Iran playing games

[germanos]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Is Iran going to return the money they made while the price of oil spiked due to the crisis they manufactured?

[Sirotnikov]

Yeah, absolutely true, that's a big part of it. It's also likely they felt like taking a potshot at a Western nation in response to having a few of their own officials apprehended while commiting illegal activity in Iraq the other day.

Now, please keep your hand on your knee lest it jerk all the place, but why does someone pointing that out make you seem to think the Iranian actions are being condoned or justified? Because they're not.

Posting stuff in the spirit of "it is all the US fault!! down with the bloody war!!!" (i exaggurated ) makes me feel like the blame is shifted from Iran to other, often undeserving players.

I find it that often, lefty observers tend to ignore the most direct culprit (because he's obviously a maniacal tyrant, and no one expects different anyway), and go lay blame to other players, which may have played part in the leading up to, but are definitely NOT to blame.

(with some exaggeration) you could say that the police is to blame for violent crime waves, because it cracks down on unarmed criminals. "hey, criminals will be criminals, but you don't have to drive them to use weapons!!"

That is, in my opinion, an unethical argument.

[DinoDoc]

Out of curiosity, what happened to the custom of only giving the name rank and serial number when captured?

[Barnabas]

Ahmadinejad is a very short guy, I saw him on tv in the middle of a crowd the other day, he looked say 1,65 (maybe less)

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Out of curiosity, what happened to the custom of only giving the name rank and serial number when captured?

The Brits have abandoned such macho posturing because let's face it, everyone knows anything your captors make you say is bollocks.

I presume the sailors would've been court-martialed in the US?

[Kuciwalker]

Why?

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Why?

Because of the abuse flowing from rightwingers in the US towards the British sailors, for not being "tough" enough towards their captors.

[DinoDoc]

You're wierd.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
You're wierd.

Why do you attack the messenger? Like it's my fault that kookballs wanted a war.

[DinoDoc]

I fault the mothership of the sailors more than the sailors themselves for this. I still wanna know why they weren't in a position to defend their people.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Jaakko
Why do you attack the messenger? Like it's my fault that kookballs wanted a war.

What war? It's not as if the Iranians were going to kill them and I didn't see the UK getting much real support from the EU in this matter. So who was going to start the war?

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
What war? It's not as if the Iranians were going to kill them and I didn't see the UK getting much real support from the EU in this matter. So who was going to start the war?

Duh. Neocons and other assorted tighty righties were hoping that the UK would've started a war over the capture. Tony B should've either ordered aerial bombing of Iran, or the HMS Cornwall should've blown up everything within 20nm of the incident when it happened. Instead we had a peaceful resolution, so they're taking it out on the Brits and accuse them of all kinds of cowardice.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Out of curiosity, what happened to the custom of only giving the name rank and serial number when captured?

It's not so much of a custom, as the limits of the allowable interrogation of Prisoners of War under the Geneva Convention.

Why do we insist on al Qaeda and other insurgent prisoners giving us more info than that? Because we take the position that they are not covered under that convention.

Why did the Iranians expect and insist on more? Ditto.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I fault the mothership of the sailors more than the sailors themselves for this. I still wanna know why they weren't in a position to defend their people.

Even if they had been closer, they wouldn't have been in a position to defend their people from a bunch of small, fast boats. They could have plinked some Iranians, but not saved their people in the boarding party, and gotten into a shooting incident for what good, precisely? The RoE don't allow for opposed boardings, so nobody is equipped for or planning for that kind of use of force.

[DinoDoc]

The time military action would have been most useful in this crisis would have been if the sailors mothership had been in a position to defend them. One would have thought after the first time this happened, that would have been SOP on missions like this. I'm still curious why you think people were pulling for war when a)the EU wasn't even helping the UK sanctions wise, b) they couldn't even get a strongly worded "Bad Iran!" statement from the UN, and c) they were being held in Tehran (not on the coast) limiting the ability of any military act to effect their release.