PRESS RELEASE – APRIL 23, 2007


The hunger strike by thirty-nine political prisoners in Iran, protesting deplorable prison conditions, continued Monday.

On April 22, 2007, two prisoners, Khalid Hardani and Nasser K_____, were ordered to the medical clinic at Raji Shar prison due to their worsening physical condition on the sixteenth day of hunger strike. Both men were ordered by clinic officials to end their hunger strike prior to receiving medical care, with no inquiry as to the reason for their strike.

When they refused to end the strike, they were savagely beaten inside the clinic, in full view of medical staff, by professional torture master Aslan Beghi. Neither man received any medical care, neither for the hunger strike's physical effects, nor for the effects of physical torture. They were, instead, dragged back to their filthy cells to recover on their own from the savage beatings.

Mr. Hardani, whose cardiac condition requires medication, has received no medication for his heart condition from prison medical officials in months.

Repeated letters and calls to officials of Amnesty International by Ghazal Omid (www.ghazalomid.com), Iranian dissident and official spokesperson for these 39 political prisoners, have not been returned. UN Human Rights Commission member states have also not responded to repeated calls for intervention.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE LEGITIMIZES IRAN
By Joel C Pousson

American soldiers fighting in the Global War on Terror may have thought that support for their mission among Democrat Party operatives on Capitol Hill was, at most, lukewarm.

Now, the men and women fighting every day in Iraq have another Washingtonian insider to regard with wary eyes, and her name is Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State.

The UK's Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3f96545e-f0f9-11db-838b-000b5df10621.html) reports that Madame Secretary Rice has issued an open invitation to the very government that has fed, supplied and financed the Iraqi insurgency to sit down at the diplomatic table and make recommendations to bring stability to Iraq.

With language straight out of the milquetoast "Iraq Study Group" recommendations (http://www.usip.org/isg/iraq_study_group_report/report/1206/iraq_study_group_report.pdf), Madame Secretary Rice issued an open diplomatic invitation to legitimize the terror-sponsor Iran. Now the Mullahs are asked to join the discussion on the pacification of Iraq.

One may ask what recommendations Ahmadinejad's representatives may offer at this meeting; perhaps a full and complete retreat by US forces in the Global War on Terror, a revocation of our duty to the Iraqi people struggling to establish their representative republic, and capitulation to the Iranian-directed insurgency in Iraq. Iran's involvement in supplying weapons killing Coalition troops in Iraq is obvious (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2866573&page=1). Now, per the US State Department, Iraqis are to ask advice on how to make their lives better from the sponsors of the insurgency.

Moderate Muslims who have fought and to stabilize the situation in Iraq along with the Coalition, facing IEDs and insurgencies directed right from Tehran, are now to understand that the US State Department finds it far too inconvenient to fight the terrorism of the Mullahs.

This new policy from State is in direct opposition to President Bush's stated goals to confront the Axis of Evil in his State of the Union speech of January, 2002. Although President Bush stated clearly that:

"Our nation will continue to be steadfast and patient and persistent…we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans, and bring terrorists to justice….we must prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world."

The US has done nothing to confront Iran's unapologetic support for terrorism. Iran has established terror training camps and conducted terrorism planning and attacks against the US and allies (http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5956) and has used its own corrupt justice system to absolve domestic terrorists of guilt in attacks on its own people (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6557679.stm).

The President also stated in that State of the Union speech that "…some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will…[a]ll nations should know: America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security."

However, Iran and its handmaiden, Syria, have boldly conducted terror training and operations without a single American reprisal (http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20070219-102043-1711r.htm). Even in the face of Iran's blatant involvement in terrorism and attacks on US troops in Iraq, the State Department has responded, not by calling for regime change in Iran or supporting resistance groups there, but praising Iran as a partner in the Middle East and a legitimate power broker.

Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary for Political Affairs, asked the Iranian to work with the US to resolve the situation in Iraq, ignoring Iranian culpability: "I would say that the focus of our efforts should be on the following: to try to convince the Iranian government to play a more productive role, a more positive role to enforce civility in Iraq itself." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070413/pl_afp/irannuclearpoliticsus_070413143611)

The President had a different take:

"America will take the side of brave men and women who advocate these values around the world, including the Islamic world, because we have a greater objective than eliminating threats and containing resentment. We seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror."
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html]

However, the careerists at State do not approve of the War on Terror. They cannot be bothered with continuing the march of freedom. It is far more important to implement the recommendations of politicians Lee Hamilton and James Baker III, such as the diplomatic initiatives towards the terror sponsoring government of Iran.

The sacrifices of over three thousand US families are to be ignored in the spirit of "diplomatic pragmatism" enshrined in the State Department. US military commanders should be livid at this appeasement of the main enemy in the Middle East, a nation not only pursuing the slaughter of innocents in support of political goals, but is rushing to develop nuclear weapons it will use the moment the first operational warhead is produced.

