wait. Shah has ruled before his so called coup?

I mean, I know there are tons of lies going about today, but at least I used to beleive things in the past... then again after learning some more about vietnam...

Anyways. What really happened with the Shah then?

Also. AFAIK:

1. The so called "degraded chemical weapons" found in iraq is a gas that degrades after 3 days, or up to 2 weeks under perfect storage conditions. Production facilities, delivery warheads, and chemists who professed to being tasked with created more of this gas on deman were found (chemical weapons are a WMD)

2. Yellow cake is the name US soliders give to partially enriched radioactives (attempted enrichment that did not reach weapon grade, but is not raw radioactives eithers) taken from Iraq... recently the UN protested that the US is "illigally removing" hundreds of them from Iraq.

3. Anthrax.

Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons are the three weapons of mass destruction. All 3 were actively pursued by iraq up to the last minute. So the whole "no WMD found" is bunk. Also, he actually used them to gas the curds, and tried shooting them at israel when the US stopped him from conquering kuwait in the gulf war. (most rockets failed half way through).

Bounce.

Leaki, I enjoyed reading this. In good-natured fun, here is my reply (I did not write this, copied from elsewhere):

 US Foreign Policy, Israel, and International relations

Peace Process

"Failed policy": Usually refers to an unlawful war policy which has come to cost too much money. It reinforces yet again, the imperial rights of the US to use violence at will in violation of human rights, the public will, and international law.

Blunders, Mismanagement, Mistakes, etc:

Terms used to describe US foreign policy when large sectors of business power and the population turn against [the respective policy]...the implication being clear that US initiatives are by definition, rooted in morality and altruism, despite natural human errors of strategy, not of motives, meaning that US foreign policy "means well."

 To "Spread Democracy": To extend US control over a foreign country, usually in an attempt to undermine popular democratic efforts that threaten US political, business, and ideological interests.

 "Support the Troops": Support our policy of unlawful aggression

 "The Surge worked": The perceived success of the US escalation of the illegal occupation of Iraq renders our initial/continued illegal aggression legitimate according to this proclamation.

Nevertheless, this catchphrase also ignores the actual reasons for the decrease in violence including the non-related cease fire maintained by the Shia resistance, increased segregation through extensive ethnic cleansing, and most importantly, significantly less people to kill as half the country is dead, exiled, displaced, mangled, or in prison. [2]

Democracy: Refers to a foreign government that favors the interests of elite foreign (US) investors instead of the respective population

 Moderate:a foreign leader who follows orders from Washington [1]

 Extremist: a foreign leader who pursues a course independent from Washington's orders [1]

 Human Rights: Things that the US supports and that our enemies violate

 Weapons of Mass Destruction: Weapons (sometimes nonexistent ones) that are held by states out of favor with Washington. Notice that the US and its clients by definition do not possess anything or pursue anything that would cause "mass destruction." Therefore the definition of WMD's is purely ideological, void of physical facts.

 Free/Fair Trade: Trade policies that favor the ultra wealthy and trample labor rights, ignore environmental regulations, and prevent independent development for the poor nations involved and prevent meaningful democracy for the populations of both the rich country and the poor country in any given case.

 Communist, Marxist, Socialist (concerning foreign political parties or governments): Governments that pursue independent economic development without concern for foreign investor interests or the neoliberal development model.

 Unilaterally: A term used to describe the final measure taken by the US resort to lawless violence. In other words, when the Clinton administration noted they would act "unilaterally" if they "must," they meant that the US will act in violation of the UN and international law if international law and the UN don't support and conform to US military actions and US will.

 Anti-American (concerning various international opinion): 1) Those who oppose US crimes and exploitative economic policies, and 2) Open supporters of applying the standards of international law universally.

 Anti-Semitism:An accusation usually used to deflect criticism of Israel's ongoing war crimes as cited uncontroversially by the UN, Israeli/Jewish human rights groups, and Amnesty International, all in accordance with the Geneva Conventions on human rights.

 Israel's "Right to Exist": Israel's right to continue outwardly racist policies against its Palestinian-Arab citizens within its borders and Israel's right to maintain a racist apartheid civil/military system in the Palestinian West Bank, a genocidal siege on the heavily populated Gaza Strip, and an illegal military occupation of both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

 Hamas 'Militants' or 'Terrorists':Anybody Israel kills in the occupied territories

Nuclear weapons:Benevolent instruments of peace for US and client states, tyrannical instruments of genocide when held by everyone else.

Arab/Muslim: Terrorist, usually inherently irrational, violent, and deceitful. A hater of freedom, democracy, Christians, and Jews.

