Friday News Roundup - International
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-02-03/friday-news-roundup-international
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the U.S. would withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan as early as 2013; Syrian government troops opened a new front outside Damascus in their ongoing crackdown on anti-government protesters; and Nigeria's security police said they captured the alleged spokesman of the Islamist group behind a series of bombings that have killed hundreds of people. A panel of journalists joins Diane for analysis of the week's top international news stories.
Guests
David Sanger
chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
Susan Glasser
editor-in-chief, Foreign Policy.
Hisham Melhem
Washington bureau chief, Al-Arabiya News Channel.
Comments
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Withdraw from Afghanistan? Look at a map. Withdraw 'em right through Iran and fill up our gas tanks on the way. Don't have a head-on with the "coalition of the opportunists" (Turkey and Israel) coming the other way. Remember, a ninety million worker bees' nest is at least three times as stingie as a thirty million worker bees' nest, and costs alot more. Hello Chevron and Exxon dividends, goodbye Medicare. The victims will cover their own funerals: It'll be a jackpot: They'll shower us with pistachios.
As Israel escalates tensions and threats towards Iran when oh when will the Diane Rehm Team have Bush administration official and former middle east CIA analyst Flynt Leverett on or his wife Hillary Mann Leverett also a former Bush adminiistration and expert on US/Iranian negotiations on your program to discuss Iran based on facts. Folks should go to Hillary and Flynts website RACE FOR IRAN to learn more about facts on the ground
www.raceforiran.com/
Dr. Bryzinski has predicted that if Israel is successful at dragging the US into a military confrontation with Iran based on unsubstantiated claims that this would further escalate the US's spiral downward both in the eyes of the world and economically. Can your guest discuss his prediction
Also when will the Rehm Team have Iranian experts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on your program to discuss Iran. After an attack? You can help educate the public about the facts on the ground in Iran
Soon after the invasion of Iraq the same group of individuals who lied about WMD's in Iraq began setting the stage for an attack on Iran. Cheney, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Wolfowitz, Condi "mushroom clould"Rice Bolton, Hillary Clinton, Kristol,...(tharr be more) Frum, and many many others began repeating unsubstantiated and inflammatory claims about Iran. I heard then candidates for President Clinton, Obama, McCain repeat these claims on Face the Nation. Bob Schiefer did not challenge these claims. I heard these same individuals repeat these claims on George Stephanapolous Sunday morning news program. He did not challenge the claims. I have heard John Bolton both on the Diane Rehm show and Neil Conans Talk of the Nation repeat these unsubstantiated ( Iran has a nuclear weapons program and repeat the debunked claim that the Iranian President said "wipe Israel off the map" which he did not say) claims about Iran. Guess what Diane and Neil Conan did not challenge John Bolton. I have heard Reuel Marc Gerect repeat these claims on the Diane Rehm show and Diane did not challenge the claims. Rachel Maddow has repeated these claims herself. NPR's Terri Gross has not only allowed these un proven claims to be repeated about Iran she has over and over repeated them herself. One would think that after the horrific job that many MSM host and journalist did in the run up to the unnecessary and immoral invasion of Iraq by not asking simple, obvious and necessary questions about the sources of that alleged intelligence, the validity etc etc that these news host and journalist would at the very least ask challenging questions about the persistent and unsubstantiated claims that have been repeated about Iran for over 10 years. The stage has been set for a pre-emptive attack by Israel on Iran. And MSM has allowed the stage to be set
If Israel attacks Iran...Iran has every right to attack Israel.
Israel has nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that go un inspected. Israel refuses to sign the non proliferation treaty that Iran signed long ago. This is absurd
kathleen wrote:
If Israel attacks Iran...Iran has every right to attack Israel.
We should start working on nuclear free zone in Mideast, including Israel.
Speaking about Afghanistan:
We dismantled Osama's organization that attacked us. What else are we planning to accomplish there?
Sane..yep Iran has been pushing that for quite awhile. Clearly Israel refuses to co-operate. If you go to the IAEA website you can read letters sent to IAEA heads over several decades from the neighborhoods leaders expressing extreme fear and discomfort about Israel's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. How Israel's unwillingness to play by the same rules that they demand their neighbors abide by continue to be a threat and how their massive uninspected stockpiles started the arms race in this neighborhood decades ago
So Diane and Rehm team if you are going to discuss Iran on Monday are you finally going to have Iranian experts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on your program? Come on. or are you going to have warmongering Reul Marc Gerecht again and other guest who want Israel and the US to attack Iran based on unverifiable claims?
All other problems can be traced to artificial colonial borders. The concept was to divide and govern, as long as these groups fought each other, colonial powers felt safe. Unrelated religious and ethnic groups were bundled together, regardless of their history.
Now we treat these borders as untouchable, unless some determined group prevails, after much bloodshed.
Maybe it is time to reexamine this policy.
Southern Sudan was good example and Darfur is another one. Kurdistan is a good example of this too.
Person that helped trace modern Iraq's borders was horrified after the fact.
