JTaylor

Question avoided. Some smilies. No squabbling for me, thank you.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

No not question avoided. Just thought you'd be bright enough to not need it speling out Sesame Street style. Seems I was wrong, yes?

JTaylor

Ok, let's go with the notion that you didn't avoid the question, but felt I was bright enough not to need it spelling out. Let me agree, for the benefit of the conversation, that your second point is correct i.e I do in fact need it spelling out.

Having removed those suggested obstacles to you answering the question, I'll ask it again: Why are allied forces positioning themselves so that they are, when and if the time comes, ready to invade the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Spell it out for me, please.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Stop being obtuse! It detracts from the serious debate you claim to crave.

You know full well why Iran are perceived by some as a threat to the US and the West.

JTaylor

Do you agree that the Islamic Republic of Iran are a threat to the West and its allies?

Leslie

Amusing thread I must say.

I can't help remembering Orwell saying that political speak was designed to make a load of lies look like the truth!

Goes for the lot of them!

Les

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

I have not seen any concrete evidence as to why that should be so therefore no I don't!

JTaylor

Threat is the key word and having troops in place should that "concrete evidence" come to light. Are you seriously suggesting that the West should not take up and bolster strategic positions in the Middle East in preparation for the Islamic Republic of Iran completing its nuclear weapons program? Wow!

Anyway, if you're happy to splash out £40 the IISS will send you a copy of its dosier.

http://www.iiss.org/publications/str...-capabilities/

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Would that be a similar dossier to the ones that declared Saddam Hussein to have WMDs and that he could strike the UK in 45 minutes? I think I will take with a pinch of salt any Western propaganda nonsesnse masquerading as evidence to suit the warmongering desires of the US and/or the UK thanks

tony de wonderful

Sure but it does not follow that the West has a secret plan to Invade Iran when the time comes.

Do you have any evidence to support that theory or does your tin foil hat fit well?

tony de wonderful

He's a total fool for trying to pander to the 3rd world politics of victimhood and nativism with that remark.

He sound like some self-loathing lefty.

Fact is the British empire was responsible for a long period of relative peace and economic prosperity as well as defeating **** Germany and helping to win the cold war. We really would not have the current period of world economic growth and relative peace without it. Half the world would probably still be backwards feudal fiefdoms all at war with each other if it had not been for the British.

jonc

The only person who should intervene in this dispute is the Middle East Peace Envoy. Where is he? Sunning himself on a tour down in Oz doing motivational leadership lectures and getting paid half a million for doing so.

JTaylor

I'll concede that the Iraq dossier, knocked-up by a murder of spin-doctors, was an embarrassing sham and a stain on the conscience of the Labour Party. The IISS on the other hand has a council made up of representatives from over 90 countries. Dispassionate reports built around falsifiable facts and the primary source of raw nuclear data on the planet. However, you're entitled to your belief that it's "western propaganda".

Given this narrative and your innate distrust of the west, from which organisation would you accept this "concrete evidence"? How about the International Atomic Energy Agency or the UN nuclear watchdog? Is it the case that the whole of the freeworld is wrong, that you're going to accept the word of President Ahmadinejad and feel that his enemies should, too?

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Let me ask you a question for once Assuming Iran are building nuclear weapons why are they not allowed to have them when America and the UK are?

tony de wonderful

Just like any other country is not supposed to have them in accordance with the NPT.

Have you found the secret plans for the Wests invasion of Iran yet? I'm still waiting....

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

So why don't we put our own house in order first?

As for the 'secret plans' unlike you Tony I am not privy to such confidential information. So you think there is no chance that the US will take military action against Iran in the foreseeable future despite the fact they are building nuclear weapons... something that only Western and Jewish nations are allowed to have.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

It's like listening to Blair all over again. The bloke is a Grade A moron who only wants to further his own careeer and leave his mark on world history.

JTaylor

Pakistan (Muslim), India (Hindu majority), North Korea (atheist necrocracy ).

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Pakistan's program is under US scrutiny with a view to ensuring it grows no further at the very least as was proved by Wikileaks in the last few months.

India's program is under US control virtually thanks to a deal signed in 2008 I think. The US agreed to share nuclear tech with India if India agreed to be open about its program to both the US and the International authorities.

And I hardly think I need to mention that the US is keeping a very close eye on North Korea with a view to eventually dismantling their nuclear arsenal hopefully by diplomatic negotiation, but who knows with the US?

Yet Israel and many Western coutries seem able to possess nuclear arsenals with not so much a harsh word being said against them.

Leslie

Yes I think you have put it well with regard to our present situation.

You are right about the sacrifices made just after the war and for quite a long time after that. We have become so used to our present standard of living that most people have no conception of the shortages and lack of what we now regard as essential facilities. Any reduction in those now would be regarded as an absolute disaster even though they did not exist just after the war.

We are borrowing money to pay the interest on the money we are borrowing at the moment. What a situation that we have been led into by the irresponsible way the economy has been destroyed over recent years. All for the sake of the votes as well the banker's greed, and no thought for the country's future.

We cannot avoid cuts because we cannot continue to borrow to maintain a false living standard. Government spending has to be very carefully regulated for the best reasons and Alistair Darling deserves to be strung up for committing this country to the support of those countries in the Eurozone when he knew his government had lost power and before his job was passed on. Cynical in the extreme.

Les

JTaylor

Well, that's because they share the same ideology, f1. Culturally Judeo-Christian market-led, secular, liberal democracy. That's the team. That's my team.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Which is precisely why debating with you is pointless. You have chosen sides and become indoctrinated in doing so. No amount of trying to explain why masks the fact that your mind is in some ways as closed as those you claim to despise!

Leslie

Oh he has done that alright...but for what reasons?

Les

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

I really can't fathom it other than utter conceit. I never really expected anything else from him and his government, but secrety I hoped it might be different.... sadly it isn't

JTaylor

If you're saying that I'm indoctrinated by the teachings of The Enlightenment: the seperation of church and state, free inquiry, fair representation, universal suffrage, a rule of law where reason has primacy, freedom of religion and, critically for me, freedom of conscience; if you're saying that I'm indoctrinated into believing, with evidence to support that belief, that those values are preferable to totalitarianism, then yes, guilty as charged. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people who indoctrinated me - Plato, Socrates, Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, Jefferson, Darwin, Einstein, Hitchens, my maternal grandfather and my father.

So there you go, there's my stake in the ground, where are you sticking yours?

JTaylor

Pragmatism.

tony de wonderful

Israel doesn't belligerently test fire missiles and say other countries should be wiped off the map.

In facts its nuclear program has a policy of being opaque. Iran has a policy of lying.

tony de wonderful

You are the one with explicitly said that Libya was a part of the Wests plans to Invade Iran. Are you saying now you have no evidence to support that stance?

Please stop trying to imply that just because the West does not want Iran to have nukes that it also must therefore have plans to invade. This argument does not necessarily follow and is a fallacy.

JTaylor

To be fair to the Islamic Republic of Iran, this practice is mandated by the Qu'ran. It's an extension of al-Taqiyya.