This post on the DailyKos blog is a collection of inferences from a variety of Washington sources about the game plan being readied for the next couple of weeks to prepare the public for and to get it to accept the war with Iran which is about to start. Might be crap, but given what you read elsewhere and given Bush & Co, it does seem plausible.
Like a big screen blockbuster, the tagline isn’t hard to guess: This time it will be different — we both have nukes! Or will!
They [the source's institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this–they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”
Tactical:
1. Do not use “we” or “us.” The USA, us/we, are not going to attack Iran, Bush is. This approach aggravates the right’s increasing isolation AND protects you from “blame America first” distractions. They’re all alone and everyone hates them. Make them feel it.
[...]
4. The pro-war fringe. America has left them behind. They’re doing this partially out of spite, somewhere between scorched earth and sour grapes. [...] Bombing Iraq helped them feel better about 9/11. Bombing Iran is supposed to help them feel better about Bush’s failure in Iraq.
#60 You are right. We should not have learned anything from WWII. When ever we see a psycho about to go nuts and killing not only his own people, but people in other country, look the other way. We don’t have enough criteria to know when a nut like this will come up, do we?
The only thing I can say about that nut is that he looks forward to get into a fight with someone. That’s one of the strategies those loons have to create a sense of national pride so people in his country forget the axes they have to grind against him. And he needs that. Or do you think GW is the only guy in the world that needs to look for foreign fights to fix his popularity issues?
#57 Mister Mustard, I know this is way too long, but maybe it’ll be worth reading anyway.
My point was that idiomatic phrases like “wiped off the map” are a clear mark of poor translation. If Ahmadinejad’s original Farsi words had actually meant annihilated, then it should have been translated thusly, but he didn’t say anything like that. He was making an historical reference in his speech, and actually quoting the now-deceased Ayatollah Khomeini. The English translator’s use of an idiom which is widely equated in the West with annihilation is inexcusable, even just from a procedural point of view, although it seems to have served its purpose.
The original Farsi text:
“Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.”
Another scholar translates this to mean:
“The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”
It looks more like he’s calling for regime change in that region, and this is more in keeping with other remarks he has made. Interestingly, he has not threatened that Iran will bring about this regime change, yet the parties (both within and outside the U.S.) who want to see America attack Iran “pre-emptively” are using this incorrect perception of Iran’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map.” They need to build their case that Iran is the greatest threat to world peace. It seems more like a case of fearmongering by the same people who wanted to attack Iran long before this speech was ever made.
Make no mistake, Ahmadinejad is no teddy bear by any means, but neither has he threatened to annihilate Israel. He continues to believe that if the Holocaust occurred in Germany, then the state of Israel should have been carved out in German territory as part of war reparations, rather than resulting in the displacement of so many Palestinians from their homeland, far away from where the Holocaust supposedly took place. That was one of the points he made in his letter to Bush, which was widely dismissed as the unintelligible ramblings of a crazy madman.
The handwriting is certainly on the wall — we want to attack Iran. It just comes down to the question of how thinly stretched our resources are. Also, we have a limited window of opportunity. If their next election brings a more moderate-sounding President, we may not have the excuse we need to attack them. Wouldn’t that be a shame?
#61 Pedro you are trying to vindicate the concept of “thought crime”.
If what you say is valid we can turn it around and apply it to ourselves.
It would seem then that all the nations of the earth should unite against the USA.
#62 I bet Germany has bad translators there. I knew the next thing was to prove he never said the holocaust never existed. Bravo! you’ve proved Merkel to be an ass.
I bet Al Jazeera has bad translators too, huh? http://tinyurl.com/2ekq6a
Please, read it in full and then afterwards keep backpedaling and saying they didn’t wanted to say what we think they said.
And as if he said it just once. Ahmedinanut has been saying this for years already. Bad translation. I bet is was very hard for Al Jazeera to translate from Farsi.