The President stated clearly in that State of the Union address that "…[i]f we stop now, leaving terror camps intact and terror states unchecked, our sense of security would be false and temporary. History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom's fight."

Sadly for the Iranian people, the US State Department simply was not listening.


Joel C Pousson is a human rights activist and Campaign Manager of www.FutureOfIran.com.

A Few Words on Brevity and the Soul of Wit

Dear Readers:

Today I had a talk with my older sister, a teacher of English and drama for over 30 years.

She made a very good point, that the folks I am trying to convince are very busy people, and that they don't have time to read through three printed pages of screed to get my points.

So, as a result of her straightforward and constructive criticism (of which she is never in short supply), I will work hard to trim down my comments into a far more readable format.

I think you readers here will find shorter, more concise commentary, as well as more sourcing.

I apologize to those of you who have found my postings here far too long. For those in that camp, I think you will find "The Bropous Chronicles" a far more readable, and eminently more concise source of information on a variety of subjects.

Thank you for your patience as my writing skills evolve, and for your continued interest.

That which does not grow, stagnates.

Joel

It's Sunday, time to rest up, "fall back to leap forward" as the world-popular French say, and being a swords-and-sorcery fan, I'm going to recommend some good escapist reading material.

The above picture, a painting by artist Rodney Matthews, portrays the Dragon Lord "Elric of Melnibone", an incarnation of the Eternal Champion, from a series by one of the seminal masters of fantasy fiction, Michael Moorcock (www.multiverse.org).

Elric, the last Emperor of Melnibone, ended the 10,000 reign of the Dragon Lords after finding the crooning runeblade "Stormbringer". An albino sorceror, Elric's physical stamina is only maintained by consuming rare herbs, until Stormbringer's magical quality of transferring the life energy of his victims to Elric allows him to become almost a demigod.

Sworn to serve the cosmic forces of Chaos, Elric rebels against his demon lord Arioch, and finds that he is one incarnation of the Eternal Champion, doomed to live many lives as a hero defending the power of the Eternal Balance in the infinite battles between Chaos and Law.

You can find Elric's tale at http://www.amazon.com/Elric-Melnibone-Michael-Moorcock/dp/0441203981 .

Next Sunday, I will review George RR Martin's excellent series beginning with "A Game of Thrones".

And Now For Something Completely Different...

For the Sunday posting, a little lighter topic:

AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE: MOVIE FILM FOR THEATERS

I saw this on Friday, and oh man, my sides are STILL hurting!

I love the show, it is perfect for my sick, oddball sense of humor.

This is a fun, hilarious, side-splitting funny movie, and worth every dime I paid to see it.

Of course, it's a movie for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force fan base, probably not something the mainstream audiences might "get" at first blush.

The opening sequence on the moviegoing etiquette completely kiiled me, and set the pace for the entire film. All the favorites are there, including Master Shake, Frylock and Meatwad, and their perfect New Jersey slob archetype neighbor Carl, but also stars old favorites like the Moonites (hey, Boston, remember them?), Oglethorpe, and the over/undersexed robot Ghost of Christmas Past, and the plot is pretty straightforward, but the jokes are sideplittingly hilarious.

With insights into low-grade rock and roll bands, the exercise craze, and the real estate sales market, ATHF is a fantastic movie for those who love the "Adult Swim" feature on Cartoon Network. There would have been bigger box office if it had opened in more theaters.

If you love the show, you will want to see this flick!

My Fax to President Bush re: Nicholas Burns

I am so mad about the undercutting of the Iranian resistance by that despicable Clintonista Nicholas Burns that I have sent the following fax to the President asking for the man to be fired:

President George W Bush
The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500
FAX: (202) 456-2461


VIA FACSIMILE


MOST URGENT FOR THE PRESIDENT


April 14, 2007


Dear Mr. President:


I am very disturbed by Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, stabbing the Iranian people in the back, and making it seem that the policy of the United States Government is to acquiesce to the brutal Revolutionary government in Iran's death grip on its people.


Mr. President, Mr. Burns is a holdover from the bad old days of the Clinton Administration who needs to be removed from this high-ranking office. He is declaring the defunct and terror-appeasing policies of the Clinton Administration, not enunciating the clarity of your own terrorist-defeating policy of the Global War on Terror.


He stated, before Congress, on March 6, 2007, that it is the official policy of the State Department "to try to convince the Iranian government to play a more productive role, a more positive role to enforce civility in Iraq itself."


Mr. President, put yourself in the shoes of the people in Iran who take their lives, and those of their entire families, in their hands to stand up and speak out against the government there, and then see that the third-highest ranking official in the State Department is advocating for partnership with the very murderers who are torturing and raping women as an established policy to quell dissent.


There are Americans and Iranians working together to help the people of Iran remove their terror-sponsoring government from within, who are working for a peaceful overthrow of the keystone of the Axis of Evil, and Nicholas Burns is before Congress stating clearly that the US is begging Iran to play nice in Iran on bended knee.


