Mutiny! Admiral Mullen Sends Israel A Message: NO "Green Light" To Attack Iran

[kpete]

Ha'aretz's Amos Harel:

... A senior U.S. strategic analyst says the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, sent Israel an unequivocal message stating that Israel does not have a "green light" from the U.S. to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1000091.html

[Hydra]

1. Olmert: "Bush said I could- he outranks you!" n/t

[Turbineguy]

2. No Green Light?

The lamp must be burned out. That happens all the time. I saw it on Fox News. As long as the red lights are working in the other direction, you can go.

Oh, I forgot::sarcasm:

[bdamomma]

3. oh boy, Mullen is being very aggressive with his opinions

I hope he gives Cheney hell when he has too. Cuz Cheney is like a dog with a bone, and will not give up.

[tburnsten]

4. Don't care if they do

just bad timing is all, Iran is trouble. War should be avoided when possible but it is a recurring theme in human history and it will continue to be. Sometimes war is a neccessary evil, I just hope we can get the Iraqi government stood up on its own feet soon so we can get the bulk of our forces out and let their security forces get some experience at keeping order without the corruption that they used to be plagued with.

Iran is no good though, too much rhetoric coming from them. Politically they act like a seven year old, whining and stomping for attention. If their leaders weren't so god-awful petulant they would probably find that they get much more international support.

[Clark2008]

5. Hmmm...

"If their leaders weren't so god-awful petulant they would probably find that they get much more international support."

Sounds suspiciously like the US's leaders.

[tburnsten]

12. Not saying it doesn't

Just that statements about wanting to wipe Israel off the map do little to gain sympathy for Iran in any way. Having paid attention to my world history classes in high school, I would rather give full support to a close ally like Israel than sit back and let them be freely attacked by their ideologically driven neighbors. Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear sites to prevent or slow their acquisition of nuclear weapons, furthering their chances for survival. Why would Iran want to wipe Israel off the map? I am sure many Iranians are not as driven as most of their leaders are, but their leaders are worrisome.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. So you're fine with Israel wiping Iran off the map...

Do you know what a "hypocrite" is?

[tburnsten]

16. There is a huge difference

between what I said and what you said I said. I am fine with Iran's totally unregulated nuclear program being bombed back into the stone age, because they are a very aggressive and confrontational country that has threatened to commit acts like eliminating Israel. I am not fine with an entire nation being eliminated over ideological differences or religious fundamentalism.

Try not to misquote me too much.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. So you're in favor of bombing that aggressive country that hasn't bombed anybody.

Apparently you don't know what it means.

[14thColony]

45. "Totally unregulated nuclear program"?

You mean the one that has submitted to multiple inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency? Feel free to go read the IAEA inspection reports at their website:

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml

Overall the IAEA is very pleased with the level of Iranian cooperation with their inspections.

[Beausoleil]

22. He did not say "wipe Israel off the map"

Bad translation of a decades-old quote of Khomeini's.

A more accurate translation would be "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

Regime change. Sound familiar?

[tburnsten]

28. My mistake, what I get for hanging on to a snippet.

I still don't believe that Iran is a nation that can be trusted not to abuse nuclear power at this point. Too many of their weapons being used in Iraq, too many incidents with their Revolutionary Guard. Once they stop illegally trafficking weapons to foreign jihad groups they will start to gain some legitimacy on the international stage.

[malaise]

33. Iran never said that anyway

They always separate Jews from the Zionist state.

[tburnsten]

35. Seems like a lot of work to legitamize their antagonizing N?T

[malaise]

36. Well we're sure one of those two states really has nukes

Worry about those.

[WhiteTara]

43. what has Israel ever done

for us? Please educate me.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tburnsten]

15. Neither candidate can withdraw from Iraq during their term

no matter what they promise, believing that is an unrealistic pipe dream at this point. The Iraqi army and police forces are doing better and better with every graduating class of soldiers and officers, and actually their neighborhood watch groups are the most effective of all. I feel that they are growing quite weary of all the violence in their communities and are starting to get a handle on things. We will have at least a smallish (South Korea smallish) presence there for the forseeable future, probably at least fifty or sixty years, but there is still quite a bit of ground to cover before the Iraqi government is capable of sustaining day-to-day operations without significant help from us. An encouraging sign is that their security forces have started going on missions unsupervised, and without being slaughtered. Quite a ddeparture from the Iraqi army of three years ago that kept having busloads of soldiers executed on the side of the road.