 Well, who is NOT an Arab then?: According to the honorable McCain, "decent, family men" who we may or may not have "disagreements" with. By implication, an Arab then cannot be "decent" or family orientated. For further elaboration, see the above definition.

Domestic Politics: Economic policy and Authority Well, this means exactly what it sounds like, which is why the public was opposed to the whole thing. Publicly funded (we pay) bailouts for wall street, and polite condolences for workers, children, the poor, and the sick. (concerning public policy and advocacy): Policies where the public's tax money is spent on the public welfare, as opposed to transferring public funds to the ultra wealthy. "Solutions" to social problems that put profit as the driving force, rather than human need by eliminating the public role in decision making, transferring additional and un-calculated costs to the public and forcing working families and the poor to bare most of the burden of market forces. The richest of the rich, the elite millionaire/billionaire corporations, investors, and banks—the ones who own the country and are unaccountable to the public. Not a "community" in the friendly sense that we understand it to be. (Does not include small business owners like your local friendly family-run restaurant.) Due to a significant level of desperation and sizable unemployment in the labor force, conditions are ripe for business managers and owners to slash living wages, cut benefits, disregard reasonable working condition standards, and destroy workers' unions in order to increase their power and profits. The use of this word in referring to social programs for the public is chosen specifically to imply that those receiving the much needed social benefits are "freeloaders" and "sponging off of the government." Refers exclusively to the poor, working class, and middle class. Entitlements for the wealthy, such as tax breaks and other gifts, are not included in this categorization. Huge sums of money stolen from the pockets of taxpayers received mostly by rich blacks who cheat the government and are too lazy to work. What? There's no such thing! And if there was, it would never be exponentially larger than social welfare... Social Darwinism or the 'law of the jungle' for the working class, poor, uninsured, and disenfranchised. Note that "personal responsibility" doesn't apply to the elite, who enjoy government protection and public safety nets. Unrestricted free reign for multinational corporations, billionaire investors, and massive banking institutions to run the country in their interests at the expense of the general population whose role is to work, go into debt, and supply the funds (taxes) to erect barriers to market forces for big business. Also commonly known as "liberty". A massive government designed in the interests of military dominance and in the interests of the rich, while making sure public dollars cannot be spent on public interests and much needed social programs. Simply put, big government for sectors of power, small government for the needy. An economic system of "public subsidy and private profit," where the government intervenes in the market regularly to protect elite business interests from market forces. [1] The removal of economic institutions from the public sphere into private, unaccountable hands. By definition, a radical reduction of democracy. Change of face and rhetoric, maintenance of the status quo Elections every few years between two factions of business representatives, public ratifications of concentrated power. A lively debate between a "liberal" and a "conservative" within a narrow framework of assumptions that serve the interests of power. Refers exclusively to small criminals from the lower classes like drug dealers, petty thieves, some violent behavior. Does not include the massive crime and corruption on Wall Street, or the much bigger and more serious war crimes (which have kill millions of people) committed by presidents and congress. a one-trillion-dollar-and-climbing policy of insanity (by Albert Einstein's definition) which shamefully and disproportionally targets Blacks and Latinos...a policy which is no more a "war" on drug use than the t.v. show "Cheaters" is a "war" on infidelity. a term used by government officials to calm down an angry population in light of police brutality, political corruption, government misconduct, etc. The "investigation" either produces no results or simply sacrifices a scapegoat for PR reasons, while neglecting to address the deeply rooted institutional problems. [3] Subjugating, often using violence, those who attempt to participate in decision making outside the ballot box. (in the case that the accused is an American): 1) Those who love their country and aspire to improve it by challenging their government, and/or, 2) Americans who do not identify themselves or their moral values with the Washington-Wall Street power structure. An all purpose catch phrase used to justify US military aggression and restriction of civil rights. Corporate interests [1]

Wall Street Bailout:

Socialism, Communism, Marxism

Market Based Solutions:

Business Community:

Labor Flexibility:

Entitlement:

Welfare:

Corporate Welfare/Subsidies:

Personal Responsibility:

Economic Freedom:

Small Government:

Free Enterprise, Free Market:

Privatization:

'Hope or Change':

Democracy, Democratic Process:

Balanced Media Coverage:

Crime:

War on Drugs:

Full Investigation:

Getting public unrest "under control":

Anti-American

National Security:

National Interest:

and lastly,

Universities:

Apologies for the hashing of the text above (wall of text and definitions missing from some titles)

The entire thing can be found here-

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21052.htm

Artysim, I don't get the "jokes".

