Britain Makes Smart Move

Britain is ever so politely waiting for a response from Iraq regarding the Brits desire to hold direct bi-lateral talks. The mullahs must be too busy laughing to get back to them straight away. But such talks actually benefit Britain. With bi-lateral talks, they won't have to worry about the rest of the world looking in and laughing at them, as well. Though it may be a bit late for that.

Let's see - what shall we call such a summit ... how do you say, pull my finger in Persian?

In related news, MGM is burning all of those old black and white film clips featuring the British Navy from World War Two. They figure that no one will believe Britain was once a world power given the pathetic pleading they are stuck with as their only solution for Iran.

The smart money figures Iran may only jerk them around for another week or two. The mullahs are notorious for their short attention spans. How long can they possibly remain entertained by smacking around what's left of the British Empire?

Along with no longer teaching about the holocaust in their history classes, I figure if the Brits agree to deport some Jews and throw in another grand mosque or two for London, they might actually manage to get their sailors and marines (cough, cough) back.

Mark my words, Iran isn't done with Britain yet. They will manage to come up with a trick or two to humiliate the Brits just a bit more before giving their people back. That there has been no great uproar from the British people tells you all you need to know of the UK. What was once the greatest power on earth has been reduced to going hat in hand to a joke of a country from the third world.

Maybe the Queen will lend a hand to move things along and wear the hijab at her next state affair, assuming Britain still qualifies as a sovereign state by then. We shouldn't count on any more support from the Brits in any international military confrontation. And not surprisingly, the libs will probably blame the fall of the British Empire on Bush. feh

I always suspected Blair had a touch of teh Gay. Tell me you haven't thought that, too? LOL

LONDON (AP) - Britain called for direct talks with Iran to resolve a dispute over 15 captive Britons Tuesday after its first contact with the chief Iranian negotiator. The announcement followed the sudden release of an Iranian diplomat in Iraq that raised new hope for resolving the standoff.

In a statement late Tuesday, Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said there had been "further contacts" between the two countries, including with chief international negotiator Ali Larijani.

"The UK has proposed direct bilateral discussions and awaits an Iranian response on when these can begin," Blair's office said. "Both sides share a desire for an early resolution to this issue through direct talks."

British officials say there has been intense diplomatic activity, including meetings in London with Iran's ambassador. But reports of contacts with officials in Tehran have been sketchy. The Downing Street statement did not say whether the contact with Larijani came in person or by phone.

Comments

[scarshapedstar]

So, Dan, do you think the Iranians would have the time for this bullshit if Saddam were still next door?

[Terry Gain]

Oh yes the old mad dog would have kept them -and his own people in their place (while harbouring every terrorist who needed a safe haven).

Well Saddam is not next door and when the people of Iran see what happens when you remove the shackles of tyranny and open up a country they will demand more of the same.

Time to get off your negative carousel. Seek to be enlightened. Even ABC news is saying the Surge is working. Watch it and weep BiS.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3001578

[Darth Malice]

The old British Bulldog lost it's teeth.

[Buzzy]

Saddam didn't stop Iran from taking US hostages in 1979 and holding them for 444 days did he? Scar, if you actually thought before you posted it would be scary. You aren't Rosie are you?

[Darth Malice]

Buzzy,you nail scar more often than Big Bill nails chicks.:)

[southdakotaboy]

Just when you start to think you've seen the absolute limit to what those nutty leftists will do you find out that KEITH RICHARDS snorted cocain mixed with his Father's ashes. I will offically no longer be suprised by what anyone on the left says or does anymore more. I mean Terry Jones wrote that truely horrific piece about the British sailors. What is up with the British these days?

[templar knight]

Hmm....where's Ziffy, BrainlessBob, LOL, Victor, not the Senator, the Spartan, and several other liberal commenters? It just makes me wonder? Why is it that when one is gone, they all are gone? Does sock puppet ring a bell?

[YourSOdumb]

Iran To Free UK Captives
Updated: 14:27, Wednesday April 04, 2007

Iran is to free the 15 UK sailors and marines taken captive a fortnight ago as a "gift" to Britain.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1259008,00.html

[templar knight]

I thought the song was, "You're so Vain", by Carly Simon, YourSOdumb. And when you want to accuse others of being dumb, it would be helpful to your cause if you would at least get it right, unless, of course, you are referring to yourself. The proper usage would be you're, not your.