Nicholas Burns lends credence to the Mullahs and Ahmadenijad, Mr. President, and he has no business whatsoever influencing US policy on Iran.


You forgave too many of the Clinton-era careerists at State and in the Intelligence Services, Mr. President, and what did that get us? It got us all a shadow government using the offices at State as well as at the CIA who worked diligently, and misusing the authority of the US government to make it appear they had your own official sanction to countermand the very orders you issued.


Sir, I know you are as stalwart a voice for Iranian freedom as anyone out there, and the Iranian people are looking directly to you for some sign that the US backs their efforts to remove the Ahmadenijad regime before it is able to develop a nuclear warhead. I am asking you, as my President, to please make a speech declaring outright that the United States of America supports the voices of Freedom inside Iran in their struggle to win back their nation from those who twist the words of their God to excuse bloody-handed murder of innocent human beings.


I remind you of your own words in your second inaugural speech: "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies." Nicholas Burns, Mr. President, has walked all over your words that gave hope to millions of Iranians struggling to overthrow the terror-sponsoring government of Iran from within.


The people of Iran need your clarification on this issue, Sir, and many more will die at the hands of the brutes in Tehran, emboldened by Nicholas Burns' Chamberlain-esque words.


Please, Mr. President, make the public statement that the United States in no way accepts the terror-sponsoring nation of Iran as a partner in any arena whatsoever, neither in Iraq, nor in the Persian Gulf, nor even in its brutalization of its own citizens.


And, Mr. President, please fire Nicholas Burns immediately. The man has handed the terrorists who control Iran a diplomatic victory, and political cover for their repression of dissent.


Appeasement of dictators only strengthens their hands, Sir. Your voice, speaking clearly in support of those working to bring Iran back to a modern, pro-Western representative republic, are begging for you to hold out the hand of hope. This is one speech that could lead to massive demonstrations in Iran and the removal of the madman Ahmadenijad.


With great respect and sincere admiration,

[Signature Block]

----------------------------

I invite all Friends of Iranian Freedom to also fax the President and express your outrage over the despicable statement by Mr. Burns, and ask that the President fire this Clinton holdover immediately and without delay.

Nicholas Burns is a man of whom the President's loyalty is undeserved.

The people in Iran fighting for their own freedom deserve far better from the only power in the world with the power, and the will, to help them.

Nicholas Burns and the Chamberlains at State

In a recent press conference, the slimy and greasy Clintonista spokesman for the State Department, Nicholas Burns, expressed part of the independent foreign policy that the appeasers that infest the State Department are attempting to establish:


"The message to Iran is, we're not wishing to provoke a conflict with them, in fact we wish to have a peaceful relationship with Iran," Burns said, adding that the United States, would, however, defend its troops in Iraq if they came under attack. "I would say that the focus of our efforts should be on the following: to try to convince the Iranian government to play a more productive role, a more positive role to enforce civility in Iraq itself."

Nicholas Burns and the civil servants at the State Department have far more in common with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain than they do with the man who has been elected to direct foreign policy, US President George W Bush, who has freed more human souls than Josef Stalin butchered.

And now we are asking Iran to help enforce civility in Iraq? This is tripe directly out of the Iraq Surrender Group Report, not the clear anti-terror sponsor policy enunciated by the President.

The gains in the Global War on Terror have been made despite the best efforts of the US State Department to hamstring the progress of the war. In September 2003, the filth at State strangled the money supply to the US military at a critical juncture, in a petty bureaucratic struggle over who was going to run the reconstruction show in Iraq. No money for reconstruction was allowed to get to the people in Iraq who were to rebuild that nation, and the Iraqi people saw US advisors sitting on their asses, not doing a damn thing to help them recover from the war. As a result, the anti-US insurgency was born. The anti-US insurgency in Iraq has direct roots in the civil servants at the US State Department.

This is a bold statement, but this American is frigging fed up with the Clintonistas at State doing their best to cause the US mission in Iraq, to establish a stable, representative republic, fail. They are the policy arm of the Peacenik movement, and daily work diligently to stab US troops in the field right in their backs.

In a recent letter to a dear friend who took great umbrage to Burns' appeasement declaration, I stated the following:

"The appeasers over at the State Department would be negotiating today with the successors of Hitler's Third Reich rather than had us have fought the Second World War.

"One of President Bush's greatest failings, when he took office, was not firing each and every Clinton appointment at the State Department, the CIA, the Justice Department, and the Pentagon.

"However, he not only is a very forgiving and accepting man (to a fault, sadly), and then he had the 9/11 attack nine months into his Presidency. That consumed his time before his Administration had a chance to fully staff itself with new people. The Democrats controlled the Senate when Bush started his Presidency; it was really a 50/50 split, but the power-sharing agreements the Republicans signed on to in that first term really handed all power over approving the President's appointed advisors to the Democrats, and they were already out for blood to revenge Bill Clinton's well-deserved impeachment. They did everything they could do to slow down the appointments, and when 9/11/2001 came around, he had to freeze everyone in place and simply concentrate on the War.