Look at this one:

"Terrorist: 1) Anybody that the US fights against, 2) People who defend themselves from US attack, and 3) Perpetrators of terrorism whose terror doesn't serve US power"

I don't know of anyone who uses the word in any of these senses. My definitions are all based on how I have seen the words used.

At no point was everyone the US fought against called a "terrorist". And the people called "terrorists" now are really people who attack civilians (i.e. employ terrorism). Very few of them are actually fighting (or "defending from") the US.

Plus I don't know of any group who perpetrates terrorism but isn't called such by the US because its terror serves US power. (How can terror serve US power anyway? I don't see the possibility. The US _never_ profit from civilians dying.)

Other things are simply anti-Semitic lies:

"Israel's right to continue outwardly racist policies against its Palestinian-Arab citizens within its borders"

There are no "racist policies" against "Palestinian-Arab" citizens within Israel's borders. I don't know if you have ever been in Israel, but in Israel Jews and Arabs live together, study together in the same universities, use the same streets, the same public transport (if they so choose) and there are no laws that restrict anything to any particular ethnicity (except for laws that favour Bedouins in hiring for the civil service and laws that allow Arabs not to serve in the army). I don't find a list of anti-Semitic lies particularly funny.

It might not mean anything to you, but people DIE because of those lies.

Nothing in my list makes people want to kill other people. When I say that liberals call Bush a Nazi but ironically enough not Saddam, nobody is going to want to kill anybody because of what I said.

But I have been shot at because of stupid anti-Semitic lies like the ones you apparently find so funny.

I have also spoken to families of victims of terror attacks (in Israel and Iraq) and their experience has absolutely nothing to do with a particular American definition of terrorism that might or might not relate to whether the terrorists serve US interests. If one attacks civilians one is a terrorist. It's a tactic. And it's despicable and a war crime.

Particular;y non-amusing I find the accusation that Isarel commits lots of war crimes. If you actually take the time to look them up you will find out that the accusation is a lie as well. It's simply based on a new definition of "war crime" that considers Israel's actions "war crimes" regardless of earlier definitions.

I am sick and tired of people dying because of people like you spreading those anti-Semitic lies.

There is a difference between implying that, say, Michael Moore is a liar ("controversial") and repeating century-old lies about Jews and claiming, untruthfully, that Israel is now commiting those crimes (what a relief for the anti-Semite that Israel came to be). The one is funny and an insult, obviously. The other costs lives.

No liberal has to walk through cities of this world trying to hide who he is because of the jokes in my article.

But Jews everywhere in the world, except in Israel and perhaps the US, have to be careful because of the "jokes" of the article you quote.

Maybe some people also don't get how the dictionary works.

You can actually take an article and replace the words in question with the definitions from my dictionary. The article will still make sense and tell the same story.

That doesn't work with other "dictionaries" like the one Artysim quotes.

Imagine an article that tells us of the following (made up) event in Arbil (in fact Arbil is safe):

"A terrorist killed two children when he blowed himself up in a kindergarten following his participation in an anti-American protest."

If we replace the words with the "definitions" given by Artysim, the sentence would read:

"A defender against the US killed two Kurdish children when he blowed himself up in a kindergarten following his participation in a protest against exploitative economic policies and for applying the standards of internal law universally."

Do we really believe that killing Kurdish children is "defence" against the US and that the protest this man attended was against exploitative economic policies (as such)?

(What about killing Jewish children? Is it resistance? Against what? Jewish children? Does one even have to resist an enemy that only started fighting when one started to kill his children?)

Leauki, the whole point of what I posted above was to point out the sheer hypocrisy in the world. There are no good guys, at least very rarely so.

When the Afghans were fighting the soviets they were valiant freedom fighters.

Now that they're fighting us they're terrorist scum.

When we have nukes they're benevolent instruments of peace.

When countries we don't like have nukes they're WMD's that threaten the entire world. Never mind we're the only ones who used nukes and killed a couple hundred thousand civillians while doing so.

Serbia attacks Kosovo because they're a "breakaway" region and we bomb the crap out of Serbia, going after vital military targets like water treatment plants and power stations and infrastructure in the middle of cities (yes, killing civillians) and it's collateral dammage.

Georgia attacks S. Ossetia because they're a "breakaway" region, killing mostly civillians and they're just exercising their sovereign rights according to us. Then, when Russia responds by intervening (which is exactly what we did in Kosovo, only Russia doesn't launch into a sustained attack on Georgia's civillian infrastructure like we did to Serbia) they're loose cannon bad guys that need to be reigned in.