[Dan Riehl]

Nah, no further humiliation there:

Iran is to free the 15 UK sailors and marines taken captive in the Shatt al Arab waterway as a "gift" to Britain.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the group would be released promptly and handed over to the British embassy in Tehran.

He said he had pardoned the sailors as a gift to the British people and to mark the birthday of Islam's Prophet Mohammed and Easter.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "We welcome what the President has said about the release of our 15 personnel.

"We are now establishing exactly what this means in terms of the method and timing of their release."

President Ahmadinejad announced the Britons' release after awarding medals to the "brave" border guards who had arrested them.

[nowinger]

Its so humiliating to get your own people back alive and well without having to fire a shot or put anyone else in harms way.

[templar knight]

Here we go, Dan, right along the lines you suggested. The Argentines have now come out again and reclaimed the Falkland Islands. And "President for Life" Mugabe of Zimbabwe has now threatened to kill a female British diplomat.

Funny how these chickens come home to roost, when you are a chicken. Wow, great call, Dan.

[templar knight]

nowinger, yes, that's true, but now there are consequences to the appearance, or perhaps, weakness itself. Now we see the Argentines reasserting their claim to the Falklands, and thugs like Mugabe threatening to kill British diplomats. I wonder how many people were killed in the last Falkland War, and now I wonder how many might be killed in Zimbabwe, for example, now that Mugabe feels he has a free hand. Consequences. Yes, these fifteen were saved by kissing the ass of the Iranians, but how many will die from the resulting humiliation of the British. More than fifteen, I'll bet.

[southdakotaboy]

First I will believe it when I see them walking off an allied plane at an allied controled airport. Second the new rules of ROE for the British Navy when dealing woth Iranians should be shoot firts ask questions later.
And I still think we should bomb the hell out of their only gas refinery.

[David M]

Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 04/04/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.

[nowinger]

I wonder why we haven't invaded Zimbabwe to liberate the people from the dictator Mugabe, who has been oppressing, torturing and raping his own people for how long now?

[Darth Malice]

Nowinger,we can't invade a socialist paradise like Zimbabwe!Are they not carrying out the re-distrbution of wealth you liberal demand?

[templar knight]

Quite a long time now, nowinger, quite a long time. But you know it would be impossible for the US to attack an African state controlled by a black man. The racism thing, you know, which has cost many a million life in Africa. Sad, really.

[nowinger]

Bullshit and you know it. We don't give a shit about the people of Zimbabwe just like we didn't give a shit about the Rwandan genocide or the Bosnian genocides and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into those conflicts to try and keep the peace. We don't give a shit about the Egyptian people, Saudi people, Syrian people, the Iranian people or the Iraqi people. We didn't invade Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people and even you wingers know that because you say every day what a worthless bunch of terrorists and moon worshippers the arabs and the persians are. Get over yourselves and admit the truth. The welfare of the people of Iraq was and is last on the list of reasons why we invaded their country.

[Darth Malice]

I don't care about the Arabs or Muslims in general.They and their moon god should be crushed.....not rebuilt.

[bloodrage bob]

whoo! that "why don't we invade zimbabwe" thing was the best laugh i've had in ages!

impinge upon a sovereign nation run by africans? suggest *in any way* that (black or muslim) africans aren't capable of running a country?

the democrats would come UNGLUED. besides, dems are incredibly racist: it's why they sit on their hands and say nuffin about the ongoing muslim genocide of what democrats secretly refer to as "mere africans" in darfur.

we don't read much about darfur these days, do we? the ethnic cleansing there continues apace; and has in fact spread into chad. current rough estimated death toll: oh, about 600,000. response from the dems: nada. zip. zero. mustn't criticize africans: might imply a (shudder) *value judgement*. and teacher said value judgements are WRONG. better to let hundreds of thousands die than to commit a PC faux-pas. (foe-paw?)(ONE of them damn french words.)(i swear, it's like they've got a differnt word for EVERYTHING!)

[templar knight]

Well, speak for yourself, nowinger. Whether YOU think so or not, I give a shit about the people of Zimbabwe, and Darfur, and Somalia, and many other places around the World where people are being subjected to barbarism. But no, I don't give a shit about Islamists and terrorists, no matter their countries, and wish them all either dead, imprisoned or rehabilitated to useful human beings.

