The Iranian Interest

Bahram va Jaleho e geraami

To back my claim, as far as the Shia community is concerned, I refer both of you to the position adopted by their leaders; above all, Ayatollah Sistani the great , whose saying is considered by the Iraqi Shias as sacred as Quranic verses.

Bahram in Chicago, great point!

You wrote to Pishroo :

"Why read you when I can go to the original source and read William Kristol or Charles Krauthammer?"

Exactly my sentiment! Recently Douglas Feith has written a book with VEGHAHAT on the sucess of Iraq war!!! I don't know why people who have no original argument, or something to back it up by new data or historical data, bother to ruminate the garbage that one hears all the time in FOX fro example?!

And frankly, they best be ignored since not only they have nothing informative to base their arguments upon, even when you bring out documented counter arguments, they come back with platitudes like:

"there are three lies, big ones, small ones and polls", I guess he forgot the biggest lie, well established historical data!

Reminds you of Bush that whenever people tell him how unpopular he is when there are large crowds against him, all he says with his idiotic smirk is: "it is a sign that people are free to express their opinion." The idiot never contemplates about the original point of "LARGE number using their freedom to show how disgusted they are with him!"

Things are not going right?

Under United Nation Charter article 39-42 “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken” now if you have any knowledge of the war in Iraq the united states argued that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of WMDs which has not been found to this day., which based on the charter would make this war illegitimate to begin with ; Nonetheless, you seem to be arguing the fact that the ends justify the means . Well here are the ends: According to a new study, 1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since the 2003 invasion, The study was done by the British polling firm ORB, the study's margin of error was plus-minus 2.4 percent. Now it is hard to put a number on the atrocities of Saddam Hussein crimes however John Burns of the New York Times wrote and in accordance with the world health association an estimated that Saddam was responsible for the death of 1.4 million people in the span of his 24 years . Now Pishroo you can point out the “ $79billion ” surplus which does not take in account the billions spent by the U.S. to make that number possible, and believe me Saddam was an evil man and his death is cause for celebration but for you to state that the war in Iraq has had any positive aspect to it is wrong. I beg for you to ask the thousands of homeless children and rape victims from this heavenly war on how they think things are going in Iraq .

Dear Amir Ashkan: thanks for having no facts to back your claims

So you know that the Shia majority supports the US occupation based on what? Based on the writings of American Enterprise Institute (AEI) "scholars" like Michael Ledeen? The editorial pages of the Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal, and Jerusalem Post? The insights of Pahlavi propagandist-extraordinaire Amir Taheri, or perhaps Psychic Friends Network?

You have no evidence or logic to back your views because none exist. All you regurgitate are recycled editorials and talking points from the above-mentioned neocon rags. Why read you when I can go to the original source and read William Kristol or Charles Krauthammer? Either way, the intellectual and factual dishonesty shines through. I am eager to read more commentary from you on how well Iraq is doing thanks to the US occupation. Perhaps at this rate, it will be as well off as Indonesia, Guatemala, Zaire, and other US puppet states...

Dear Bahram

There are three kinds of lie: Big one, small one, polls.

Thanks for your comment.

Who said the Shia support the U.S. occupation?

You stated: "Thank you, Not Anonymous, for the support and for bringing our attention to the Iraqi Shiites. After all, they make up %65 of the population of Iraq.

What they and the Kurds think about Iraq's liberation count at the end of the day, and not some bankrupt third-worldist view which its main concern is to settle score with the US no matter what."

Actually, polls in Iraq have shown that majorities of both Shia and Sunni Arabs oppose the U.S. occupation.

Conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), University of Maryland, a poll found that Iraqis believe, by an overwhelming margin of 78 to 21 percent, that the US military presence is “provoking more conflict that it is preventing.” Seven in ten Iraqis want the US-led forces to commit to withdraw within a year, but a very large majority believes that the US will remain in the country, even if the Iraqi government asked it to withdraw, as the Washington plans to maintain permanent bases . Further, support for attacks against US forces has increased substantially and as of September 2006 reached 61 percent.

A poll conducted by the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies found that an overwhelming 92% of Iraqis perceive Coalition forces as occupiers, rather than as liberators or peacekeepers. 41 percent of respondents felt the Coalition should leave immediately and a further 45 percent believed that the occupiers should leave once a permanent government was elected.

The reason for the budget surplus

"Iraq’s budget surplus will amount as much as $79 billion by the of this year."

LOL. Of course when nothing is spent on anything in that god forsaken country, the money just accomulates.

It is the US that prevents Iraqis from rebuilding anything. The Iraqis have to stand forth in line to see any of that 80 billion. US first, Kuwait second, Saudi Arabia third....

Not to forget "encouraging" the Iraqis to sign long term oil contracts with American companies.

Thank you, Not Anonymous,

Thank you, Not Anonymous, for the support and for bringing our attention to the Iraqi Shiites. After all, they make up %65 of the population of Iraq.

What they and the Kurds think about Iraq's liberation count at the end of the day, and not some bankrupt third-worldist view which its main concern is to settle score with the US no matter what.

baba haal dari?