You may want to go to Columbia my friend. There are ample paramilitary groups that have a funny habbit of causing labor leaders and farmers to go missing and found days later with drill holes in their heads.  Interestingly enough, many of these groups are allied heavily with the Columbian government, who is an ally of the U.S but can claim innocence when these people go missing. Deniability is the name of the game.

This is nothing new. In Chile in the 70's, the dictatorship waged a "war on terror" that really meant a program to round up leftists, political dissidents and labor leaders and kill them. We applauded the Chilean militaries terrorism on their own people as "fighting communism" which couldn't have been further from the truth!

This has been replicated in many, many nations around the globe besides just "Nicaragua and Iran" as you keep going back to

By that definition, just about every nation on the planet would qualify for terrorist status. A few weeks ago nearly 60 Afghan civillians were killed in a U.S airstrike (initially the Afghans said it was 90, the U.S said there were "uncomfirmed" reports, then as video footage surfaced the U.S grudgingly admitted that yes, they had killed civillians, at first they said it was only 9 and then as time wore on, eventually admitted it was several dozen)

What about Dresden or the fire bombing of Tokyo? Both of those were massive carpet bombing raids that were completely unnecessary from a military standpoint. The technical reason for incinerating Dresden, I do believe was to take out their rail yards that were transporting military traffic. Well, for such a specific target it's funny how bombs ended up falling on the entire city instead of just the rail yards. And within 48 hours of the attack, German crews had the rails up and running again anyway. So  militarily, the massive expenditure of munitions and bomber sorties was impotent and achieved very little, other than the mass slaughter of a mostly unarmed city!

There are good guys.

The children in the kindergarten are the good guys. And whichever side TARGETS them is the bad guys. Why is that so difficult to understand?

I am not talking about hitting civilians by accident or even because one didn't care. I am talking of hitting civilians on purpose. That's what terrorism is.

No. The Northern Alliance were "valiant freedom fighters" then and when they helped us overethrow the Taliban in 2001. And you know what? Their fight for freedom did not consist of enslaving women and killing children.

The Taliban, OTOH, who took power in 1996 and had nothing to do with fighting the Russians, are terrorist scum and always have been. They came from "religious" schools in Pakistan whither they fled. They hadn't fought the Russians, they were in Pakistan during the 80s.

What is despicable is the fact that the US abandoned support for Dostum and the others after the Soviet Union was driven out. That's why the Taliban could take power from the victorious rebels. (Ironically Iran continued to support Dostum. And finally so did Russia.)

You might have a rough understanding of Afghanistan, but perhaps you are not aware of some of the connections of the groups.

Bin Laden joined an _Arab_ group fighting the Russians. The group was founded by a former PLO operative. They were not the ones supported by the US.

There were _Afgani_ groups fighting the Russians as well. One of them switched sides a lot. That was the Uzbeks under General Dostum, I think. The others were quite stable. They consisted mainly of non-Pashtun Afgahnis who could not easily flee to Pakistan (where Pashtuns also live) and lived closer to the Soviet border (in the north).

The Taliban were then cowards, not valiant freedom fighters.

And Bin Laden quickly abandoned the group he was with to team up with Al-Zawahiri (spelling?) to found Al-Qaeda who are then and is today terrorist scum.

You see, quite in contrast to what liberals believe, it is their METHODS, not their ALLEGIANCE that makes them terrorists.

If you want to point out hypocrisy, point your finger at the people who pretend that the (Pashtun) Taliban and the (non-Pashtun) fighrers who didn't/couldn't flee to Pakistan are the same people.

And they have been ever since they were used to end World War II in the Pacific and they worked well to deter any possible Soviet aggression.

I grew up in West-Berlin. Several east-European countries actually did fall to the Soviets.

But the conflict between the US and the Soviet-Union was very peaceful compared to what conflicts between such powers traditionally turned out to be like.

Dresden was a major industrial centre and bombing Dresden shortened the war, saving thousands of lives.

If Germany thought that bombing other people is wrong, Germany should have made that point in 1939.

And if you think that that is in any way similar to blowing up a mosque or a kindergarden, please feel free to tell me how blowing up a Shiite mosque in Baghdad shortens the war or saves lives and how the Shiites could have prevented that from happening.

If the Allies could have destroyed German's military infrastructure without killing a single civilian, they would have.

For Al-Qaeda destroying America's military infrastricture wouldn't be the goal of the war, but only the way to murdering American civilians. Otherwise they would have attacked a military base or weapons factory and not New York City.