[Darth Malice]

Bravo Templar!!!!!

[nowinger]

The Dems have been in control of Congress for 3 months, therefore, if 600,000 civilians have been killed in Darfur then the responsibility lies with George Bush and the Republicans, who have been in power for the last six years. I don't think Saddam Hussein killed anything close to 600,000 of his own people in the six years prior to the invasion of his country. All you have to do is admit that the welfare of the Iraqi people wasn't a factor in deciding to invade Iraq. Everyone already knows this. You yourselves have already shown your utter contempt for the Iraqi people. Tell the truth. We invaded Iraq in an attempt to change the balance of power in the Middle East, give ourselves a bigger military staging ground to enable us to better keep the Arab states in line, send a strong message to Iran and Syrian to mind their own business and in furtherance of the president's psychological daddy complex.

[southdakotaboy]

When we went to Somallia and tried to help out they truned on us there. We are involved in the Balkans, we listened to the Europeans who said they could handle it. The whole Rwanda thing was an complete screw up from the get go, but you know how it goes we don't want to get called all the nasty names. But I will tell you one thing nowinger if this Bushn would have been in charge when some of those things happened he would have been all over them.

[templar knight]

nowinger, I will admit to no such thing. Frankly, speaking just for myself, I was completely against an invasion of Iraq. I was much more concerned about what was going on in Pakistan, and would have much preferred an invasion of the al-Queda sancturaries located in W. Pakistan. There, and Saudi Arabia was where I considered the al-Queda hive to be located. Of course, Saudi and Pakistan were nominal allies, and any action in those places was out of the question.

You know, I've thought about the invasion of Iraq for years, and have never really come up with a really good reason for the invasion, other than the emnity between Saddam and Bush. It wasn't for the oil, as oil was flowing out of Iraq. So, I'll put it down to the former.

In any event, after the invasion, and the subsequent entrance of al-Queda into the conflict, I supported a win there, for two reasons.

1. The consequences of losing will be huge.
2. The only hope of stabilizing the ME would be a strong, independent Iraq, one in which the West would have some influence.

If you're asking me, no, I would never have put my eggs in this basket. Never.

[Terry Gain]

"All you have to do is admit that the welfare of the Iraqi people wasn't a factor in deciding to invade Iraq." nowinger

There were many factors but there's no point listing them for you (again ad nauseum) because as a liberal you can't retain more thn one thought at a time.

[Terry Gain]

If we hadn't invaded Saddam would now be well on his way to having nuclear weapons. Read Saddam's Bomb by McGrory and Bhattia. Please.

[Nishna]

Bloodrage - still making sh*t up. It's the Republicans, since they've been running the damn government until two months ago, that did as little as possible on Darfur. You want to throw around racism charges, start there.

*******************

Even though the 109th Congress delivered a bipartisan Darfur sanctions bill to the president’s desk, some Democrats are looking to use their new majority on Capitol Hill to push through a pair of Darfur-related measures that stalled last year.

Two House Democrats, Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (N.Y.) and Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.), have introduced legislation that looks to use Congress’s budgetary powers to address the humanitarian crisis in the Sudanese region.

[Zifnab]

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?

Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need

I need a hero
I'm holding out for at hero 'till the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero 'till the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life
Larger than life

Doo doo doo doooo
Doo doo doo doooo
Doo doo doo doooo
Aaahhh
Aaahhh

Somewhere after midnight
In my wildest fantasy
Somewhere just beyond my reach
There’s someone reaching back for me

Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat
It’s gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'till the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero 'till the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life

I need a hero
I'm holding out for at hero 'till the the end of the night

Up where the mountains meet the heavens above
Out where the lightning strikes the sea
I could swear there is someone somewhere
Watching me

Through the wind and the chill and the rain
And the storm and the flood
I can feel his approach
Like a fire in my blood

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'till the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'till the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'till the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'till the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And he's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'till the end of the night

[nowinger]