Reading the iranian.com for a long time it's interesting to see how many israelis or pro israelis in many clothes come to make their point or change the realities. baba bacheh khar mikoni?

sorry but we must be doing something to have so many israelis come to this site and wanting to change our minds and perspectives. interesting.

pishroo, copying Doug Feith, the LOSER?!

and you said about Saddam:

"He was a time bomb that threatened the entire region and indeed the international community. He had to be defused, and should have been deposed already in the first Persian Gulf war. Thanks to the United States and its allies that Saddam, “the butcher of Baghdad” is today no longer among us."

Right. Saddam indeed was a time bomb and US recognized correctly that he must be defused, or they would get another revolution a la Iran next door threatening "their" oil supply. But few points:

1.  That time bomb was created by US itself when they armed him to teeth for Iran-Iraq war hoping that the brutal puppet could crush Irananian revolution amid revolutionary chaos. Miscalculation. Even their chemical weapon and all of US intelligence, military and political support, and the Arab financial support couldn't achieve that goal.

2. "should have been deposed already in the first Persian Gulf war." Now, don't try to be smarter than your neocon bosses. The first Gulf war gave US a chance to weaken Saddam to a degree that it could ask the Iraqi underdogs, i.e. the Shiites and the Kurds to revolt against Saddam. US promised them a cover if they revolted and when they did just that, US left Saddam's hand open to massacre them and cleans the revolting elements!

3. The butcher of Baghdad was created THEN by the US!! That is, after the Shiite and Kurdish revolt, despite everyone's surprise, US allowed Saddam to go ahaead and massacre them and create the famous "mass graves". When the Kurds complained about US false promise, Kissinger gave his short answer: "covert operation is not charity work"

The same mass graves that US butcher created to burry most of the revolutionary elements in Iraq was later used as an excuse to depose Saddam when his useful life was past and was due to be flushed.

Hopefully you won't be perplexed any more on why your neocon bosses went all the way to the gates of Baghdad and then decided to give their butcher a bit more chance before they defused him.

3 Million Shiites Make Pilgrimage To Karbala

Excellent A.P. You're a timely addition to this site and I'm grateful for your fairly objective and unskewed contributions on political issues.

This news must make all shi'ites happy:

"More than three million Shiites marked the annual pilgrimage to Karbala amid tight security and attacks on the way to the holy city that killed dozens of people. (AFP/Mohammed Sawaf)

Three million Iraqi pilgrims converged on Karbala this weekend to commemorate a Shiite holiday.
UPI reported:
Thousands of Shiite pilgrims congregated Sunday in the holy city of Karbala to commemorate the birth of ninth century Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi.

Muhammad al-Mahdi was the last of the 12 most revered Shiite Imams. China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported that pilgrims from around Iraq traveled to the holy site to commemorate the imam, who Muslims believe will return at the end of time to bring peace and justice to mankind.

More than 40,000 security forces and checkpoints around the city south of Baghdad were set up to keep pilgrims safe, said Karbala police chief Maj. Gen. Raid Shakir.
Iraqis today are free to celebrate Muslim holidays. Once Saddam was ousted, Iraqi Shiites started to practice their faith and commemorate their imams openly.

//www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/08/17/Pilgrims_co...

//blogs.wsj.com/iraq/2008/07/30/shiites-relig...

//blogs.wsj.com/iraq/2008/07/30/shiites-relig...

Mr. kashani

Thank you very much, indeed, Mr. kashani.

US is great but Israel is fantastic

Please write an article explain that too. Please put some emphasis on how F-16I is far superior than F-16 and how it murders babies with much more ease. Thanks, Moshe Pasroo.

He was a time bomb that threatened the entire region...

Hard to tel you are talking about Iraq or Israel. Which is it?

Saddam Hussien and his psychopathic crime gang are gone!

But Saddam Hussien and his psychopathic crime gang were put in place by the US and ZioNazis in order to rip off the country easily. So how is taking him out and putting new people an improvement?

Mr. Pishroo, great article.

Mr. Pishroo, great article. Absolutely true. Keep up the good work.

Pipeline for Washington's propaganda?

I always find it amusing when Uncle Sam's propagandists and apologists tell us how well Iraq is doing. By any measure (level of violence, GDP per capita, unemployment, infant mortality, childhood diseases, lack of clean water, power outages, internally displaced persons, refugees fleeing the country), life in Iran is about 100 times better than Iraq. This is no advertisement for the IRI; on the contrary, Iran has many political and socioeconomic problems--most of them due to the IRI. But sheer common sense will tell you that things in Iran (bad as they are) are better than in Iraq. Iraqis can tell you that themselves; after all, they are "voting with their feet". That is why millions of Iraqi refugees have fled to Jordan, Syria, Iran, and other neighboring countries. Now, if someone went around saying how great things are in Iran (the literacy rate is up, life expectancy is up, more universities, 65% of university students are females, more roads, a subway system in Tehran and another under construction in Esfahan, high-rise buildings and cranes are legion on the Tehran skyline, etc. etc.)--that person would be denounced as an IRI apologist, right? But Washington's apologists love to propagate their false view of "how Iraq is really not that bad" (when it's a lot worse than Iran)--well what can one say about such shameless propagandists?

By the way, has The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) established a foothold on Iranian.com? If I want to read AEI propaganda, I can visit their website or those of the Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal or Jerusalem Post--I don't have to visit Iranian.com.