"So, you had jerks like Valerie Plame at CIA doing her best to sabotage Bush's foreign policy regarding Iraq, and others like the schmucks you ran into at the State Department who scuttled your grant request, all working to sideline the War on Terror.

"I do not like Nicholas Burns in the least, and the State Department is doing its best to just maintain the Status Quo, and old-time hacks like James Baker and Lee Hamilton, who are up to their necks in Saudi money, argue for limitation and containment strategies. There is a firmly entrenched civil service Mafia in Washington, intent on just keeping the world situation as is, afraid of any change because they would all be forced to actually work for their big fat paychecks, and even worse, they would be cut out of the money the Wahabbist Saudis, the Iranian government, and other sleazy terror-supporting groups are spreading around to undercut President Bush.

"For all of his faults, at least the President abandoned the old policies of just getting along with brutal thugs and tyrants in Arab countries, and tried his best to start a movement to establish elected governments in the Arab world to replace besotted dictators and spoiled mandarin royal families. Problem is, those dictators and royal families had many US politicians bought and paid for, over decades, and many of the powerful in Washington built mansions on bribes and "donations to political campaigns", and established political dynasties, sending their spoiled children to Harvard on Saudi Wahabbist bribes.

"Nicholas Burns is not, let us be clear about this, is not stating the President's policy, he is stating the State Department's policy. We both know that the US, at least on the military and military intelligence side, is working to confront Iran. The civilians at State, in the CIA, and the civilian network within the Defense Department care only for their continued paychecks and their fat retirements.

"Don't let political hack jackasses like Nicholas Burns get you down.

"Here are some words I want you to read closely, and ponder them deeply. This is a quote by my favorite author of all time, John Roald Ruel Tolkien, author of "The Lord of the Rings". I have read the trilogy twenty-six times. He said of his book:

" '...[The Lord of the Rings] is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in 'world politics' of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, forgotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless." Letters of JRR Tolkien, page 160.'

"My dear friend, you and I are like Frodo and Sam bringing the evil Sauron to destruction while his attention is concentrated on the armies gathered on his doorstep. And there are thousands of us, the "small, ungreat, forgotten in the places of the Wise and Great", the voices who will never give up on freedom, and will not accept the civilians in the US government to allow the bloody handed bastards like Ahmadinejad to retain power.

"Our mission continues, and we do not falter, we do not blanch, we do not quail in the face of enemies of Freedom, be they in Tehran, or sitting on their bloated behinds at a desk in the State Department. Freedom only fails if the small, the ungreat, and the forgotten abandon their unforseen and unforseeable acts of will to bring down the Evil that man does to himself.

"Nicholas Burns is going to eat his words. I guarantee it."

Nicholas Burns and his Neville Chamberlain clones in the State Department can kiss this Cajun's rear end. This nation is NOT going to sit back and ask Iran to get involved in "civility in Iraq", this nation is going to work to bring the bloodthirsty scumbag Ahmadinejad and the bloated Mullahs who are perverting the religion of Islam to excuse their terror attacks on innocent women and children down.

When Mussolini was strung up by the heels in Milan, the Italian people did not ask permission from the US State Department (which, let us not forget, in 1944 was packed to the gills with Soviet spies) to depose Il Duce and hang him. Similarly, independent voices in the West are going to make sure Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs have their "Mussolini Moment" and see Iran returned to the people, and the State Department can sit and spin.

Nicholas Burns has had his "jump the shark moment".

It is high time that the voices of freedom at the State Department, and I know there are folks there who do want Iran's government brought down from within, stand up to the appeasement and status quo crowd and support this President.

Not a single civil servant at State ever received as much as one vote from the American People. George W Bush did. It's time that these Chamberlain clones realize that the President makes the policy, not some lifetime staffer coffee klatch with a grudge against Republicans and who would use the innocent Iranian people as a cudgel against the President and the US military.

Joel Pousson
April 14, 2007

April 12, 2007

Responses to Comments

A friend of mine from Lucianne.com, a poster by the name of "ForNow", has made some comments in response to my April 7 post on this blog.

From his comments:

"…some cultures do have distinctive characteristics, and I have spoken with quite a few Iranians over the years and decades, and have read about Iranian issues over the years. It's hard not to note an Iranian tendency towards being possessed by one idea or another and toward having a consuming agenda, howsoever well-intentioned it sometimes is." [For complete context of the discussion, please visit the "comments" for April 7, 2007.]

My response to him, here, in open forum:

I understand your points, ForNow, and immediately recognized you as one of the posters at Lucianne.com. Yes, I most certainly was advocating most vociferously for a military attack on Iran, as I enumerate in the blog posts here on this site, where I can say what I want without getting my own words edited, or even outright deleted, because I have committed some violation not enumerated in the rules posted on that fine and irreplaceable site.

