Let's Start A War (Trees And Things)

gerrymander: Re: Let's Start A War

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:59:58 EST

There is no way those boats could have been packed with enough explosives to put more than a scorch mark on a Perry class frigate, which was the smallest ship involved.

Unfortunately, you're mistaken, on at least three counts. First, the USS C

PenitenziAgite: Re: Let's Start A War

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 02:20:13 EST
Yeah, well in this case he is completely right.
I saw the video. There is no way those boats could have been packed with enough explosives to put more than a scorch mark on a Perry class frigate, which was the smallest ship involved. They we

gerrymander: Re: Let's Start A War

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:27:17 EST
Your willingness to grant credibility to any source except the US government is as striking as it is appalling.

novy: Re: Let's Start A War

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:12:17 EST
Or (e) It didn't actually happen.
"Or maybe the Bush admin is polishing up its propaganda horn for a good honking - 'teh IRANIANS are so super scary - we have to FUCK their shit completel

novy: Re: Let's Start A War

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:06:22 EST
You could also consider possibility that US account of incident was complete nonsense and that trying to figure out why Iranians would do something like might lead nowhere because they might

novy: Re: Let's Start A War

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:53:58 EST
After "clue train" snakes its way through Middle East, maybe it could stop in Washington, where Neanderthal posturing hasn't stopped since Bush-Cheney took office.
As to British example, naval personnel taken by Iran were caught in two small boats after

PenitenziAgite: Re: Let's Start A War

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:46:43 EST
Whoa. Let's just say we're lucky that it's 2007. Not so long ago in history, a look like that from the English monarch meant a whole lot of very uncool shit was about to happen to your country.
Looks like the protocol people at the State dep

3fingerspointback: This Briggs Will Explode

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:30:31 EST
The Pentagon is already backing off of their earlier claim that it was the speedboats that made the threat to explode, and Iranian expatriates don't even recognize the spoken threat as

PenitenziAgite: Re: Let's Start A War

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:29:53 EST
"I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple minutes."
Wait. Stop. Hold on a sec.
Can we take a look at this statement?
First, seeing as how the Pentagon will never, ever let the general public or the press listen to the ac

PenitenziAgite: Re: Well....

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:11:24 EST
I dig your point of view, but as has been remarked elsewhere in this discussion...
Iran is decidedly not a dictatorship. They have a parliamentary system with a clerical council that acts as a kind of turbocharged supreme court, the executive is m

Lou: Re: Let's Start A War

Wed, 9 Jan 2008 17:26:34 EST
To you, maybe. I just see it as a workable tactic, because you know -- it worked. The British backed down.
Of course it worked...they were British.

1fastdog: a small nit

Wed, 9 Jan 2008 16:08:54 EST
but we don't have as sophisticated a grasp of the nuance (full data set) involved in assigning priorities to Ahmadinejad's decision tree and thus being able to predict how he (or his minions) will behave.
Eh, Ahmadinejad is - I wouldn't be too confident of a Westerners grasp of the cultural mechanics of a 'shame based' social milieu as the comparison betw

gerrymander: Re: Let's Start A War

Wed, 9 Jan 2008 10:38:47 EST
A small British patrol craft strayed too close to Iran for Iranian comfort
Unfortunately for the Iranians, "too close for Iranian comfort" is not the same as "invading Iranian territorial waters." The British released the Hombre Secreto (link is to a lame video that uses the song as a soundtrack, ignore the vid - enjoy the song)
'Lets Have A War' -FEAR (again

WMK: Re: Let's Start A War

Wed, 9 Jan 2008 08:40:13 EST
What an awesome song by FEAR! I totally got the reference before the explanation. I had an old soundtrack tape to Repo Man that I listened to frequently. (sorry, I wasn't so hardcore as to own a bunch of Punk vinyl).
I don't care for t

snidleywhiplash: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 13:52:38 EST
"Give guns to the Bush twins" is a new line to me, but I learned this song as "Let's Have a War" off the 1982 album "The Record" by the punk band Fear. It's been covered a bunch of times. It's also on

gerrymander: cue the viking cats

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 13:04:08 EST
How about a song which contains "let's start a war," like this one?

