what is iran thinking???

Wurm

Here's how:

According to former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray (www.craigmurray.co.uk) also former Maritime Head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. "The Iran-Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist. It has been drawn up by the British government…. (it is) a fake map."


and...


April 1, 2007

German Armed Forces University: British Boundary Map "Fictitious"

Translated from the German:

In today's printed version of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Prof Khan of the University for the Federal Armed Forces in Munich confirms Craig Murrays statement:

"In their presentation, the British have effectively drawn a fictitious line in their attempt to prove where exactly the soldiers were when taken captive instead of showing a clear border. They couldn't have done the latter in any case as the border between Iran and Iraq around Shatt el-Arab is not clearly identifiable."

__________________
"Bush is the first President to admit to an impeachable offense."

- John Dean, former Counsel to the President (Nixon)

The aim of big corporations is to separate fools from their money all of the time and ordinary folks from their money most of the time. The rest of us must fend for ourselves.

EoinC

Not quite, Wurm. It explains how we cannot be sure of anything from either side, which was kind of the point I was making.

Wurm

It explains that we can be sure that Britain's version of events is clearly a fabrication, and begs the question as to why Britain would lie about it. Therefore Iran had every right to detain and question any foreign military that entered what it considers to be its territorial waters, since any actions such as Britain's in the current atmosphere there would be considered hostile by any nation in the same circumstance.

__________________
"Bush is the first President to admit to an impeachable offense."

- John Dean, former Counsel to the President (Nixon)

The aim of big corporations is to separate fools from their money all of the time and ordinary folks from their money most of the time. The rest of us must fend for ourselves.

EoinC

That's what I mean, Wurm. Both of them are putting their own interpretation on an undefined border. That is why I don't put any stead in what either of them are saying about the situation.

Wurm

In that case Eoin, it would have been a simple matter for Britain to stay well clear of where Iran says is their line of demarcation. That is, if Britain were looking to avoid provoking an incident. It is after all Iran's neighborhood, not England's.

__________________
"Bush is the first President to admit to an impeachable offense."

- John Dean, former Counsel to the President (Nixon)

The aim of big corporations is to separate fools from their money all of the time and ordinary folks from their money most of the time. The rest of us must fend for ourselves.

Bro Deal

Why not? Don't want to hear the truth? I suppose when the U.S. invades a country, the people should just lay down and let the Americans walk all over them. If you fight back you are a terrorist.

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Bro Deal

One thing we can be sure of is that the British were operating in ambiguous waters. It then begs the question of why. Why would they put themselves in a situation which could cause an incident? Why would they do so when a previous incident happened in 2004? And why would they risk another one for an unncessary search for smuggled cars, which the Iraqis should be doing themselves?

If you were the really cynical type, you might think the yanks and the brits want an incident to occur. Of course, Occam's razor in these sorts of things always leads to the explanation of stupidity.

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Virenque

You still don`t or just don`t want to understand me! YES, it`s understandable that you fight against invader but it is not understandable to fight against you fellow citizens!!! Please, let me know if you understand my point now..I`ve written the same for about 5 times so I think it`s time that you understand what I want to say.

Bro Deal

I already answered that. Your problem is that you seem to have some idealized fantasy of how guerrilla warfare, where the guerrillas only fight the invader. That is not how the real world works. Rebel wars are extremely brutal and vicious to all parties involved. They always have been. The innocent citizens are just pawns to be killed or manipulated to achieve the purposes of each group vying for power.

What's more is that the different religious and ethnic groups don't view the other groups as their fellow citizens. They may have lived side by side in the recent past, but Bush's outright incompetence has allowed the country's security to fall apart and enough intergroup incidents to occur that the groups are now enemies.

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Virenque

Is that perfectly legal and honorable?

Bro Deal

It depends on what level you want to discuss war at. At the high level of platitudes and propaganda that is used to justify war, fighting an illegal occupation is legal and honorable, certainly a lot more so than the bag of lies that Bush and Blair used to con their people into going to war. At the lower, ground level of how war is actually carried out, there is just a lot of people dying who should not be. There is no honor or glory. Those are myths used on the young and/or stupid to get them to sacrifice their lives.

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Virenque

Maybe. I partially agree. Fighting an occupation is legal if you fight against occupator, while killing innocent civilians who have nothing to do with an occupation is very, very illegal and shamefull!

A reason why insurgents kill innocent civilians is of course to make more pressure from public to leaders of coallition forces (it`s an indirect fight against occupation) but from a moral view, that IS NOT a fight against occupation! These are disturbing acts while to free people from a tyrant is an absolute opposite to a disturbing act!

That`s the easiest possible way to explain my thoughts about that war and I don`t have anything more to say. Period.

Bro Deal

You have an ideal view that does not exist in reality. All wars against occupation are sordid and bloody. It does not matter whether they take place in Central America, Africa, Southeast Asia, or the Middle East; the ordinary citizens suffer the most. Saddam was a tyrant but he did keep the peace. The Bush-Blair regime has people dying at a rate many times higher than under the Baathist regime. Girls used to be able to attend school, now men are afraid to shave their beards. Doesn't look like freedom to me.

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

limerickman

Craig Murray's just been interviewed on Newsnight and he has said that neither side can definitively say whether or not the British troops were in either jurisdictions territory.

He said that the rivers/dunes that territorial water are in permanent flux and for anyone - especially No.10 Downing Street - to claim that the troops were in Iraqi waters is rubbish.

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets" - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.