When we went to Iraq, we took lid of these problems.
Leaders in that part of the world have worried about Israel's uninspected nuclear, biological and chemical weapons for decades. The last US President who demanded that Israel open up their underground nuclear weapons to inspections was President Kennedy
How many billions and weapons contracts will the US have to give Israel to delay an attack on Iran?
@Kathleen
FYI: The bloody and corrupt mullah mafia does not represent the good people of Iran. History is on the side of the good and innocent people of Iran not the mullah mafia. Hillary Mann Leverett and her husband are "intellectuals for hire", who support the mullah mafia not the people of Iran. Jimmy Carter and Brezinski paved the way for the Islamofascists in Iran and have never criticized the mullah mafia for their total lack of respect for human rights in Iran and that is very unethical. I support the good and innocent people of Iran who have been the victims of the mullah mafia and if Hillary Mann Leverett and her husband had any sense of ethics, they'd support the people of Iran and not the mullah mafia.
Humanist, are the good 75 million Iranians saving up those pistachios to shower us?
It's not like drones have an Islamofascist meter on them is it?
People get angry when you blow up their families.
(If you can't see the fascists right in your midst then how do you know what an Islamofascist is?) Our military and our mercenaries could wind up the filling in a jelly sandwich if Israel fires on the friendly. (John Hagee is praying for that barbeque, but wasn't Jesus a lover not a fighter?)
@Pancake Rankin
No! I do not advocate war and there is absolutely no need to bomb Iran.
The problem is all these "intellectuals for hire" such as Hillary Mann Leverett and her husband who have been helping this bloody and corrupt, anti-Iranian mullah mafia to stay in power. The best way to help the people of Iran is not to allow the mullahs to deposit the money they steal on a daily basis in foreign banks. The mullah mafia is doomed due to its illegal and unethical nature and I choose to be on the side of the people of Iran not the mullah mafia. Exposure of the criminal activities of the mullah mafia is a very good way to destroy it without any military action on our part.
"sane wrote:
kathleen wrote:
If Israel attacks Iran...Iran has every right to attack Israel.
We should start working on nuclear free zone in Mideast, including Israel.
Speaking about Afghanistan:
We dismantled Osama's organization that attacked us. What else are we planning to accomplish there?
February 3, 2012 - 11:27 am"
To destroy Pakistan, of course!!
A certain piece of NeoCon filth on this morning's panel had a good bit to say about the weak Pakistan Government and repeated his Ethnic group's outrageous claims of active support, coordination and collusion of the Pakistan Military and Security forces with the Taliban.
I would like to remind the Rat that the Pakistanis lost 20,000 to 30,000 dead, hundreds of thousands displaced and perhaps Billions in lost economic opportunities trying to suppress the Taliban because our dumbazded Military with it's sophisticated equipment is too lazy to secure the borders.
I would also like to remind the Rat that the Pakistani People bravely resisted and overcame the Military Government and in so doing, earned the animosity of the Bush/CIA/NPR/Mossad/FBI/NeoCon/GOP/Jew Media/Military/NRA Kabal who hate Democracy and will do anything to destroy it.
Iran, Pakistan, Haiti, Cuba, just to name a few examples.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
"Humanist wrote:
@Kathleen
FYI: The bloody and corrupt mullah mafia does not represent the good people of Iran. History is on the side of the good and innocent people of Iran not the mullah mafia. Hillary Mann Leverett and her husband are "intellectuals for hire", who support the mullah mafia not the people of Iran."
That's the same manure you people leveled at Scott Ritter when he tried to tell the World that the lousy, stinking, murdering, Bush/CIA/NPR/Mossad/FBI/NeoCon/GOP/Jew Media/Military/NRA Kabal was lying about Iraqi WMD.
"Jimmy Carter and Brezinski paved the way for the Islamofascists in Iran and have never criticized the mullah mafia for their total lack of respect for human rights in Iran and that is very unethical."
Maybe after lousy, lying Traitor Bush sucked up to the Mullah Mafia in order to screw Carter in the Election, he deserved to inherit the whole mess.
"I support the good and innocent people of Iran who have been the victims of the mullah mafia..."
The good and innocent people of Iran were the Victims of the lousy Bush/CIA/NPR/Mossad/FBI/NeoCon/GOP/Jew Media/Military/NRA Kabal that encouraged, funded and armed the Iraqis to start a particularly vicious war on Iran and even joined the attack on Iran, during which our cowardly and rotten military deliberately shot down a Commercial Airliner.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
You are massively disinformed and misinformed, too much Pacifica Radio perhaps? Pakistan is ruled by a highly corrupt and bloody mafia which is heavily influenced by the Saudis.
Khomeini provoked Saddam to invade Iran and that gave Khomeini and his mafia an excuse to totally destroy the Marxists and other forms of oppositon in Iran.
Jimmy carter and Brezinski were totally inept and history is the best evidence of that.
Jews are a people and to blame them for wars...etc, is a sign of ignorance. I suggest you read "why people believe weird things" by Micheal Shermer.