Yes, I clearly advocated a war on Iran, and I changed my position based on new, and very credible, data. My discussions with Ghazal convinced me to reconsider my own strategy suggestions, and I am not a man whose opinions sway with the wind or who changes fundamental beliefs because of ideas thrown at me based upon shaky logical foundations.
Additionally, I just cannot agree that there is any "national tendency" in a nation that has produced 70 million souls.

I work with Ghazal in a sincere effort to help the Iranian people free themselves. I have been exposed to many voices outside and inside the nation of Iran, and am thoroughly convinced that the people there are ready to overthrow the vicious Revolutionary government. This is in no way based on some fatuous arguments; it is a result of honest, open and productive conversations with Ghazal, and some of the people she, and now I, am working with to cause an overthrow of the Mullahs.

In the past weeks, there have been three massive demonstrations within Iran. Have we seen them? Nope, we haven't. That is partly because of the inability to get hard news out of the country, but is also a direct result of the Western media's complicity in hiding the truth about what is going on inside the country.

I do find it despicable that the so-called "objective media" is nothing of the sort, but is rather openly engaged in the short-circuiting of legitimate resistance groups, and is also complicit in the silencing of the moderate Islamic voices that are trying to do the very thing for which so many Americans ask, and that is to speak out against the perversion of their own religion, used as an excuse by bloodthirsty Wahabbist terrorists.

I do think you most definitely are painting the Iranians with far too broad a brush, my friend. Even in a small state in the US like Louisiana, my own home state, you cannot state that there is any sort of "Louisiana tendency" no more than there is any "New Hampshire tendency" nor a "Colorado tendency".

I also knew Iranians prior to the Revolution. Here are the two groups with whom I had direct interaction:

1. At Encampment for Civil Air Patrol at Keesler AFB near Biloxi, MS in 1977, I was invited at the mess hall to sit with a group of six Iranian Royal Air Force pilots. This thirteen-year-old kid was taken in like a little brother, and these guys were some of the most wonderfully decent and welcoming men I have ever met. They were very interested in my own background, as I was in theirs, and they had the best time answering this young fellow's questions about being a pilot, and about their nation. Sadly, I am sure that every one of these fine Iranian heroes died in the ensuing chaos of the Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.

2. The next year, as I was working at a McDonald's in Beaumont, TX, I worked with an Iranian "crew leader" who was a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth pro-Khomeini freak. He and I had some epic arguments in that kitchen, and late in our time together, I nearly had to fight for my very life when I stated, clearly and unequivocally, that Khomeini should be shot, sparing the Iranian people from a brutal thug who was intent on turning the nation into a religious madhouse, a situation that would play out very badly in international politics. It was not long afterwards that this jackass disappeared, presumably to join the revolution in Iran.

No one is able to make a psychoanalysis of the entire Iranian populace, and to say that Iranians-this or Iranians-that just short-sells the dominance of individual personality over collective consciousness. Iran has produced people of EVERY type of personality, from the peaceful, quiet folks to the raving, lunatic fringe, just as the US has done, just as Mexico has done, just as Argentina has done, just as India has done.

There is NO "Iranian" predisposition to exaggeration, nor to under-exaggeration, nor to overachievement, nor to underachievement, nor to inherent honesty, nor to inherent dishonesty.

Iranians are PEOPLE, my friend, and just like people everywhere, you find it takes all kinds to make the world. There are all kinds of Iranians, ForNow, just as there are all kinds of Americans. Please try to remember that.

bropous

UEFA Cup News: Manchester United 7, AS Roma 1

What an incredible performance by the Red Devils, with Cristiano Ronaldo finally breaking his long drought by scoring twice in the UEFA Cup second leg quarterfinal match against AS Roma.

The smile says it all!

Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007

I just want to stop for a moment and extend a Happy Easter to all those who are Christians out there.

Christianity was a huge gift to the world because, at its very core, the admonition "Treat others as you would be treated" outranks all others.

I am hoping that by next Easter, the trend of Freedom that has seen Afghanistan and Iraq throw off the strangling grip of despotism extends to other nations.

Here, in Colorado, the snow falls. In other parts of the world, even on this day, the blade of the guillotine falls.

Humanity has a lot to learn, but let us not forget that it has learned much already.

April 7, 2007 - Out of Iraq - East or West?

I have been conversing with brilliant and prolific Iranian dissident Ghazal Omid (http://www.ghazalomid.com , http://www.ghazalomid.com/videos , http://www.livinginhell.com ) for only a very short time, but I have been impressed enough with her tenacity and her intellect, as well as her cogent arguments, to change some preconceptions that I had regarding the wisdom of a US military attack on Iran at the present time.

I am an independent military analyst, having studied military history and military science for over 30 years. I am no great soldier, having only served in the US Army as an M60A1 tanker at Ft Knox in 1982-1983 before leaving the Army after 3.5 months. I was too much of an individualist to settle into the last years of the Carter military (the Reagan reforms had not reached into the training brigades when I signed up for delayed entry while still in high school).