Lou: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 12:57:19 EST
I'm partial to Let Them Eat War by Bad Religion.

skeptic: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 12:55:19 EST
The recent genocidal tribal warfare in Rwanda was based almost entirely upon the kind of motives described in that song (fighting the war in Rwanda rather than New Jersey, was, of course, their big mistake). The rhetoric used to justify war al

thefadd: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 12:48:59 EST
If you're looking for songs that begin "Let's Start A War..." this one's better.

thefadd: Re: Well....

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 12:44:39 EST
Who's batshit insane?

gerrymander: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 12:25:34 EST
some other reason that makes any fucking sense?
There are at least four reasons which make sense, within context:
Probing -- This engagement can be considered a calculated, active assessment of the US naval defense posture.
Gaini

Coelacanth: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 12:17:56 EST
It was clear in the British navy incident that there are factions within the Iranian military & govt with different agendas, possibly including embarrassing other factions with provocations like this. You also can't rule out sheer stupidity or ju

pO157: I used to live in NJ.

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 11:10:34 EST
Let's start a war!
We'll start it in New Jersey!
And I'm okay with that.

novy: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:34:04 EST
I did. It was very funny, and that was why I started by saying that press wasn't necessarily being conspiratorial in this case either.

novy: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:32:41 EST
I named this story after song I once heard:
"There's so many of us
There's so many of us
There's so many, there's so many
There's so many of us
There's so many of us
There's so many.
"Let's start a war
So you can go and die!

zyxwvutsr: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:28:28 EST
I know you like to tie everything in to Bush's lies, but why not click the link in my comment?

novy: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:23:53 EST
Press reports what it gets told by Pentagon. Believing Pentagon reports without making any independent effort to ascertain facts doesn't quite make media co-conspirators, it just makes them lazy. US ships could even enter or come close to entering Iranian

novy: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:17:46 EST
How incidents like this might get "manufactured" would be by sending US ships into waters known to be claimed as territorial waters by Iran and waiting for Iranian Revolutionary Guards to try to do something about it. Remember when Libya claimed Gul

pO157: Re: Well....

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:05:36 EST
What could possibly go wrong?
Heh. Responding with unconventional weapons against an Islamic nation's naval blockage or other conventional attack would go over real well.
But seeing as how our current leader would only start a nuclear apocaly

novy: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:04:07 EST
I tried to mention both that March attack on Brits and Gulf of Tonkin Incident in my final paragraph. And while "US vessels enjoy the right to navigate in international waters, like anyone else", US vessels do not enjoy right to navigate in Iranian territo

zyxwvutsr: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 09:09:26 EST

Bush can't blink these days without spawning a conspiracy theory
The press are in on the conspiracy. Even when he's caught they say it

WMK: Re: Well....

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 08:46:31 EST
Howzabout a hydrogen bomb or 2 in Tehran?
We have a bunch of them in stock - and we have awesome planes that can swoop in and drop those suckers before anyone there even suspects a thing.
That would be pretty cheap and not require much in the

MayorBob: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 08:46:12 EST
Didn't the Iranians pull the same sort of thing with a bunch of Brit military a few months ago? A small British patrol craft strayed too close to Iran for Iranian comfort and the whole crew of Brit commandos ended up enjoying the hospitality of Mahmoud unt

pO157: Well....

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 08:36:30 EST
a) We are bored - let's poke the most dangerous and violent US administration ever with a pointy stick and ...you know...see what happens. Maybe something good?
If I was a batshit insane dictator of a regional power (or perhaps some rogue

WMK: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 08:31:08 EST
What would the Iranian leadership reasoning be behind this?
a) We are bored - let's poke the most dangerous and violent US administration ever with a pointy stick and ...you know...see what happens. Maybe something good?
b) US ships enter our w

joshv: Re: Let's Start A War

Tue, 8 Jan 2008 06:49:28 EST
So yeah, I guess Bush manufactured this incident. Right. Bush can't blink these days without spawning a conspiracy theory.