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tburnsten]

29. Being a Soldier gives you some insight

and some of that insight is that the Iraqis cannot support themselves yet, and to just yank out the bulk of our troops any time in the next ten years would be a huge mistake, civilian casualties would probably measure in the hundreds of thousands within a relatively short period of time afterwards, until their security forces are capable of preventing jihad groups from taking over and using Iraq as a little private warzone we cannot leave. It is a simple fact, not a talking point for anyone, and neither presidential candidate has any power to responsibly remove our troops from Iraq.


And I haven't been following the race much at all.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

9. "without the corruption that they used to be plagued with"

You are aware are you not that the Al-Maliki government is absolutely plagued with corruption? One of the reasons that Iraq's oil industry has been so slow to gear up is that much of the oil is being stolen and sold on the black market by crooked government officials. The U.S. spent a lot of money on contractors to design technology to determine how much oil was flowing through their pipelines. The problem still hasn't been cleared up. I assume you're suggesting that getting rid of Saddam was great because now Iraqis have no corruption in their government. I don't think so.

http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1534

[tburnsten]

20. I am aware that the Iraqi Government overall is in shambles

but in much of the country, things ARE starting to stabilize and the local police forces along with the army is rapidly improving its ability to keep life somewhat "normal" for the people there. They are doing better at preventing violence, there isn't the same level of sectarian death squad infiltration into the security forces there once was, and they are getting more and more competent. I think that is an important starting point, once life can be more or less normal for the Iraqi people as a whole they can start weeding out corruption in their fledgling government. You need to think in relative terms, and relatively, corruption in some areas of government is not as big a deal right now as rampant death squads are.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

32. The U.S. bribed local Sunni officials

That got the Sunni militias to call cease fires and will continue as long as the war lords want it to continue. That's a temporary band-aid on what will only become a worse problem down the road. The country is set for a coming firestorm of violence. Only three of the 18 benchmarks of the surge have been met to date.

The Shiites are keeping their powder dry because they are closely tied to Iran and Iran doesn't want a civil war at this point. Iran in fact hates the Shiite faction of Al Sadr because he's an independent who follows his own drummer and won't make nice with either the Americans, Sunnis, other Shiites or Iranians. Iraq is a far greater mess than it ever was under Saddam.

Al-Maliki lived in exile in Iran while Saddam was in power. When he recently visited Iran on an official state tour, he called the Islamic Republic of Iran his "good friend and brother". In fact, the Iranian government called the al-Da'wa Party to which Al-Maliki belongs as "their people". Iranian influence in Iraq is growing, not dwindling. Iraq still has a long way to go before it encounters lasting peace, stability, and independence.

And Al-Maliki doesn't want the American military in Iraq very much longer and has called for a timetable for withdrawal.

[tburnsten]

34. Some times it feels like

it would be best to just get out and let all the factions there go at it. three out of eighteen is pathetic. I have to say though, that many people don't fully understand our military's efforts in Iraq and how much good we are doing. Yes things were more stable under Saddam than they are now, but we went in five or is it six years ago now? It happened, we are there, and I think many people are having a tough time objectively viewing the situation because of personal disapproval for the entire endeavor. Objectively things are getting somewhat better, even if it is temporary. Without any temporary fixes, the Iraqis will not get to feel what they ultimately must strive for themselves. Once they as a society make up their minds that they want a less violent lifestyle and that things like different phrasing in the Quran is not worth bloody civil wars they will be in a better position to start working towards a stable nation.

[SpiralHawk]

10. What you wrote, tburnsten, is a spot-on description of Commander AWOL Bush

& his VP sidekick Dickie 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney & their corrupt cabal of chickenhawk republicons, including Doug Feith.

The vast majority of patriotic Americans would agree, as public surveys unmistakeably show.