However, my brigade commander at the time, Lt Col Birdingame, spoke to me about the responsibilities of a US citizen to his country, and the requirement of each citizen to find some way to serve his country. I never forgot that, and have never wavered in my support of the US military, and have independently lobbied elected officials to press for funding for troop levels and military hardware advances ever since.

I have intesively studied military strategy and have had, as a personal mission, a conviction to support the military and its causes as a civilian, and understand military studies as thoroughly as a graduate from Staff Colleges. I understand the tactical, operational and strategic levels of military functions, and even though I have no extensive military credentials, I know from which end of the tube the round emits, if you can read me 5x5.

When I first contacted Ghazal, I was thoroughly convinced that a US attack on Iran should most certianly occur, with these objectives:

1. Degredation of anti-air assets through concentrated SEAD attacks;

2. Removal of SSM threat in the Persian Gulf littoral and removal of ASM abilities through air superiority and immediate removal of Iranian naval assets, including denial of small boat launch through minelaying and selective insertion of Special Forces to slips and launch areas;

3. Reduction of Iranian government anti-insurgent assets through attacks on Iranian military and Revolutionaryu Guards assembly areas;

4. Elimination of Iranian nuclear facilities with ground-penetrator small-yield high explosive (250-lb) munitions;

5. Release of Iranian ethnic resistance groups which have been trained, supplied, and supported by US Special Forces working in-country to topple the Iranian government and raise indigenous resistance to support the overthrow of the current regime.

In our conversations, I learned of her stolid conviction that the current regime has over three years before reaching operational status with an atomic fission weapon, that the Iranians' patriotic fervor would galvanize around the government, no matter its brutality, in the face of a US attack, and that legitimate resistance groups in-country, with the proper funding, would be able to remove the current government far before a nuclear weapons program reaped its goals.

What is important now is to put the disparate pieces together and come up with a cogent total picture. US and allied naval forces massing in the Arabian Sea and the Eastern Med, as well as developments in the US, are pointing to one conclusion: The US is preparing for an assault either on Iran, which would be a tragic mistake and could actually set back the Grand Strategy in the Global War on Terror, or we are getting ready to hit Assad's Syria, which would end up isolating Iran and cut off logisitical and command and control to Hezbollah, and avert a Syrian attack on Israel into the Goan Heights in support of Iran, if it is attacked.

I am just a regular guy out here in Colorado who keeps up with military and geopolitical developments, and who has the ability, with a 30-year background in military science and military research, to put the pieces together and can see where the main thrust is heading. I have a sincere desire to see Iran freed with as few innocent lives lost as humanly possible, and with no US military casualties. I fully support the Global War on Terror, because I know what radical Islamic groups can do with conventional weapons, and can also understand what will happen if NBC agents are passed to the wrong hands by the Mullahs and their myrmidons in Teheran.

What I am unable to determine in the current picture is whether the thrust is headed west out of Iraq into Iran, or East into Syria towards the Mediterranean. One goal, into Iran for regime change, can very well fail in the face of Iranian nationalistic patriotism. The other goal, westward into Syria simply for degredation of Syrian military capabilities and elimination of terrorist training areas, is a more reachable goal for now, with redirection of resistance funding in Iran to bring down that government without US military operations.

Joel Pousson
Independent Military Analyst
Castle Rock, CO

Friday, April 6, 2007

"Good Friday"

This week, the UEFA soccer championships have continued. Yes, I am an American who is a HUGE soccer fan.

Soccer is a tremendously fast-paced game, played by men (and women, in their leagues) at the pinnacle of athletic conditioning, and a sport that exhibits sportsmanship, cunning, and quick decisions made in split seconds by eleven team members functioning as an organic unit. It is, truly, "the Beautiful Game."

That is, however, on the field. In the stands, the conditions can be far different.

Soccer hooliganism is a pervasive infection spreading through soccer fandom. Fans need to stand up and bring it to a screeching halt.

This week, yes, yet again, two tremendously embarrassing events for soccer fans worldwide marred the important work on the field, and shifted the focus up into the bleachers, instead of on the field, where the focus belongs.

At the game in Rome between Manchester United and AS Roma, two of the top teams in the world, you'd think the fans had been culled from the most base prisons of both Italy and England. Roma fans and Man U fans tied it up, and the Roman police waded in with batons and riot gear, wailing away and cracking heads.

One visual irony was that, above the Roma fans, a massive banner swayed back and forth at the end of a thirty-foot pole, emblazoned with "SPQR", abbreviations for "The Senate and People of Rome." The whole scene up there above the field was like a two-thousand year throwback to the days of the gladiatorial games and the horse races of the Circus Maximus when centurions, on orders of Roman emperors, waded into Roman crowds, hacking left and right with their gladii iberii (shortswords) and slamming down the rioters with their scuta (shields) to restore some semblance of order.

