoterica of Muslim theology or has such an obsessive hatred of it all that 'she' spends much time hunting down all the negative aspects of the religion.
It's a bit like the 18th century poet Alexander Pope who admitted to kicking around a Bible each day in anger at God creating him short, barely 4 feet and with painful curvature of the spine.
But if it comes from similar causes to Hirshan Ali in Holland, my apologies.

elixelx

My Iranian friend, Ali, recently brought me a long roll of NPT paper which is even now, as I write, being used by members of my immediate family...
We couldn't live without its soft yet strong qualities!
It is DEFINITELY worth the paper its printed on and Ali tells me that it is de riguer in all the Iranian Mullah's homes!

Polly Gamma

Tim - ahem take a moment to consider your own diatribe..!

Are you 4ft tall and in pain yourself by any chance?

Linda Smith

Tim, "Suki's rabid hatred for all things Islamic or Muslim has always been obvious..she spends much time hunting down all the negative aspects of the religion."

You obviously know nothing about Islam or you would know that in the same way as Nazism it asserts the supremacy of one group of human beings over others. In Islamic ideology, membership of the supreme group is predicated on conversion to Islam. In Nazi ideology, membership of the supreme group is predicated on genes. Both ideologies assert a master-slave relationship between groupmembers and non-members.

Judging from your name I assume you are not Muslim (yet). Perhaps, as a non-Muslim you would like to explain to us the "positive" aspects of supremacist Islam for the non-believing infidel?

Don't bother to respond until you have read the discriminatory 1991 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam of the 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference - which repudiates the UN Universal Declaration of Human rights and instead takes its authority from the Koran and Sharia law. Available online.

I recommend you also read Jacques Ellul's 1983 Preface to Bat Ye'Or's book: The Dhimmi, also available online.

SHIM

The time is NOW. Let the bombs fly. Nobody stops us. Iran can be obliterated with ease by the IDF. Thank you Mrs Phillips for the War Cry.

Tom

@ Linda Smith:

'You obviously know nothing about Islam or you would know that in the same way as Nazism it asserts the supremacy of one group of human beings over others.'

Is this not true of all religions?? (although i think your comparison with Nazism is lazy in the extreme)

andy c

All this kerfuffle over Iran - which is not nuclear and has never attacked anyone - disguises the U.N.'s recent recomendation that Israel. which is nuclear and a serial regional trouble maker, be prosecuted for War Crimes.

Linda Smith

Tom: "Is this not true of all religions?? No. Judaism and Christianity do not exert the supremacy of its adherents over non-believers. Islam requires submission to its "truth". Non-believers are required to pay a tax (the jizya) in order to have their lives spared by their supremacist masters who are also at liberty, and indeed required, to humiliate them. The Jews of Yemen were forced to go barefoot (amongst other humiliations and oppressions) until they were rescued by the new State of Israel in 1949 in Operation Flying Carpet.

(although I think your comparison with Nazism is lazy in the extreme).

Please give your reasons for your thought.

Tom

Linda,

I found the Nazi analogy lazy because it is not a reasonable comparison in terms of ideology and action. Rather it is the imagery of oppression you are utilizing, which I believe is misrepresentative and unfair.
Nazism had an central authority. Islam does not. Catholicism is much more akin to authoritarianism in that respect. (It may also be worth rethinking Christianity's role in twentieth century European history before casting it in opposition to 'Nazi Islam').

Nazi ideology led to the perpetration of the worst acts of brutality and cruelty every unleashed. 'Islamic' terrorism is presumably what you are comparing this to in terms of actions. Whilst devaluing life in the same way, Islamic terrorism is neither comparable in scale or intention (disparate aims, context, power relations of groups involved).

I strongly feel that casting a new problem in old imagery carries substantial baggage that distracts from accurate analysis and addressing the underlying issues. Thus it makes positive outcomes more remote rather than more likely.

As for the Jews of Yemen, it is a pretty massive leap to compare the mistreatment you described to an industrial Nazi death machine that slaughtered as efficiently and far-reachingly as possible.
That said, there was obvious mistreatment and abuse, which should be condemned and combated. As it should be all over the world, but we should do this to the best of our ability, which means being accurate and fair in analysis and dialogue.

Yehuda

andy c: you claim that Israel is "the regional trouble maker."
What trouble has Israel made?
According to Israel's enemies, it's very existence is trouble, and for over 60 years they have tried a number of ways of ending its existence, the most recent of which is "lawfare."
Realistically, however, the world has a choice to make: either it ceases to collaborate actively or passively with Israel's mortal enemies or it faces Armageddon.
andy c, how would you like to run your car on radioactive petroleum?

ahad ha'amoratsim

"Iran - which is not nuclear and has never attacked anyone"Really? Well, unless you count their attacks on US vessels, their attack on US embassy workers in Tehran and holding them captive, their brutal murders of their own people, and their murderous proxy wars and insurgencies and terrorist campaigns conducted in Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Argentina and elsewhere. Supposed "trouble maker" Israel has shown time and again that if left alone it is more than happy to leave others alone.