The Pakistanis are not our allies, all they do is throw us a few Al Quaeda operatives every couple of years, when we put the screws to them again. The House of Saud is probably the most corrupt Arab regime out there, at least the UAE sheiks are trying to set up some other types of industries beyond oil. Your post makes sense, but I don't think a 'win' is possible anymore. I don't think we are going to avoid a wholesale slaughter of Sunnis in Iraq, two million Iraqis have already fled the country, most likely those who went to Jordan were the most prosperous professionals who could get OUT. That leaves Iraq will nothing but the crazies and the goatherders. I can't see why a Shia Iraq would be more friendly to the US than to Iran, I'm not even sure a Shia Iraqi leader who IS friendly to the US could survive assassination. Hard as it is to believe, the Sunni Shia issue looks like something nobody paid attention to. A strong, independent Iraq is at least a decade away and that would be the most positive assessment. It would also be helpful if the wingers would stop talking about WINNING and start talking about STABILITY. The time where we could have had a true victory is passed. Once the Sunnis and Shia started killing each other, that goal was out of reach in the nearterm. No one disputes that Iraq can't be allowed to go into a total freefall, however the rhetoric of winning and victory is distasteful. We lost our chance for an easy transition in the first year of the occupation, all we can do now is prevent disaster, that is not winning, but surviving.

[Darth Malice]

Z,we need a hero.We need a brute in charge to destroy our enemies here and abroad.We need a combo of Lord Sideous,Ming the Merciless,George Patton and King Leonidas.He will come someday and you liberals and muslims will be sorry.

[tk]

This guy nowinger is a fruit cake but he lets us see inside the non-thinking of the nutty left. He hates everything American. That tells me he really hates himself. He is one of life's failures an needs to blame someone so why not those who love their country and enjoy the bounty the country provides. I hope he keeps writing his nonsense so we see the left as they really exist.

[templar knight]

Uh, Ziffy, AlGore is your chosen hero, and he fits none of your categories. Choose wiser next time is my advice to you.

[Terry Gain]

"We lost our chance for an easy transition in the first year of the occupation, all we can do now is prevent disaster, that is not winning, but surviving." nowinger

Pure fantasy. There will be no peace in Iraq until enough of the killers are killed that the rest realize their fate and give up.

If we had sent in 500,000 troops (which we didn't have) the Iraqis would never have accepted the need to build up their own forces.

I love these statements of what we should have done by people who don't know enough to support what we should obviously be doing now (support General Petraeus and the Surge).

[nowinger]

Coming from someone who thinks Saddam Hussein would have had a nucleur bomb by now your views on how to succeed in Iraq are not relevant.

[southdakotaboy]

Here is a thought: could we round up a the libs and have them committed for being insane. I know the expense of building the nut houses would be steep, but at least they wouldn't be out roaming around loose.

[Darth Malice]

Dakota,force the dirty hippies to bathe.

[templar knight]

Terry, I give nowinger this one thing. He is absolutely right about our planners giving little or no thought to the ongoing Shite/Sunni conflict, one that has caused rifts and wars between the two factions since almost the beginning of Islam. As a matter of fact, one of the weaknesses of the West is an almost complete ignorance about Islam, and its past.

To think that Iraq could be united under a Shite banner was naive at best, it should have been quite obvious that most Sunnis would not let themselves be ruled by Shites, whom they consider to be inferior. Our plan should now revolve around spliting Iraq into 3 distinct areas; Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish. I believe the Ottoman Turks used this arrangement to pacify the area, and that the British changed this system. But it's been quite a while since I studied this, so perhaps I'm wrong. If anyone knows, please correct me.

[TheFuture]

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture

Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that's an order!

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture

Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant

Leonard Cohen...THE FUTURE

[templar knight]

Leonard, I'll bet you there are some people in NYC and SF who will pay you well to write drivel like that. But most here will laugh at you, and wonder what you've been shooting up your arm.

My advice. Try Kos, My DD, or some of the other Left Wing blogs. I think they will understand exactly what you are trying to say. And like it, too.

[Terry Gain]

so perhaps I'm wrong. If anyone knows, please correct me

TK

The claim that the Shiites and Sunnis are constantly at war and can't co-exist is a myth. There is much inter-marriage within Iraq. Poll after poll indicates that Iraqis don't want their country split in 3. Attempts to impose Biden's solution will plunge Iraq into a real and unending civil war. What America wasn't prepared for was that an insurgency would not likely be put down in less than 4 years. But there is no doubt that, despite the best efforts of al Qaeda to keep it going, it is being put down. And all of you should read Saddam's Bomb if you think removing Saddam wasn't necessary.

