Posted by
voice_of_reason on Sunday, September 30, 2007 9:28:09 AM
The following is from an Iranian blog, translated by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center from the Persian - excerpted from a NYTimes
article titled "Blogging Ahmadinejad in Teheran".
"Most Western news agencies like CNN and Fox News, which are branded by the regime as the agents of a Western cultural war, broadcast the speech of President Ahmadinejad live. It is interesting that none of the channels inside our country did that. What does this mean? Does it mean we don’t trust ourselves? Does it mean that we worry we might let something slip? Does it mean that we fear that our president might let something slip?
It means that knowing is not a right our people have! It means that other countries abide by democracy more than we do. It means that even we don’t believe ourselves, even that we fear ourselves. We fear that we might say something by mistake and that our lies would be revealed to the people. Really, why are the state officials against open access to information? Why don’t the people even have the right to hear the speech of their elected president? Why can’t they hear his reasoning for issues like nuclear power, democracy in Iran, and so on?
What is interesting is that we claim the Americans want to prevent our voice from being heard, so why do we censor ourselves? "
— Poor Iran, yaghiha.blogfa.ir, Sept. 24 VoR: It is interesting that the blogger refers to the branding of CNN and Fox News as 'agents of a Western cultural war' by the Iranian regime. This tends to support a propagandist image of Western media which is decried in the Middle East as a means to export depravity. Islamic regimes paint a picture of a depraved Western media and culture to attact support from traditionalists to their own anachronistic ways. By focusing their attention to our excesses (which come from the freedom to make fools of ourselves), they miss the main point - that economic and political freedom are
requirements for affluence and stability.
But, as indicated by the Iranian blogger, the openness of Western media and the sharp contrast to their own restricted media is not missed by segments of the Iranian public.
Another
article worth reading is "An Act of War" from TH's own Crawfish! Here is an excerpt:
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — An Iranian officer accused of smuggling powerful roadside bombs into Iraq was arrested Thursday in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said.
The arrest could add to tensions between Washington and Tehran already strained by the detention of each other's citizens as well as U.S. accusations of Iranian involvement in Iraq's violence and Iran's disputed nuclear program.
The military said the suspect was a member of the Quds force — an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards — and was seized from a hotel in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.
The Iranian officer was allegedly involved in transporting roadside bombs, including armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, into Iraq, according to a military statement. It said intelligence reports also indicated he was involved in the infiltration and training of foreign fighters in Iraq.
VoR: The greatest danger that we face (from external sources) is a nuclear-armed, terrorism-supporting Iran.
The capture of an Iranian agent with munitions that are used
every day against our soldiers should warrant a Declaration of War. It should begin as a two pronged strategy - with covert ops
and a focused PR campaign that links up with their political dissidents (and there are many). These would yield good results and will also unearth other irrefutable evidence of Iran's misdeeds - laying the support for a full attack on the regime.
The Iraq operation should have been presented to the American people as
Round#1 of a strategy of bringing the Middle East into the modern age; 9/11 gave us the motivation to deal ourselves into this. Instead, we got a watered down set of UN-approved reasons to go to war, that made our case weaker for
Round#2 (Iran).
In our currently muddled way of thinking, political calculations seem to dominate. Also, Leftists have gained enough traction in our country to emasculate our political will.
Frankly, I am not optimistic that there will be a suitable response. The political games in our own country have weakened us. Can you imagine what would happen if some information was leaked (by the obliging MSM) about our covert ops in Iran?
Despite having our special ops teams in harms way, these mainstream media maggots would expose our tactics in order to win ratings and the approval of their Leftist supporters.
It wouldn't surprise me if a few unprincipled (D) legislators (who must be consulted, as a result of their committee positions) would deliberately leak such information for their own political advantage.
Our covert ops have to face
two threats - one of which is the threat of exposure (for political advantage) by the American Left. So, it makes it that much harder for a C-in-C to authorize such measures.