Linda Smith

Tom, "As for the Jews of Yemen, it is a pretty massive leap to compare the mistreatment you described to an industrial Nazi death machine that slaughtered as efficiently and far-reachingly as possible.
That said, there was obvious mistreatment and abuse, which should be condemned and combated. As it should be all over the world, but we should do this to the best of our ability, which means being accurate and fair in analysis and dialogue."
Well, you'd better start by studying Islam instead of spouting a load of crap.
Islam's central authority is the Koran. The "mistreatment" of the Jews of Yemen was/is dictated by Islamic religious doctrine and similar "oppression" will be coming your way in an Islamic society as a dhimmi.

"The Christian concept of God or of Jesus Christ is no longer the same for the Christians today as it was in the Middle Ages, and one can multiply examples. But precisely what seems to me interesting and striking about Islam, one of its peculiarities,. is the fixity of its concepts.....Islam, even more than Christianity., is a religion that claims to give a form to the social order, to human relations, and claims to embrace each moment in the life of every person. Thus, it tends towards an inflexibility that most other forms of society have not had....Of course, there can be an evolution (in practical matters, in jurisprudence, etc.) but when threre is a text, which is regarded in some way as an "authoritative" source, only has only to go back to that text and the recent innovations will collapse. And this is exactly what has happened in Islam. Legalism has everywhere produced a rigidity (not an absolute rigidity, which is impossible, but a maximal one) that makes historical investigations essential. One should br aware that when one is dealing with some Islamic term or institution of the past, as long as the basic text - in this case, the Koran - remains unchanged, one can always return to the original principles and ideas whatever apparent transformations or developments have taken place, especially because Islam has achieved something that has always been very unusual: an integration of the religious, the political, the moral, the social, the juridical, and the intellectual, thus constituting a rigorous whole of which each element forms an integral part......

.....For the conquering Islam of today, those who do not claim to be Muslims do not have any human rights recognised as such. In an Islamic society, the non-Muslims would return to their former dhimmi status, which is why ther idea of solving the Middle East conflicts by the creation of a federation including Israel within a group of Muslim peoples or states, or in a "Judeo-Islamic" state, is a fantasy and an illusion. From the Muslim point of view, such a thing would be an illusion."
(Jacques Ellul, 1983, French Jurist)

MIK

What W recognized was that the polity would not accept a war with Iran, particularly in light of an NIE that reported that Iran had ceased its efforts. W could not, politically, embroil the country in another armed conflict. If blame is to be apportioned, it should be apoortioned to a class of political elite who agreed that the US needed to deal woth Iraq but when things got tough, backed away.

Barrie

'The major blame for this appalling situation must be laid squarely at the door of President George W Bush. He had eight years..'.
Oh dear. How simple to blame poor hopeless Bush. Didn't he outsource this very problem to the EU years ago -after all, the Iranian threat is far closer to Europe than to the USA. Are the Europe nations still not grown-ups?
Melanie, stop blaming Bush too, pleeaase. I like your mind.

Mark

Practical question. Most sensible people here would I think accept that a large part of the problem is that too many people in the West simply refuse to accept that the problem lies in radcial Islamist ideollogy - not in one or more aspects of international relations (Israel, Kashmir) or any of the other so caled "root causs".

Fine. How do we set about convincing people of this, becasue a lot of the way i which we respond will depend on it.

Danny Lemieux

Gee, before we rely on selective memory to bear down hard on G.W. Bush, I distinctly remember that it was the EURO powers, horrified at Bush's "hard" diplomacy, that insisted on confronting Iran with "soft diplomacy". The "negotiations" that took place with Iran during the Bush administration were led by Europeans, who assured us that we would soon have peace in hand.

The U.S., graciously, allowed EUROPE the opportunity to prove its point and, so, here we are.

Linda Smith

Mark, "radical Islamist ideology."

Myth. It's all Islam. A Muslim either believes or doesn't. Islam bans questioning or dissent. "Moderate" Islam is a non sequitur.

Drakken

Ah Mark
You want to know how to deal with barbaric savages? it's called the mailed fist in spades. Think more on the lines of Gen. William T Sherman and you will get there. Glad I could help, and as for the moderate m word , its called a oxymoron.

Tom the Redhunter

Dittos to what Melanie says.

GWB should have stopped the Iranian bomb. Iraq dragged him down, but that's really no excuse.

So now we're stuck with Obama, who will dither as the Middle East burns, just as he's dithering now on Afghanistan.

I expect they know already...

Have just got round to buying the video of Dr Strangelove. Someone somewhere must have done a cartoon of Obama sitting on the bomb.

It sure is a funny kinda love.
Thing is if Iran has ICBM's its kinda dumb for Europe to play the fool.

What range does Iran really have?
Theres some mighty long blue tubes in bushehr.

the ipcress tapes - nailed in albania

"Moderate" Islam is a non sequitur.

I suppose so but does a moderate muslim exist? Was for instance a muslim (fikret abdic) and leader of a muslim community who sided with christians (serbs) against a muslim (izhetbegovic, clintons idea of a moderate muslim, and who used to be in the ss handzar division) a case ????

Linda Smith

The holocaust denying Ahmedinejad is Jewish!! There would have been a gas chamber waiting for him too, whether he believes it or not.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/6256173/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-revealed-to-have-Jewish-past.html#