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stevemcgarrett

Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 3:10 am Post subject: HAS IRAN'S MULLAHOCRACY JUST BLINKED FOR BLAIR? |
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Now that my other thread on this same topic has extended into too many pages, let's refocus on developments at hand.
Have the mullahs just blinked? (One can only hope so). This just out from the AP wire:
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The next two days are "fairly critical" to resolving the dispute over a seized British navy crew, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday, after Iran's chief international negotiator offered a new approach to end the standoff with Tehran. Blair told Scotland's Real Radio that Ali Larijani's suggestion of talks offered hope of an end to the crisis. "If they want to resolve this in a diplomatic way the door is open," the prime minister said.
But if negotiations to win the quick release of the 15 sailors and marines stalled, Britain would "take an increasingly tougher position," he said. The navy crew was detained March 23 by naval units of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards while the Britons patrolled for smugglers near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, a waterway that long has been a disputed dividing line between Iraq and Iran. On Monday, Larijani said that Iran sought "to solve the problem through proper diplomatic channels" and proposed having a delegation determine whether British forces had strayed into Iranian territory in the Persian Gulf. He did not say what sort of delegation he had in mind. Larijani told Britain's Channel 4 News Monday through an interpreter that Iranian officials "definitely believe that this issue can be resolved and there is no need for any trial." Over the weekend, The Sunday Telegraph of London said Britain was considering sending a senior Royal Navy officer to Tehran to discuss the return of the captives as well as to talk about ways to avoid future incidents...Larijani also urged Britain to guarantee "that such violation will not be repeated," but avoided repeating Tehran's demand for an apology. British leaders have insisted they have nothing to apologize for. |
But then again there is this to consider:
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The comments suggested the sides were seeking a face-facing formula in which each could argue its interests were upheld while the captives could go free. Under such a formula, Iran could claim Britain tacitly acknowledged the border area is in dispute, and Britain could maintain it never apologized. |
So, what's it going to be boys? Is Iran caving in, or will this fiasco end in a stand-off, or will the Brits concede on humanitarian grounds, concerned as they are foremost for the well-being of their military personnel? |
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Milwaukiedave
Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Location: Goseong
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 3:31 am Post subject: |
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Stevie...control your hard on man. It's pretty gay when you spout off and foam at the mouth. |
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stevemcgarrett

Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 3:40 am Post subject: |
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MDave:
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Stevie...control your hard on man. It's pretty gay when you spout off and foam at the mouth. |
You're pathetic, I mean really pathetic. You can't address the issues so you try to imitate my other detractors on this board and your humor has all the spice of JAL food. Really, go buy some new cowbells for your Wisconsin girlfriend. |
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Milwaukiedave
Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Location: Goseong
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 3:52 am Post subject: |
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Well Steve, you are the one who called the entire state of Oregon "moonbats." I guess you should stop reading that drivel over on Michelle Malkin's website |
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ddeubel

Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 3:53 am Post subject: |
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McGarette,
He is right. You make a poor fisherman. You can't remain quiet, nor in one spot, nor reflective with any wisdom......nor can you even bait.
That is the truth. Why do you and many others post things just to goad and cajole? You have shown that you don't want debate or even discourse but rather just the comments and cheers of the colosseum.
Of course this isn't "blinking" - to answer your too obvious question. It is the efforts of diplomacy working, probably from those civilized Brits that so many think are but appeasers. I've only good things to say about British diplomacy and I roo the day they went to bed with Bush.... But it also shows that Iranians aren't just stewarts of evil but rather those who at the end of the day, despite their slip ups and errors, want to maybe do the right thing.
DD |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 5:31 am Post subject: |
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ddeubel wrote: |
Of course this isn't "blinking" - to answer your too obvious question. It is the efforts of diplomacy working, probably from those civilized Brits that so many think are but appeasers. I've only good things to say about British diplomacy and I roo the day they went to bed with Bush.... But it also shows that Iranians aren't just stewarts of evil but rather those who at the end of the day, despite their slip ups and errors, want to maybe do the right thing.
DD |
You lefties are stupid at its worst. Of course you blame this whole thing on the eeeeevil Bushie and the U.S. Who else? And then you claim that "maybe" Iran wants to do the right thing? Did it ever occur to you that doing the right thing would have been to release the prisoners immediately after taking them instead of parading them around and forcing "confessions" out of them? Slip ups and errors? To a lefty, Iran has slips ups and errors while the eeeevil U.S. is sinister in its every step. |
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stevemcgarrett

Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:02 am Post subject: |
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DD muttered:
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You have shown that you don't want debate or even discourse but rather just the comments and cheers of the colosseum. |
Oh, you couldn't be more wrong. But then that would require Cloud 9 lefties like you to actually muster up enough concentration to address the issues raised.
Instead, we've got people like Davy of Pewaukee losing sleep over my slur of Oregonians, referring to them as moonbats.  |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:48 am Post subject: |
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Ddeubel wrote:
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I've only good things to say about British diplomacy |
(This is not meant as a comment on the current situation with Iran. It's just that Ddeubel's hyperbolic praise of British diplomacy was pretty much a screaming invitation for someone to post that picture.) |
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Mosley
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:56 am Post subject: |
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Hand, I think you're seeking "peace in our time" at the CE Forum.
Cheers, Mosley |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:01 am Post subject: |
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Hand, I think you're seeking "peace in our time" at the CE Forum.
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Well, why not? After all, this is a forum far away from us, frequented by people of whom we know nothing. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 9:17 am Post subject: |
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On the other hand wrote: |
Ddeubel wrote:
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I've only good things to say about British diplomacy |
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And ever since, the 'special relationship.' I'm surprised to find that DD and I both admire this aspect of British diplomacy and geopolitical planning. |
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stevemcgarrett

Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 11:19 pm Post subject: |
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on the other hand:
I've got to "hand" it to you: you sure know how to cut to the chase. We don't always agree on the issues but for whatever it's worth I pay attention to your posts (not that you need my approval, obviously).
Another photo that says a thousand words and at least one ongoing foreign policy posture. |
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ddeubel

Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 4:57 am Post subject: |
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Yes, I guess I should have expected that...... a proportion of people who deal only in symbols and the costume and not the wherewithall within......
Fact of the matter is that there is much debate still, whether appeasement was a failure. I won't mention in detail that it did allow Britain to gain time and strength. I will mention strongly that it was against a backdrop of terror and death that we don't today understand -- The Great War. Chamberlain and almost every other Brit alive at the time had lost a loved one, or two, or 10 in that great wave of death.
Further, let's not judge a nation, their attitudes, based on one historical moment. I could argue (as you could also counterwise) that the U.K. did take the high ground and retreat as an empire on many occassions. Seeking to negotiate and tread diplomatically and not use the cannon.
But alas, in my allusion to British "diplomacy" I was thinking more along the lines of their fine tradition of decorum and "gentlemanly understanding". Not for no reason that Brits have made some of the best anthropologists (and worst ...). They do make a fine cup of tea and have settled many disputes over them.....
I'll leave with this quote about Chamberlain's policy, from Paul Kennedy, the kind of historian Gopher would be sure to despise......too well read, outside the reading list of so and so professor...
"Each course brought its share of disadvantages: there was only a choice of evils. The crisis in the British global position by this time was such that it was, in the last resort, insoluble, in the sense that there was no good or proper solution."
DD |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:21 am Post subject: |
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I've got to "hand" it to you: you sure know how to cut to the chase. We don't always agree on the issues but for whatever it's worth I pay attention to your posts (not that you need my approval, obviously). |
Thanks!
Just to reiterate, though, I didn't intend a neccessary comparison between Chamberlain's appeasement and the current British dealings with Iran. Just thought that Ddeubel's sweeping endorsement of British diplomacy kind of called out for the obvious punch-line.
Ddeubel wrote:
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I could argue (as you could also counterwise) that the U.K. did take the high ground and retreat as an empire on many occassions. |
Sorry, Ddeubel, but that's a little bit like arguing that Jack The Ripper was taking the high road when he decided to stop murdering women.
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For seven years in the 1950s Britain pursued a murderous little war in Kenya - mass murderous at times - against a rebellion called Mau Mau. Abandoning all values, its troops killed and tortured civilians with impunity. One officer quoted by David Anderson gives a taste of the impunity - and the hatred. Interviewing three enemy suspects he says: "�one of them, a tall coal-black bastard, kept grinning at me, real insolent. I slapped him hard, but he kept on grinning at me, so I kicked him in the balls as hard as I could�. When he finally got up on his feet he grinned at me again and I snapped. I really did. I stuck my revolver right in his grinning mouth... And I pulled the trigger. His brains went all over the side of the police station. The other two (suspects) were standing there looking blank� so I shot them both� when the sub-inspector drove up, I told him the (suspects) tried to escape. He didn't believe me but all he said was 'bury them and see the wall is cleaned up' "
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Last edited by On the other hand on Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:24 am Post subject: |
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Some stuff from the same webpage, that I forgot to quote above...
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But the British also deployed an even more fatal if effective method, the one they had used against Afrikaner civilians in the Boer war, the concentration camp. More than a million were crammed into heavily guarded camps where starvation and disease killed thousands. Outside the army used the same tactics as Sudan government has been using against the rebels in Darfur. They armed the local enemies of the rebellion and encouraged them to kill, rape and loot at will. When accounts of British atrocities leaked out, officials in Nairobi and London lied to deny them. When a few brave souls spoke out or even resigned they were persuaded to keep quiet. When at last some of the truth came out the game was up. Even the young Enoch Powell, from the far right of the Tory Party who later preached a whites-only Britain, declared that if Britain behaved like this it did not deserve an empire. |
That stuff like this was tolerated by the highest levels of British officialdom in the 1950s leads me to conclude that any post-colonial affinity for "the high road" was merely a result of not being able to repeat their Kenyan tactics everywhere that they wanted to.
http://tinyurl.com/yot7g7
Last edited by On the other hand on Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:49 am; edited 1 time in total |
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