brian_g wrote:

I agree, Matt. Except with the world power thing. They want to be a regional power that could influence countries in their near abroad and perhaps a little further.

But none of those reasons are “extend the power of Iran at the cost of Egypt or Saudi Arabia”.

If you control the flow of oil – you are a world power. They don’t need anything more than that.

When propaganda supports the government’s lies, conservatives see it as “patriotic.”

However, any resemblance to independent reporting disappeared from the American media when the Democratic regime of President Clinton allowed Murdoch and a small handful of moguls to concentrate the American media in a few corporate hands. That was the end of American reporting.

Journalists disappeared from media management and were replaced by corporate advertising executives with an eye not to offend any source of advertising revenue, and certainly not to offend the government, which controls the broadcast licenses that comprise the value of the mega-companies. Today reporters write the stories that their masters want to hear, or they are out. The function of editors is to make certain that no uncomfortable information reaches the public.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2009/010909Roberts2.shtml

The most amazing part is that this wasn’t written by some “left-wing wacko,” but by Paul Craig Roberts, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, who was known as the “Father of Reaganomics”.

But none of those reasons are “extend the power of Iran at the cost of Egypt or Saudi Arabia”.

brian_g wrote:

OK. So what is Iran’s reason for engaging in this war?

Lets see
- to irritate us
- to kill jews
- to derail the peace process
- to keep their domestic problems off the minds of their people by distracting them w/ what is going on in Palestine
- to drive up oil prices so they can prop up their budget
- to make the world pay attention to Iran (they want to be a world power)
- to allow the religous leaders in power in Iran to export their orthodoxy
- and all of the above helps keep the mullahs in power……..and it costs them almost nothing compared to what we spend

Palestine is not a country, it is a prison. A prison with terribly poor conditions that only seems to get worse. Most of the time the rest of the world is able to ignore this prison while Israel squeezes the inmates by building more settlements on disputed land, dividing their land with walls, cutting off water and energy, and cutting off all funding.

The democratically elected leaders of this prison (Hamas) attempt to get the attention of the outside world the only way they can, by launching missiles at their prison’s guards. It is easy to say that Hamas should just not launch missiles, but I do not think that the solution is as simple as that.

I also find the timing of this invasion into gaza very suspect, as if they wanted to get it in before Bush left the Whitehouse.

The Ossetia issue is complex. The Ossetians claim to be Russians and the Russians never recognized Georgian claims to the area in the first place.

The Russian Navy is a joke and wouldn’t want to be within 1000 miles of an angry U.S. warship.

Saudi Arabia does very little without our tacit approval. Their entire existence is wholly dependent on US support.

Iran is trying to challenge our dominance in the region but so far has done very little to diminish it.