[nowinger]

From what I understand, one of the places we went wrong was apportioning each group with certain numbers of seats, ministry posts, etc. when we designed their government. Instead of protecting the minorities, and ensuring everyone had some share in power, it deepended the ethnic divide and motivated people to make all decisions based on Shia, Kurd or Sunni affliation, or so I have read. In typical fashion the Bush people had the worst possible combination of naivite and incompetance. The old guard hawks would have set up a dictator, Chalabi, given him total control, told him behind closed doors to keep the killing to a minimum, declared victory and gone home, left some troops there to prevent a coup and hoped things would settle down in a few years. The cons were naive enough to think the Iraqis really wanted Chalabi and when they saw that wasn't true, naively tried to create a democracy from scratch. Even there, they might have succeeded except for their ignorance, arrogance and incompetance, making obviously wrong choices, failing to admit their mistakes, and compouding their errors until we reached civil war.

[templar knight]

Actually, nowinger, it's not an ethnic divide so much as a religious divide. And Terry, I realize that the two factions are not in a constant war, especially when one faction is dominated by the other, like the Shia were by the Sunni for years in Iraq. I just think it was naive of us to assume the Shia would not wish to take revenge on the Sunni for years of terror they were subjected to under Saddam. What we see happening now was bound to happen if we left both sides with access to the other.

Honestly, Terry, I really don't believe our planners considered the religious aspects and divides present in Iraq when we invaded, nor have we come to grips with it yet. But, you see, most of our planners were ignorant of Islam and its past, and with the deep-seated religious animosity that exists between the Shia and Sunni. If we are to win, we need to get a handle on this.

[nowinger]

One might have thought that the Yugoslavia debacle would have been a heads up, no? People who lived side by side, village by village for decades, no killing. Tito dies, Yugoslavia disappears all the old gripes and hatreds, going back to WWI were brought back to the surface leading to genocide. The 'planners' look to have ommitted the fact that most of the Ba ath party were Sunni, and figured that the divide would be pro Saddam or anti Saddam and never bothered to consider the potential second layer. It is axiomatic that violence begets violence, revenge killing begets revenge killing. One more reason why our occupation has been inexcusably incompetant. As soon as the first HINT of Sunni/Shia revenege killings and kidnappings was seen, we should have brought in as many more troops as needed to ensure the violence would not erupt on a large scale.

[Max]

I heard a rummor that the commander of the "Coast Guards" involved in capturing the British personnel, the one that was awarded with Ahmadinejad's "medal of honor" is actually a well known person in within the "Quds Force" of the Revolutionary Guards (recent post on this elite unit in http://blog.technonllc.com ). Has anyone heard anything about this?

[caseyschenkofsky]

"...a joke of a country from the third world."
Given that Iran managed to overthrow a CIA installed regime and force Reagan to pay for hostages and sell arms to them as well, I'm not so sure if "joke" really fits the bill. After all, the Brits are part of a proxy war between the U.S. and "terrorists" (just as Iraq and Afghanistan are too), so if anything, they either get played by their friends or their friend's "enemies." No need to challenge me, just go look at a map and do a little reading.

And I'm afraid that the U.K. has been reduced of late by the current U.S. Admin. more than anyone else. Try asking someone outside of the U.S. and see what they say.

It will be interesting to see how the ongoing Israel/Iran nuclear situation develops.

[scarshapedstar]

"Z,we need a hero.We need a brute in charge to destroy our enemies here and abroad.We need a combo of Lord Sideous,Ming the Merciless,George Patton and King Leonidas.He will come someday and you liberals and muslims will be sorry."

If that's the case, why the hell did you vote for a combination of Emperor Norton, and Don Quixote?

[scarshapedstar]

"Now we see the Argentines reasserting their claim to the Falklands"

Whatever that means. They never relinquished their claim in the first place, hence the "reassertion". Only a rube would suggest that a Falkland Islands War II is in the works.

[southdakotaboy]

Lets put Ted Nuggent in charge, he has been known on occasion to eat raw meat. And he seems to be just slightly crazy looking...ALRIGHT completely crazy looking.
Just take a second to sit back, clear your mind and just imagine the first press conference.