Game On in Iraq: Iranian Quds and Militias Suffer a, um, Setback

Time for the CIA to get in gear.

And interfere in the politics of a sovereign nation? You realize that we’re in this mess to begin with because the CIA didn’t know when to leave well enough alone, right?

well considering anything "state run" in Iran is heavily censored & controlled I think it's a legitimate question. But since you're so fucking smart I guess you can just tell me if the article is seriously anti-Iranian government or not.

okay you lost me with that sentence....

He means regime change. <--Reading comprehension for the win!

I’m just saying we had a similar opportunity back in ‘09 during the “Arab spring” and Obama blew it. We could have nudged them in the right direction and we didn’t. It seems to me that the Iranian people have been on the verge of turning against the leadership for quite some time now. Maybe drop some leaflets or something.

we already had a "hundred years war" so we would need to take it up a notch or two. Let's go for the half millennium mark!

Not exactly.

Oh Snap! Denied!

If you're not talking about regime change, then what exactly are you talking about?

"Time for the CIA than get in gear." So you are telling me that sentence makes sense? "Time for the CIA" - okay, following it so far, let's keep going - "than get in gear."
Does he mean "then" get in gear? Either way there's a chunk missing from the middle of the sentence. Granted maybe there are typos in the sentence or a computer glitch occurred.

Absolutely agreed, but the problem for me is we are openly applying a label on the basis of third hand suspicion and largely unseen intel.

I'm quite happy to concede this is a person who may have had an indirect hand in terrorist activity, just concerned about how readily people online are throwing the term around without asking why. It's very easy to default to calling every person who is our enemy a terrorist and by and large much of the public will accept it's use without feeling the need to apply critical thinking of their own.

If there is to be a war and the public are to have their full democratic say I think it's only reasonable to question assertions presented without evidence, else where does that lead? Another Iraq, another twenty years pointing the finger of blame over non existent WMDs and thousands of lives lost?

I'm not disputing he was an awful human being, merely emphasising that facts matter and if he is a suspected terrorist then that is what he should be referred to as, not to mention intellectually curious as to the willingness people show to accept a label merely on the basis of someone fitting a stereotype.

He was talking about the CIA getting in gear to start nudging the Iranian people towards overthrowing the Iranian government...but when I pointed out that what he was talking about was Regime Change (antithetical to Libertarianism), he tried to back-track.

"we are openly applying a label on the basis of third hand suspicion and largely unseen intel." - spot261
word to the wise spot - most of the really important intel is "largely unseen" and should remain "largely unseen." That's pretty much how shit works in the war/crime/killing business. Sadsalami was a very dangerous man, but if you are waiting for a detailed public report on exactly who he was likely to target next and the how/when to prove it, that's probably not going to happen. And there's a reason you might not find a lot of proof on his prior shenanigans and that is because a big part of the war/crime/killing business is not leaving a "paper trail" which can incriminate you and tip your hand to your present and future adversaries. That and a culture of fear, intimidation and oppression by the government/military means not a lot of people run their mouths or keep traceable records on higher-ups and powerful people.

Maybe, just maybe, this article shows that not every question, even inside the supposedly monolithic realm of Iran, is answerable in black and white terms. Maybe there are competing factions inside the government, but understanding that would require something other than binary thinking. I bet I just set off the "TILT" sign again....

I didn’t try and back trac, I wasn’t talking about regime change from the get go and I responded to @The Night Funky before I even read your post.

So you're not talking about regime change, but rather nudging the Iranian people in the right direction... towards regime change.

Many Republicans were calling on Obama to take action so no, he wouldn’t have gotten hammered for it.

No. We need to stay out of it. Let the people do it on their own. We’ll just fuck it up.

What you were talking about in your response to The Night Funky is regime change.

Saying, “Time for the CIA to get in gear.“ in response to my post about people protesting and demanding change in Iran’s leadership because of the plane shot down clearly is talk about regime change.

No one, except Oldfella apparently who got lost, thinks that line means anything other than the US trying to regime change.

They did. In 1953.

What would these leaflets say? "If you get rid of your government we can be friends"? Overthrowing a government actually isn't all that difficult, happens all the time in the world. The hard part is setting up a new government that's better than the previous one. This would especially be the case in a place like Iran, because of how religion is so tightly interwound with the government.

As for the Iranian protests back in '09, there was really fuck all Obama could do. He was blasted by Republicans for doing nothing, and if he had done something, the Republicans would have blasted him for meddling in the affairs of another country. Which is exactly what happened a few years later when he decided to support those in Libya who wanted to overthrow Qaddafi. We know how well that turned out.

When it comes to the Arab Spring, the past is really prologue. We saw a similar situation happen in Europe back in 1848. A whole bunch of nations decided that they'd have enough of their governments' shit and tossed them out. Only to wind up with worse governments a few years later. What the US (and the rest of the developed world) needs to do when it comes to Iran, is sit the fuck down and let them sort out if they want to toss out the government. If they do toss out the government, then we need to send them academics who are experts in how a country can establish a successful government. We don't need to send them political operatives or business executives, or anyone who's likely to put American interests ahead of Iranian ones. Because if we do that, we'll end up with the same kind of fucked up shit we've got now.

We won't do that for two reasons, however. The first is because a bunch of college professors doesn't make for good TV like blowing shit up. The second is that we'd rather exploit the fuck out of people than actually help them because we're more interested in making a buck than in ensuring people have a decent life.

Yes, that type of regime change, using soft power that is, is fine. It’s regime change wars that I’m against.

I didn't say "regime change wars". I said "regime change", and you said "not exactly", but regime change is exactly what you were talking about.

you didn't set it off but your mom did - tell her "thanks" from me during your next pillow talk session!

This sentence "Time for the CIA than get in gear" is the exact original quote. Is this a coherent sentence? However "Time for the CIA to get in gear." is indeed a coherent sentence and I would understand fully what that implies, if the original sentence (which was "Time for the CIA than get in gear") was indeed "Time for the CIA to get in gear." Can you discern the difference between the two sentences?

Back on topic the IMHO the CIA steering the Iranian civilian citizenry against their own government is more likely to fail than succeed in the long run. But "fail" versus "succeed" is in the eye of the beholder in a very polarized political climate such as the U.S.

And yet, you're the only one that didn't know what he was talking about.

Oldfella: "Oh really? You're a mind reader? You know for a fact that 100% of Wordforge that isn't me understood what he meant? Are you a superhero or something?"

Yes.

Can’t do leaflet drops in areas where you don’t control the airspace.

And they are really only good for places where the population isn’t connected to modern telecommunications. You are better off broadcasting news over TV/radio/internet than a leaflet.

What?

Are you kidding?

You of all people are complaining that the sentence Federal Farmer wrote wasn't coherent enough for you? Even though Federal Farmer could have written the sentence better such as, "Time for the CIA to get in gear" everyone except you understood what he meant. Even though he now is trying to backpedal on what he meant. Typical Federal Farmer.

And if you can understand, "Time for the CIA to get in gear" than how can you not understand that was the point that Federal Farmer was trying to make but not in a coherent manner?

The CIA should be barred by Trump from even looking at Iran and the protestors and trying anything.