Six Lies You Shouldn't Believe About Iran, Especially Since, Hey, There's People Down Here

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_rosa_sch_070202_six_lies_you_shouldn.htm

Six Lies You Shouldn't Believe About Iran, Especially Since, Hey, There's People Down Here.

by Rosa Schmidt Azadi

It feels so different watching an aircraft carrier group coming toward you than watching it sailing away from you toward another part of the world.

I'm an American who used to live in New York City. All my life, when I heard about warships, it was US warships going places far away. I never even imagined hostile warships sailing toward New York. Now I'm in Tehran, and aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis is heading our way. And as it sails, people are discussing Israel and/or the US bombing Iran as if my family and 69 million other people weren't even here. I'm getting scared.

Most Iranians that I know don't worry about this as much as I do, though they're wondering how the sanctions will affect the economy. Khomeini had a famous saying that we actually saw on a sign yesterday in another town: "America can't do anything to us." Some friends here speculate that Bush just needs an enemy so that he can continue his programs in the US, and that Iran is the enemy du jour. I wish I could believe that.

The way I see it, somebody has to stop the US president right now, and it's very upsetting that the Congress isn't doing it. My frustration is greater because I'm in a country where the Internet is not completely available. For example, I tried to send a donation to Dennis Kucinich, but PayPal wouldn't take it because of the embargo. I tried to write to my Congressperson, but the Islamic Republic blocked the communication, presumably because it was with the US government. (Sometimes news stories that I want to read are blocked, too, but there are ways around that.)

If the US and/or Israel attack Iran, it will be a war based on lies, just like the Iraq war. Iraq didn't have WMD, but Iraqis died in the hundreds of thousands. The lies about Iran seem intended to, first, make Iran look like the new Nazi state that must be bombed so as to avoid a new Holocaust, and second, make Americans fear that Iran will hurt our soldiers in Iraq or give nuclear weapons to terrorists who will hurt us in "the homeland."

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Sign petition to "Stop Bush From Attacking Iran"
(Edit to add correct link to petition)

http://www.usalone.net/cgi-bin/oen.cgi?qnum=1517

have a clue about how serious we are in our roadmap to bomb Iran back to the stone ages. They are not being told that we are beating the drums and are serious. The majority of normal everyday Iranians will be totally surprised when the bombs start falling on their homes and markets.

Both the Dem and GOPer political parties stand in favor of invading another country yet again.

get around the blocks to read what's happening. And I think Iranians are an educated populace for the most part. I imagine many are worried.

To complain about a Zionist state. As a liberal, I hold that it's generally a bad idea for governments to be entangled with religion. Not to the extent that that should be an international cause over other, more important issues, and certainly not with the notion that that has to be ended except by persuasion and peaceful political evolution.

But for the president of a state that has an official religion, as does Iran, and where supreme authority is vested in a religious council, as it is in Iran, to suggest that Zionism is wrong and must be ended is not just hypocritical, but also dangerous. The truth may not be quite as bad as the lie, but it is still pretty damn bad in its own right. Whenever Ahmadinejad complains about the Zionist nature of Israel, the universal response to him should be to attend to the beam in his own eye.

:hippie:

That is NOT the universal response to Iran; it is HOWEVER the stated goals of a small extremist sect in largely the US and Israel that is attempting to make arguments like this SEEM like they are justification for a killing thousands upon thousands of citizens in a country that hasn't declared war on anyone is 150 years.

So you, peppering your replies with words like 'liberal', 'peaceful' and confusing the American Constitutional debate regarding 'the separation of church and state' is really quite meaningless.

If you support a war with Iran, then be honest...don't insinuate that you are 'left' or liberal because none of those people support anything you said.