Yesterday, in the UEFA quarterfinal match between Sevilla, Spain, and the English Premiere League team Tottenham Hotspurs, the situation was similar, although the Spanish police were slightly more reticent to use brute force. Tottenham and Sevilla were on the pitch, the Hotspur goalie drew a foul against a Sevilla striker, and a penalty kick was awarded. In the stands, the fans went ballistic, they went at each other, hammer and tong, out for blood, and they got it.

In Italy, earlier in the season, in the incredibly talented league Calcio Serie A, at a game between Palermo and Catania, fans threw so many flaming, smoking flares onto the pitch that the game had to be stalled over half an hour so the players down on the field could breathe. In the stands, if I remember correctly, a few fans slipped this surly mortal coil and assumed immortality at the hands of their fellow soccer lovers.

What in the heck is wrong with people?

It is a game, folks! What is happening on the pitch is not life and death, so why turn buying a ticket to a soccer game a lottery ticket to the great beyond?

In our world, we have plenty of things that can kill us instead of being in the middle of riots in the bleachers catalyzed by someone's mindless fanaticism over a basic, simple, and beautiful game.

Here is a dose of reality for my fellow soccer fans: The game on the pitch is going to have its ups and downs. Your team is going to do great, AND your team is going to do horribly. Your team is going to win, AND your team is going to lose. And, yes, your team is going to benefit from stupid referee decisions, AND your team is going to get shafted by the same stupid decisions.

And you in the stands, it is YOUR responsibility to keep your head on your shoulders, not elsewhere, if you get my drift. It is your responsibility, as a ticket holder, to not only watch the field, but those around you as well. If you see some drunken and/or belligerent total freak who is giving all the signs of getting so worked up he will rip a seat out of the stands and hurl it, go and tell a policeman.

Ask yourself: Did that hooligan pay for your ticket? Nope. Is that hooligan going to give you money back for ruining your game? Nope. And is that hooligan going to pay the penalty for besmirching The Beautiful Game? Nope.

We ALL pay the price for soccer hooliganism, and for battles in the lists between fans. And when you travel to support your beloved team, you are a representative, an ambassador, of that team, of your city, of your nation. And, yes, you are there as a representative of all the other fans, like me, who are not lucky enough to make it to the stands for that important UEFA quarterfinal match. Act like it.

We are all soccer fans, my friends, and we are all tarred with the same brush when a few unbalanced loons ruin the reputation of fans of what is the most enjoyable fan sport in the world.

Joel Pousson
American Soccer Fan

Nancy Pelosi Forgets Olmert's Words

April 5, 2007

Nancy Pelosi told Bashar Assad that Israel was ready to enter into peace talks, and when asked, PM Olmert of Israel stated quite clearly that he told Madame Pelosi no such thing.

Bropous has rooted out the reason that Nancy "Damascus" Pelosi thought Olmert gave her the go-ahead. Old Nancy "Damascus" Pelosi was busted red-handed hitting a little Syrian sensemilla before her meeting with Bashar "Short Eyes" Assad.




Nancy "Damascus" Pelosi's Rainbow Tour (little allusion to "Evita" there) to the Mid East is a perfect example of a person who is in way over their heads, intellectually. Nancy is a pretty singularly moronic person, but of course, it is her mindless, base constituents who inflicted this political STD upon the nation.




Nancy flew right from PM Olmert's office into Damascus airport, where planeloads of Hizbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters waved at her plane from airliner windows and laughed as they were getting ready to head to Teheran for terrorist training, at the very same airport where their brothers-in-terror were landing and heading out to prepare a mass wave of terror attacks if Iran is attacked.




Nancy got there, with her pea-brain all atwitter over her heady celebrity status, and stuck her foot right in her wrinkle-lined mouth. She completely lost in translation the things that Assad was telling her, swallowed his bait and ran with it, clicking to a news conference in her stiletto heels, and declared "peace in our time".




Assad, after closing the door when she left, laughed his ass off with his inner circle and returned to logistics works in support of Hizbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and their preparations to attack Israel in the Golan Heights.




Nancy then flew to Saudi Arabia, sat in an empty seat before an empty legislature hall, and asked, "So when do I meet the femaile Saudi elected officials? I thought we could, well, you know, girl talk."




Saudi women could not be reached for comment. Their husbands refused to allow them to leave the house to talk to this moronic freak.




Women are every bit as capable as men to serve as elected officials. However, an idiot is an idiot, no matter what their sex. Nancy "Damascus" Pelosi is a dangerous enabler of terrorism, no matter where she goes, no matter upon which dictator's rear end she leaves lipstick traces.




Nancy, shut the hell up and just stay home. You are killing US military men and women with the mixed signals you sent to Syria. You've done enough damage, just go back for another Botox treatment or another facelift. You're looking really, really old.



Joel Pousson

NEW INFORMATION ON IRAN

New Information on Iran

In my recent discussions with a brilliant Iranian dissident, Ghazal Omid (http://www.livinginhell.com/ http://www.ghazalomid.com/), I have come to change some of my prior opinions on Islam, Iran, and the wisdom in a US attack on Iran.

I am now thoroughly convinced that an attack on Iran right now is the last thing the Bush Administration should do.

