Iran sending warships close to US borders[W:623]

apdst said:

By then, it's too late. Don't you see that?

it would be much smarter to head them off several hundred miles away from our coastline and send a clear message that they won't be allowed to approach any closer.

Allowing them to patrol, 12.5 miles offshore is stupid.

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Sherman123 said:

We barely know who was responsible. There is massively conflicting evidence over the exact identity of the attackers, let alone their would be state sponsors. Moreover even if we did have resounding evidence of Iranian culpability we are a responsible hegemonic democracy, we don't retaliate by wantonly slaughtering people at sea and then say "By the way this was for the Khobar Towers 20 years ago".

We prepare our retaliation, we plot possible consequences, we organize our contingencies, and then we act and we always make clear why we acted.

We aren't god damn pirates.

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Gaius46 said:

Would you find that justification acceptable if Iran managed to sink one of our ships in the PG? Afterall our ships have nukes and are within spitting distance of Iranian territorial waters.

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APACHERAT said:

I was in Central America a few times, got deported twice.

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apdst said:

Iran is a terrorist state. They don't get special considerations. Why are you suggesting that they should?

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apdst said:

An American court established that Iran is responsible. Under our system, that makes it a fact.

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Gaius46 said:

They get the same consideration as any other sovereign state.

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Sherman123 said:

No they didn't. The United States district court issued murder indictmentsagainst four named individuals all of whom were Saudi or Gulf Arabs, and also issued indictments against several unnamed persons including a Lebanese citizen. There was no criminal trial. What happened was that the victims enlisted the support of DLA Piper to file a federal lawsuit against Iran for damages related to the incident and won them.

The United States is hardly bound by the findings of a civil suit. Moreover the Judge in said case authorized the payment of $254 million in damages, not murder at sea.

Meanwhile the evidence remains unclear. While it is likely that Iran was responsible for the attack, the theory of al-Qaeda's involvement has won increasing prominence and cannot be discounted. The Secretary of Defense at the time and many high ranking officials in the CIA and INR believe it is increasingly possible that al-Qaeda played a major role, which was underlined by the 9/11 Commission Report on the subject.

In any event you failed to address the main point. Which was that this is not how a responsible democratic hegemon behaves for any number of reasons.

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A federal judge ruled yesterday that Iran is responsible for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and ordered that the government pay $254 million to the families of 17 Americans who died in the attack in Saudi Arabia.

Iran Held Liable In Khobar Attack

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Chocolate said:

what makes Iran a terrorist state, and not a sovereign? I agree with you... I thought that there were terrorist organisations in iran.... but the country itself is a sovereign state could someone help me understand this?

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apdst said:

Yes, Iran was found responsible...

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Sherman123 said:

I addressed that word for word in my post. Either you didn't read it or you didn't understand it. You are also still dodging both the secondary and main points. I suspect because you know you've dug yourself into a really dumb position.

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apdst said:

They fund a terrorist army...that's what.

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Lerxst said:

I never got deported but I would have welcomed anything that would have got me out of there sooner. I was in El Salvador, and it sucked. Everybody...I mean everybody...was armed. It's real jungle down there. I woke up multiple times with tarantulas, scorpions, and snakes crawling around the tent. Mosquito netting and mesh laundry bags saved me daily. ****ing tarantulas can jump. High. The guy next to me fell asleep without netting around him in the middle of the day. Felt something crawling on his face and slapped it. Scorpion stung him through his eyelid. And gunfire every single night.

Twice was enough for me. Where were you at?

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Chocolate said:

Really? wow I am all mixed up for some reason I thought we were aiding the Iran government against terrorist groups in there country my bad

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apdst said:

You made an erroneous statement. I corrected you. I know you hate being wrong, but there it is.

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APACHERAT said:

Mosquitos, try bug juice.

Mosquitos, snakes, tarantulas, etc. are minor league, Camp Pendleton has them all.

Try 13 months in Vietnam with Burmese pythons that can eat a man, cobras that popped up a few feet from you while on patrol in the bush. Or the infamous "Two Step" bamboo pit viper, man eating tigers, leaches, giant mosquitos that discriminated and would turn over your dog tags while sleeping to see what your blood type was. Then you had Charley who was a pest. Then when you were in your hooch you had to deal with King Rat.

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apdst said:

You must be thinking of Iraq.

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APACHERAT said:

Mosquitos, try bug juice.

