Mal,
Colonel Lang may have issues with the current administration. He damn well has a right. The Bush Administration ignored the retired members of our Intelligence services who had real on the ground contacts in the Arab Middle east, as well as a background that made them choice picks to call back into duty after 911. Neoconservatives wanted nothing to do with these Arabists, and used that term derisively, often implying that it meant lefty, socialistic, islamofascist appeasers. Pure dialectics from Trotskyites.
Let's reminiscence about the Reagan Admin's Iranian appeasers, who were willing to covertly trade high-end modern weaponry with that government, which they had placed on the terrorist sponsoring countries list, in the hopes that they might be able to affect the Lebanese militants who held American hostages. Look at two who were in the thick of those unlawful negotiations:
Michael Ledeen, and
Robert Gates.
And I do not think it was a Lang depiction of Ahmadinajad supporting “scholars who seek the truth”, he was translating what was said. Lang is not defending Iran or Almadinajad, in fact his remarks about Persian subtlety in full context indicates that he is both a realist, as well as one who appreciates irony and satire:
When challenged on Iranian government support of international terrorist groups, he said that Iran herself is the victim of extensive terrorist attack sponsored by foreign governments. He clearly had in mind the MEK. He said that all parties should stop this kind of activity. There may have been an implied offer in that. THe Persians are subtle people. Perhaps they are too subtle for his audience
You do know that the MEK is a Marxist revolutionary org, which sits on the State Department's terrorist org list, and that prior to the Invasion of Iraq, received most of its funding from Hussein, aren't you? (
CFR -
Global Security) There have been some pretty credible rumours that the Bush Admin has been providing backing for The MEK. Then there was the April ABC News story about the US supporting an anti-Iranian Pak based terrorist group:
Justin Rood and Gretchen Peters, "The Secret War Against Iran", ABC News, April 03, 2007I understood Lang's subtlety remark to be a jab in the nose of the hypocritical policies of the Bush Administration. Col. Lang makes a lot of assumptions about his blog readership's awareness of current events. This isn't a freshman intro course.
I have been tied up with other concerns both in my private/work life, and my public postings. Part of this is your fault
(kidding-ok? truthfully, thanks for the pointer to G.N.), as I have been doing a bit of digging into ties between the Austrian School and Dominion believers; it isn't rock solid yet, but potentials are ugly. So excuse my ignorance here: Was Almadinajad speaking English at Columbia? Who was translating it if he was not? Might want to investigate that. If it was Memri, or anyone remotely associated with Pipes, I'd trust Lang's version hands down. I haven't been to Prof. Cole's site in a while, so I am not up to speed on his take. There must be some here who are though.
I'll take a quick trip to a couple of sites I am familiar with that are authored by strongly secularist individuals of MidEast origins, and see if they are commenting.
Here's a couple of links to interviews by the Turkish Tank: International Strategic Research Organization. While checking their website, Journal of Turkish Weekly, to make sure these were still live links, I scraped some other news story links too, and am dropping them here. I just took part in a sort of group conference IM session on Euro time. Not business, it was working on a goofy theory regarding collaboration, and I'm an old fogey, out of my league using IM to communicate anyway. I'm going to get a few hours sleep now, and get up for an early afternoon meeting. I'll check back after that.
- 15 November 2005 - Iran's Nuclear Program - The full text of the interview made by NTV with the Head of International Escort for the IAEA Inspections in Iran, Mr. ALI ASGHAR SOLTANIEH who was invited by International Strategic Research Organization (ISRO)
- 28 February 2006 -Interview: A General Evaluation of ...nd further Estimations on Nuclear Crisis - International Strategic Research Organization (ISRO) that is concentrated on the effects of Iranian developments on the region had interviewed Prof. Ehteshami on Iran’s current situation and asked him for some further estimation. Prof. Anoush Ehteshami is Head of School of Government and International Affairs at University of Durham, United Kingdom.
The point I'm trying to make here is that this is getting distilled into one of those
"your either with us or against us" Bush black and white things, and nether side is being honest. I am not attempting to defend Iran, but instead trying to turn the tide from America embarking upon another unjustified war. We know that the Bush Administration is capable of and willing to engage in deceits. Even when it means heading away from our true enemies into an unrighteous war. They cannot be trusted to decide. Cheney is especially untrustworthy, because he was willing to invoke the El Salvador Solution. am I the only person in America that was completely creeped-out by it?
"Twenty years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador. We had -- guerrilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead, and we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress.
The human drive for freedom, the determination of these people to vote, was unbelievable. And the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places; as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied the right to vote.
And today El Salvador is a whale of a lot better because we held free elections.
The power of that concept is enormous. And it will apply in Afghanistan, and it will apply as well in Iraq."
Dick Cheney, Vice Presidential Debate, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, October 5, 2004