911 certainly didn't shorten the war. It started it.

The bombing of Dresden did not start the war. It ended it.

I am not a pacifist but I do acknowledge the advantage of ending a war over starting a war.

No. There are very few countries or groups that actually attack civilians. The Japanese did in China. The Nazis did when they specifically killed Jews and homosexuals. The PLO and Hamas do when they attack Jewish kindergartens. Hizbullah do when they shoot rockets into Jeish cities.

But most countries or groups do not attack civilians. Heck, even Fidel Castro didn't.

The US did not "attack" Afghan civilians. They hit them accidentally (or perhaps by willful neglect or whatever).

Most legal systems see a difference between murder and accidental killings. It's only on the international stage that an accidental killing becomes a murder if done by a Jew or an American.

I'd rather have an enemy who might accidentally hit me than an enemy who tries to kill me. Unfortunately I don't have that choice (and part of the reason is that people like you continue to tell anti-Semitic lies, but I guess you will never understand what the problem is with those).

No, actually many are still the good guys.  It is the failure of liberals to understand what they are talking about that causes the problems.  The Taliban was just one of the factions fighting the Soviets.  The current government of Afghanistan, descended from the Northern Alliance was just as bloody fighting the Soviets as the Taliban, and indeed never capitulated to them after the struggle.  They were actually the ones that defeated the Taliban - with only the help of the US AF, not Army.

And this, my good man, is where the myth is laid bare;

Whenever any nation goes into another nation, whether it be to liberate them or conquer them, most often there is some kind of irregular warfare wherein guerrilla forces go after the occupying troops. History repeats itself, this is nothing new. What happens, invariably, is that the guerillas cannot be distinguished from the local civillian population. The occupying troops get frustrated that their buddies are getting killed by phantoms, and inevitably start to see civillians as targets or potential targets.

Now you have the concepts of "force protection" applied wherein a group of contractors (blackwater) get spooked and open up in a busy intersection killing 17 civillians who were going about their day. And, because Bremmer passed an edict before he left stating that contractors are "immune" from prosecution the Iraqis can only collect their dead while these yahoos get flown out of the country.

"Ooops! sorry bout that. We fired those guys from their jobs. Just an accident, LOL!!"

Invariably, the killing of civillians always is portrayed as an unfortunate accident. Just a blip on the radar, an abnormality now please move along nothing to see.

It goes much deeper than that. Whenever there is any insurgency, there is often a calculated misery that is visited upon the civillian population. This is punishment for harboring, supporting, or not ratting out where the insurgents are.

This punishment is visited in a myriad number of ways, ranging from stopping mobility with countless checkpoints, in which civillians must wait for hours on end as very possible future casualties in a possible battle between insurgents and jittery troops. Often times there are "accidental" civillian casualties at these checkpoints as the troops practice the mandated policy of force protection, which of course means shoot first and ask questions later if you feel even an inkling of being threatened, which these troops do feel threatened all the time so guess what happens?

Going further, you have water treatment plants, power plants and basic services cut off or denied. Going even further, you have the death squad option, a very popular one, in which paramilitary groups are armed, trained and then sent out to do dirty work that the regular army and police can't be caught doing. This is the folks disapearing in the night kind of business.

This goes back to the core of counterinsurgency- in order to win you must

1) Convince, persuade, or intimidate the population at large into no longer supporting the insurgency. Sometimes this is winning hearts and minds but most of the time it is instilling fear with death squads, checkpoints and constant punishment and humiliation until folks decide they've had enough. The constant punishment, however, often runs the risk of turning even MORE folks into insurgents and ends up helping the resistance even more. Whod'a thunk it?

2) Kill everyone. Or at least, kill enough people that the society is non functional and now you can bring in your own people and colonize. The soviets were quite good at this one!

Now I know the next thing you're going to bring up is going to be the examples of Germany and Japan- but those weren't counter-insurgencies and in the bigger picture they are the exceptions to the rule, not the norm!

Indeed. So under their benevolent leadership, opium production has skyrocketed to levels unheard of under the Taliban and Karzai's government control extends little beyond the capital. The northern alliance were nothing more than opportunistic warlords who were ousted by the Taliban. Keep in mind that only a few years before the invasion of Afghanistan the Taliban were courted by Washington as they wanted to build a pipeline through the country. Isn't it funny that when that fell through suddenly, THEN they became bad guys?

No, it really wasn't. It didn't shorten the war, it was completely unnecessary. The main reason for the bombing was to destroy it's rail facilities which were all repaired within 2 days. Besides, by that point Germany had practically lost the war anyway.