Obama, Ahmadinejad, and the toy lost on the playground

[Al B. Sure!]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-12-13/Iran-Obama-drone/51855044/1

President Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.

In an interview broadcast live Monday night on Venezuelan state television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing to suggest his country would grant the U.S. request.
"The Americans have perhaps decided to give us this spy plane," Ahmadinejad said. "We now have control of this plane."

Speaking through an interpreter, Ahmadinejad said: "There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane, who can surely analyze this plane's system also. … In any case, now we have this spy plane."

Anyone else find this all laughable and child-like?

[Zevico]

I think it's horrendously naive and consequently dangerous for Obama to have asked for it back and even worse that he's displayed his foolishness in public before the press. There was never any chance for the Iranians to give it back. Asking implies that Obama entertained the possibility that they might respond to his soothing calls, like he's some kind of horse whisperer for third world dictatorships. Apparently he hasn't quite yet learned that the Iranians don't like to play nice.

[Hauldren Collider]

Obama's Iran policy has always been incoherent. I want to know why the thing isn't designed to self destruct.

We should hire Mossad to take it out or something ... they are actually capable of ****ing with Iran it seems, unlike our limpdicked president.

[BeBMan]

Self destruction probably got damaged. Or it stopped automatically, like in Galaxy Quest

[kentonio]

Asking for it back is just protocol, it seems stupid and idiotic considering you were violating their airspace at the time, but then again most diplomatic acts sound stupid and idiotic in isolation.

[Elok]

We did not violate their airspace. Their airspace invited us. It said, "ooh, big boy, I like that coat of paint," and we just couldn't resist. We were all up in that airspace All. Night. Long. Ooooh yeaaaahhhh.

[Hauldren Collider]

You make it sound like violating their airspace is a bad idea

On the other hand, letting them get nukes is a bad idea too.

[PLATO]

What I don't understand is why the options to destroy the wreckage were so quickly dismissed. It seems to me that protecting our most valuable technology would be a national interest issue and would justify a strike. Am I thinking out of line here?

[BeBMan]

We did not violate their airspace. Their airspace invited us. It said, "ooh, big boy, I like that coat of paint," and we just couldn't resist. We were all up in that airspace All. Night. Long. Ooooh yeaaaahhhh.

I think it was a scientific weather research operation that went off-course.

[Hauldren Collider]

What I don't understand is why the options to destroy the wreckage were so quickly dismissed. It seems to me that protecting our most valuable technology would be a national interest issue and would justify a strike. Am I thinking out of line here?

QFT

Obama was probably too scared to call a strike. "Bold" enough to launch a raid into Pakistan, not bold enough to drop a bomb in the middle of Nowhere, Iran?

[giblets]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...one/51855044/1



Anyone else find this all laughable and child-like?

Possibly it's the way it's translated. I don't see how saying "we now own the spy plane" is necessarily childlike.

[giblets]

Obama's Iran policy has always been incoherent. I want to know why the thing isn't designed to self destruct.

We should hire Mossad to take it out or something ... they are actually capable of ****ing with Iran it seems, unlike our limpdicked president.

If they're so great and wonderful and can take out big bad Iran by themselves why do we need to keep pretending they're our "ally"?

[giblets]

You make it sound like violating their airspace is a bad idea

On the other hand, letting them get nukes is a bad idea too.

So, uh, you're saying you would have made the exact same decision as Obama and you would have sent spy planes into Iran? But you still think his policy is "incoherent" because someone else didn't design the planes to self-destruct?

[Elok]

I think it was a scientific weather research operation that went off-course.

Of course. We only wanted to know weather we could get away with it!

[Al B. Sure!]

We did not violate their airspace. Their airspace invited us. It said, "ooh, big boy, I like that coat of paint," and we just couldn't resist. We were all up in that airspace All. Night. Long. Ooooh yeaaaahhhh.

It is a bit like breaking into someone's house, dropping something of yours, and calling them up asking for it back.