BTW, kudos to the UN for such a commendable work on that region. UN, the gift that keeps on giving.
#63 That has been the extermist motto for quite some time. That’s the song castro has sung for over 50 years. It the same song kuzco sign all the time. They caught an 800.000 cash bribe from kuzcoland to argentina? that’s a CIA plot to overthrow kuzco. A bridge collapses? that’s th US’ fault. You get sick from that, you know. Change the tune once in a while.
I guess that Goebbels theorem works perfectly. Reapeat a lie over and over, and it will be true.
#65 which extremists contend that motto Pedro?
Your condemnation of Castro and so called Communism(Castro is a dictator BTW not a Communist) has no bearing on this debate.
Argentia and any alleged bribes have no bearing on this debate.
Your repetition of lies and disinformation doesn’t make anything true.
Must I spank you again and again?
>>Ahmadinejad is no teddy bear by any means, but
>>neither has he threatened to annihilate Israel.
OK, he’ll keep Israel, he just wants to kill all the Jews (make them “vanish from the page of time”).
Seems like “wipe them off the map” is certainly close enough for government work. Even if he bombed Israel into oblivion, it would still be “on the map”. I would just be a nuclear wasteland, with all the inhabitants having “vanished from the page of time”.
I’ll bet this guy would get along great with Mel Gibson.
#67… “OK, he’ll keep Israel, he just wants to kill all the Jews (make them ‘vanish from the page of time’)”
Huh??? Your use of “them” is incorrect. When the U.S. called for regime change in Iraq, were we threatening to annihilate the Iraqis? I understood that there was a difference between killing all the citizens and changing the regime, but time and time again, we see Ahmadinejad’s denouncement of the Zionist regime in Israel being equated with a call to kill all the Jews. I don’t deny that what he actually said is still a very serious matter. Calling for regime change is extremely serious, and our own President only does it once in awhile. However, I fail to see a legitimate equation of regime change with genocide, which is what we’re being asked to believe he called for.
>>Huh???
If you don’t understand the difference between making a whole civilization “vanish from the page of time” and “regime change”, I guess I have nothing more to say. You’re hopeless.
MM….. Let me remind you again that you’re mismatching words and phrases — perhaps I wasn’t clear enough the first time. The word “regime” is supposed to be matched with “vanish from the page of time,” as those two were specifically paired in Ahmadinejad’s speech. You (inadvertently, I’m sure) substituted “whole civilization” as your apparent equivalent for “regime.” So to answer your question — yes, I do understand the difference between regime change and making a whole civilization vanish from the page of time. A better question would be, do you? You seem a bit confused.
And thus, the pattern continues.
#66 the only missinformed an purposefully distorting reality is you. I gave you facts yet you have none to disprove them. And castro was, is and will be a commie, whether you agree with that or not.
The bribe case has everything to do with all latin american lazy fucks running their countries that find it easier to blame the US for anything bad going in their countries rather than have some responsability and do actual work. And read a little and see how many times kuzco has said that anything “bad” happenning to his regime has the US to blame, from his supposed coup, going thru that failed bribe, to unfulfilled promises to his sheeples.
And sadly, latin america is currently going thru a populist commie outbreak. Look at Bolivia and how there’s a big mess that, surprise surprise, the moron running that country blames the US for.
They’re not even creative looking for scapegoats for their corrupt behaviour. It’s the US, it’s the US. Change it already
#59 No Gas…the levee is incidental.
Cheers
What is interesting is the Muslims I know see Jews as brothers…WTF?
Cheers
Your correct. He said regime change not genocide. If any one does not believe it than you will need to watch the video. You will hear it with all the references needed to make your mind up. And by the way stay off the drugs (fox news) it only warps your mind into believing what the neocons say. That’s called mind control. Question everything you hear on any station for that matter cause rupert owns several stations. And lots of radio too!
It’s about time we did something about stupid Iran we should f*ckin nuke the b*sterds they deserve it