Iranians are like Israelis; they are not their religion first, they are Iranians first, Muslims second. There is a great love of their nation in most Iranians, and although they hate the government of the Mullahs, they would hate an attack on their country even more.

University students in Iran, as a price for their continued approval to extend their educations, have been required to sign up as brigades of suicide bombers. Innocent children are being shipped to take up positions next to the very strategic locations the Mullahs know are on the targeting list. Secret police have stepped up their campaigns of blood and rape, snatching people up left and right, killing them in custody, and using them as silent reminders of what happens when you speak up.

Additionally, the Mullahs and their puppets in Damascus have been burning up jet fuel like crazy shipping Hizbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters into Teheran for training, then back to Damascus airport for dispersal (with logistic and command support supplied by senior Syrian military commanders), across the Middle East and points elsewhere, to prepare for massive terror attacks to be unleashed when the US attacks Iran.

Iranian resistance groups, and their connections in the West, have been turned by Iranian Revolutionary Guards agents. People who came to the West on Iranian passports, or even traveling on diplomatic credentials but allowed by the Mullahs to travel with their entire families, have been snatched up and their words taken as gospel by people in our own government who are entrusted with winnowing the truth from the lies, and are supposed to be working for Iranian freedom.

Inside Iran, credible sources are reporting that the Iranian nuclear program is at a bare minimum three years away from producing a warhead, and yet US intelligence is being fed disinformation that the Mullahs are right on the verge of producing a 150 megaton nuclear warhead, by les agents provocateurs who are sent by Teheran to trigger a premature war.

Why? Well, the Mullahs are running scared. Over 70% of the current population of Iran is under 30 years of age, and 55% percent of those people are women. The Iranian people are fed up with the rape rooms, the torture chambers, the games that the Mullahs are playing even with the remains of the prisoners they have raped and beaten to death, using custody of the bodies as legal yo-yos to taunt grieving families and ensure that survivors do not tell their neighbors, and the world, what happened to their daughters and sons at the tender mercies of the left hands of the Mullahs.

Right now, the Mullahs can't even get more than 200 paid protestors to show up to throw rocks and firecrackers at the British Embassy, and now have to resort to official stories in their media that the UK is prepping its pilots to conduct kamikaze attacks on Iranian schools and hospitals. All this is in a desperate effort to stave off the inevitable, and that is, a popular uprising inside Iran.

The Mullahs are anything but dumb, and they have infiltrated legitimate resistance efforts in the West with their own agents to redirect US funds meant to support anti-government and moderate government elements, sending the money instead right into the back pockets of Ahmedinajad's secret club, or to Rafsanjani's multi-million dollar office building projects in Dubai. Money that is supposed to be buying printing presses and protest placards inside Iran to rile the people up to protest instead is spent on expensive rugs and other smarmy, sycophantic bribes meant to open the doors for feathering personal nests, of US politicians and expatriot Iranians alike.

US laws that were passed to cut off the flow of cash to terror groups are every day flaunted and sidestepped, and the river of dollars flowing from the West to Teheran, thence through tributaries to Damascus, Beirut, Gaza, Riyadh, and other points Wahabbist, funds the very weapons that every day kill Americans, moderate Muslims and other voices of freedom throughout the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. Iranian banks send interest they charge unwitting terror funding streams right into the coffers of the Revolutionary Guards, and they do legally and openly, and nothing whatsoever is done to stop them.

To add insult to injury, there are people living in freedom, who should be doing everything they can do to free their countrymen back in Iran, instead spending their time purchasing huge mansions and fancy cars on money made from trading with the Iranian government. People to whom the Iranians kept in the enslavement of the Islamic Republic look for help to throw off their shackles actually sell the very fetters of enslavement to the Mullahs and the Revolutionary Guards. This is tantamount to wealthy Jewish people selling barbed wire, poison gas and guard dogs to the monsters in Berlin in 1944.

Even voices who should be speaking out for freedom of all people, not just isolated allegiances to individual nations, fight and scrap amongst themselves like junk yard dogs over a bone for personal enrichment, instead of working in concert to form effective coalitions to fight as a unified front to combat the Mullahs and their secret police.

And behind it all, cowering behind walls of lies and distortions, the Mullahs get fat, the Revolutionary Guards crank out battalion after battalion of terrorists they shuffle out through Damascus, while the West sits complacent, infrequently stirred to offense by political maneuvers like Iranian kidnapping of British Marines in Iraqi waters, half-heartedly complaining why these barbarous beasts had not been put down decades ago and grousing for a war to end such acts of piracy, and quickly turn back to the hypnotic Svengali, weeping over Anna Nicole's funeral or Angelina Jolie's newest adopted trophy, ignoring actual tragedies and butchery on a mass scale that could be stopped in its tracks with just a few million dollars to legitimate Iranian resistance groups.

And we, in the West, are saving the world from WHAT, exactly?

Joel Pousson

April 3, 2007