Mosquitos, snakes, tarantulas, etc. are minor league, Camp Pendleton has them all.

Try 13 months in Vietnam with Burmese pythons that can eat a man, cobras that popped up a few feet from you while on patrol in the bush. Or the infamous "Two Step" bamboo pit viper, man eating tigers, leaches, giant mosquitos that discriminated and would turn over your dog tags while sleeping to see what your blood type was. Then you had Charley who was a pest. Then when you were in your hooch you had to deal with King Rat.

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Sherman123 said:

Whats the deal with the rat photo?

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Sherman123 said:

Civil liability =/= Criminally Responsible AKA Why OJ went free and still paid a fine. The United States has never pursued a criminal case on the Khobar Towers against anyone. To restate:

1. We aren't pirates and the wanton slaughter of sailors at sea is not how we retaliate.
2. To do so would bring about enormous consequences that no preparation has been made for.
3. You haven't even acknowledged the possibility that there may be compelling reasons for the US to not want to attack Iran.

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apdst said:

An American court established that Iran is responsible. Under our system, that makes it a fact.

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In 2001, the U.S. Justice Department announced a 46-count indictment against 13 Saudis and one Lebanese man in the bombing. All were allegedly connected to Hezbollah, a terrorist group the United States believes is linked to Iran.

Perry said the FBI strongly believed at the time the bombing was ordered by Iran, but Saudi officials tried to discourage that theory.

"They feared what action we would take. They rightly feared it. In fact, I had a contingency plan for a strike on Iran, if it had been if it had been clearly established. But it was never clearly established, and so we never did that," Perry said.

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Despite that consistent denial by al-Sayegh, a Washington Post story on Apr. 14, 1997 quoted U.S. and Saudi officials as saying that al-Sayegh had met two years earlier with senior Iranian intelligence officer Brig. Gen. Ahmad Sherifi and that Iran was the "organizing force" behind the Khobar bombing. That story, leaked by officials supporting the Saudi version of the Khobar story, cited Canadian intercepts of al-Sayegh’s phone conversations in Ottawa before his arrest as allegedly incriminating evidence.

The story lent further credence to the general belief in Washington that Iran had masterminded the bombing, mainly because U.S. intelligence had observed the surveillance of U.S. military and civilian sites in Saudi Arabia by Iranians and their Saudi allies in 1994 and 1995.

What al-Sayegh actually told FBI agents in a series of interviews in Ottawa and Washington, however, contradicted the leaked story, according to sources familiar with those interviews.

Al-Sayegh admitted having carried out the surveillance of one military site other than Khobar for the Iranians, but insisted that it was not to prepare for a possible terrorist bombing but to identify potential targets for Iranian retaliation in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran.

His testimony was consistent with what Ambassador Ron Neumann, who was director of the Office for Iran and Iraq in the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs from 1991 through 1994, had been saying about the Iranian reconnaissance of U.S. targets.

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Chocolate said:

I thought Iraq and Iran were allies, and it was the same sort of story. well this really Opened my eyes thank you

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APACHERAT said:

Mosquitos, try bug juice.

Mosquitos, snakes, tarantulas, etc. are minor league, Camp Pendleton has them all.

Try 13 months in Vietnam with Burmese pythons that can eat a man, cobras that popped up a few feet from you while on patrol in the bush. Or the infamous "Two Step" bamboo pit viper, man eating tigers, leaches, giant mosquitos that discriminated and would turn over your dog tags while sleeping to see what your blood type was. Then you had Charley who was a pest. Then when you were in your hooch you had to deal with King Rat.

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Paleocon said:

Iraq and Iran are allies now. Since Iraq has become democratic, since the majority of its population is Shiite, it has become an effective client state of Iran. So America and Iran are on the same side of the civil war going on in Iraq right now, but the America and Iran aren't directly cooperating in the area to my knowledge.

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APACHERAT said:

Mosquitos, try bug juice.

Mosquitos, snakes, tarantulas, etc. are minor league, Camp Pendleton has them all.

Try 13 months in Vietnam with Burmese pythons that can eat a man, cobras that popped up a few feet from you while on patrol in the bush. Or the infamous "Two Step" bamboo pit viper, man eating tigers, leaches, giant mosquitos that discriminated and would turn over your dog tags while sleeping to see what your blood type was. Then you had Charley who was a pest. Then when you were in your hooch you had to deal with King Rat.

View attachment 67161757

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