Iran making same mistake as Iraq

[lis0r]

You are talking a load of bollocks. If you don't like who we sell arms to then vote for another party, which your right.

Yeah, you can vote for the puppet on the left hand, instead of the right hand.

[Dr Morbeus]

You are talking a load of bollocks. If you don't like who we sell arms to then vote for another party, which your right.

Yeah, you can vote for the puppet on the left hand, instead of the right hand.

Apathy will be the death of democracy.

There is a simple solution - if you can be arsed voting then keep your fucking trap shut. You just lost your right to complain.

[HGFB]

There is a simple solution - if you can be arsed voting then keep your fucking trap shut. You just lost your right to complain.

Do you need to be so aggressive? We were having a decent thread until you jumped in with your bovver boots.

[Space Cowboy]

So disagreeing with Britain's take automatically makes someone a terrorist sympathizer, but disagreeing with Iran's take doesn't make you a supporter of the people on the other side?

I think when you have a track record of only pointing out the mote in Blair or Bushes eye that you leave yourself open to claims of being, well, perhaps a sympathiser is the wrong word. As I said previously, the enemoy of my enemy is my friend, and I think that's how you come across. Not just you, it seems the illiberal leftwing tendency is to attack at home, or across the pond, and defend elsewhere.

[Dr Morbeus]

There is a simple solution - if you can be arsed voting then keep your fucking trap shut. You just lost your right to complain.

Do you need to be so aggressive? We were having a decent thread until you jumped in with your bovver boots.

Sorry, I was talking about the royal "you" but should have made that clear. Better if I shut up, you're right.

[kalmar]

The reality is that Iran is indeed a rogue state - for anyone to seriously state otherwise really flies in the face of the facts.

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.

And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn't rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it's just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

What's more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting "stress positions", which the captives are expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It's all good healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out of it.

And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is "unhappy and stressed".

What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.

As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer - whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq.

[Dr Morbeus]

So disagreeing with Britain's take automatically makes someone a terrorist sympathizer, but disagreeing with Iran's take doesn't make you a supporter of the people on the other side?

I think when you have a track record of only pointing out the mote in Blair or Bushes eye that you leave yourself open to claims of being, well, perhaps a sympathiser is the wrong word. As I said previously, the enemoy of my enemy is my friend, and I think that's how you come across. Not just you, it seems the illiberal leftwing tendency is to attack at home, or across the pond, and defend elsewhere.

And the reverse seems to be true as well. If you criticise Iran, you are automatically labelled a Bush supporter.

For the record, I am not. Man is a moron.

[Space Cowboy]

Damn, I said Bushes, and it's too late to correct it now 'cause I've been quoted.

[lis0r]

There is a simple solution - if you can be arsed voting then keep your fucking trap shut. You just lost your right to complain.

Which is precisely why I don't vote. If both parties are offering to fuck me up the arse, and I vote for them, I can hardly complain when that's exactly what they do when they come into power.

[kalmar]

Which is precisely why I don't vote. If both parties are offering to fuck me up the arse, and I vote for them, I can hardly complain when that's exactly what they do when they come into power.

There is a third way

Seriously, what issues do you feel strongly about that the main parties are doing wrongly or failing to address? Even if it's "everything" there's probably an option for you somewhere.

[Governmentyard]

The reality is that Iran is indeed a rogue state - for anyone to seriously state otherwise really flies in the face of the facts.

In many ways, 'we' are worse than 'them'

Yeah. But then again, do my last job, where you are helping women in their early twenties piece their lives back together because they were married off at eight eyars old and raped by their 'husbands' in a state mandated paedophile ring the country wide. Because Mohammed did it, so that's ok. Or the lad who would sooner live in the woods outside Calais or Hull, or take the chance of suffocating to death in a sealed container on the channel routes rather than face what awaits him from the Iranian government because his father once said something they didn't like a few years ago.

Terry Jones is right to point out the torture at Abu Ghraib, but he's talking in the same stupid terms as everyone else - as if the governments of either country are really anything at all to do with the people. Know the people of Iran, befriend as many as you can and based on them, judge that nation. If you take the rantings of their leaders seriously, why not take Bush seriously as well?

Although, if we are keeping score, in the lifetime of anyone still breathing, torture in the west is restricted mostly to a handful of shadowy governmental places whereas in Iran every village has a 'police station' where those who don't tow the line can expect to lose a finger or two. Most people don;t like to go on about it though.

Someone was talking earlier about the left-hand/right-hand puppets being a choice. Well, we do have a choice - and the western states are the lesser of two evils in this case. How many refugees from the west are entering Iran every week? And with the exception of Bush who is crippled by his own failure now, how many religious zealots are running western nations?

[Space Cowboy]

Excellent points goatboy, really well made.

[snaff]

I'm more concerned with the British government's mis-deeds than I am with what the Iranian government gets up to, because the British government supposedly represents me.

If our government can be a force for good abroad then that's wonderful, but a pre-requisite of this is surely that they be honest and open about their actions. Here we have yet another example of where our authorities are mis-representing the facts and this calls into question the purity of their motives.

Either side in this debate could have apologised and cited the ambiguity of the boundary to defuse tensions without losing face diplomatically, but for whatever reason they both chose to force a stand-off. I don't care what the Iranian motives are - I want to know why my government is more interested in escalating tensions in a way in which makes the release of the prisoners any time soon less likely.

[Absolute_Zero]

I'm more concerned with the British government's mis-deeds than I am with what the Iranian government gets up to, because the British government supposedly represents me.

Where did you get the idea that the government exists to represent you? Surely their raison d'etre is to represent the UK as a whole... which by the way of these things, they pretty much do. Ergo, your complaint is with the perceived majority/center-ground, not the Government per se.

[kalmar]

I'm more concerned with the British government's mis-deeds than I am with what the Iranian government gets up to, because the British government supposedly represents me.

Where did you get the idea that the government exists to represent you? Surely their raison d'etre is to represent the UK as a whole... which by the way of these things, they pretty much do.

What, goading a bunch of Arab loonies who probably have a nuclear bomb is in the UK's best interests is it? At the moment it seems like the preferred outcome is to have them execute those poor navy buggers, so that the US can step in and flatten the place.