You wrote: "...too much rhetoric coming from them. Politically they act like a seven year old, whining and stomping for attention."

That's Bush, Cheney, and the republicons to a T.

[tburnsten]

21. What a photo!

Well I am not talking about U.S. government or actions right now, I am talking about Iran and president Ahmedinijads willingness to use his position to advocate for the massacre of Jews in Israel. Sorry but war is a part of life and unless he has toned it down since last I heard, he is aching for some surgical strikes by Israeli planes.

[Beausoleil]

24. You need to do a little research

Nobody is advocating "the massacre of Jews in Israel".

You seem to be advocating the massacre of innocent Iranians. There are no "surgical strikes".

[tburnsten]

30. Yes, there are surgical strikes.

And Israel is quite adept at them, they have spent a good amount of money and resources in the last decade developing smarter missles that allow them to get a positive identification of their target before they go in for a final approach. I hardly think you can describe destroying a rogue nuclear program as a "massacre of innocent iranians", unless you feel that ALL lives have equal worth. I believe that people working on developing monstrous weapons like nuclear warheads or weapons-traffickers like the revolutionary guard are not worth nearly as much as the ordinary peaceful citizens of either Iran or Israel.

[TheWraith]

38. Why do you think the neocons and the mullahs hate each other so much?

They're peas in a pod, and there's only room for one egomaniacal circle-jerk of that scope on the international stage.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. LOL

The irony is profound.

[Dogtown]

25. Beat that drum, tburnsten !

Somewhere, a high school senior just enlisted!


War with Iran is unthinkable and unjust.

Unthinkable because we can't win, any more than we won in Iraq. I won't argue the point, so don't waste your time. Only fools believe we are accomplishing anything more than oil profits and misery in the ME.

Unjust because America *REALLY* doesn't have a policy of preemptive strikes, nor should it.

That bankrupt policy is the invention of Bush's handlers.

[tburnsten]

31. I'm not for war with Iran

But I am against them having a nuclear program, as should anyone who values a peaceful world. They already have a habit of passing out weapons to violent organizations, if Israel decides to bomb their nuclear sites, so be it. Maybe they should've spent that money elsewhere, like on agriculture or education.

[SpiralHawk]

41. "a habit of passing out weapons to violent organizations...?"

Do you mean passing out weapons to the Contras? If so, I agree that THE GIVERS OF THESE WEAPONS are dangerous.

Or did you mean Ollie North giving our Hawk missiles to the Ayatollah of Iran? If so, then I still agree: THESE clowns are immoral, evil, and dangerous.

[yodermon]

42. iran's worst nightmare is a terrorist exploding a nuke somewhere.

do you really think iran is going to just dole out nukes to terrorist groups? Any nuke goes off anywhere in the world and tehran instantly turns to glass. They know this. They aren't stupid. they aren't suicidal. They are a country with ordinary citizens who happen to have a whackjob theocratic government.

much like us.

[The Stranger]

26. That could be the stupidest post I have seen in two months.

Go to war because they are "whining and stomping for attention" and "so god-awful petulant"?

Get outta here.

[fla nocount]

46. It's the kool-aid

Throw the television in the pool, pull the knobs off the radio and it'll be fine in the morning.

[Pastiche423]

40. The U.S.A. is Numba 1, eh?

(Check his profile.)

Son, you done landed in the wrong place.

Keep up the rw talking points and you won't last long here.

[bdamomma]

7. kick

[rox63]

8. How long until Mullin is fired?

3, 2, 1...

[Duppers]

11. my thoughts too.

nt

[Marie26]

17. Wait, did he resign?

Or was that Fallon?

[MidwestTransplant]

19. Is this who replaced Fallon?

[Disturbed]

23. Adm. Fallon "resigned". Gen.Petraus is being placed in that spot.

Mullen replaced Petraus.

[indepat]

37. Who the hell does this Mullen character think he is? Surely the wrath of Genghis Cheney will be all...

over him like ugly on an ape with the wrath of Herr LIEberman will follow not far behind. :D

[Indenturedebtor]

39. WTG Mullen n/t

[DailyGrind51]

44. I guess he will be joining Admiral Fallon, then?

"Anchors away!"