Robert Fisk: Secret letter 'proves Mousavi won poll'

This letter has nothing special, you sure it was not released by CIA?

Originally posted by Rewey

Besides the scale of the numbers, is this really any different to how GWB came to power in his first election? Didn't he fudge the numbers with help from other members of his family, and the supreme court?

Besides the numbers??!! You make it sound like that isn't an important factor

Why are you guys so obsessed with comparing everything to the USA. Come on just look at each situation in different countries from the real perspective of what actually happened.

Do you have any actual documented evidence to support the fact that Bush was fraudulently elected?

I know there will be some who say 'but no-one got shot in the aftermath of the fraudulent election results'... but is that just because the American citizens just rolled over and took it? At least the Iranian people got upset enough to have mass protests...

Maybe the Americans didn't have the evidence in order to make that conclusion, and so couldn't really protest about something that was hypothetical.

The Iranians have been upset for a while now, and this has just built up into a major release of frustration at having their freedom repressed by the supreme leader Khamenei.

They've had enough and at first just wanted their votes to count and their protests were at first largely peaceful until they were forced to defend themselves against vicious regime thugs. But now it could be heading towards a full blown revolution.

Whether some less extreme clerics of the regime helps them to get rid of Khaminei and so the regime partly survives or the whole regime falls apart is anyone's guess for now.

What we do know is that the regime keep digging a bigger hole for themselves everytime they beat someone, smash things up etc all on video.

Maybe if the American citizens had shown that sort of passion, the world might be a different place today. I can think of 1 million+ Iraqi citizens who would still be alive, for one...

Rewey

Again like a record stuck everything has to be about previous situations to do with the USA. Come of it will you please!

How exactly are the American people repressed in order for them to become angry with their government. I'm not saying life is perfect there or anywhere, and of course every country has its problems especially now with bad economic practices, but the free world is almost like heaven compared to living in Iran.

You don't get beaten up by your government or arrested just for exercising free speech. You don't get tv stations that don't agree with the state get switched off or blocked, you don't get mobile phone networks blocked, sms blocked, internet blocked. The Iranian Islamic regime is more backwards than 10th century Europe.

If you had to live like that you would have reasons to get angry.

Originally posted by Manouche
Come on people ! Why would the Interior Minister put in what must be an official document to give to the Ayatollah the results of the election they have both participated in skewing ?

The British press is on fire, every piece of questionnable info is reported by them.

The election might be stolen but this is hardly a piece of evidence. Certainly the regime can be more subtle than that.

You don't realise how stupid these people can be, and don't forget not all the clerics are as favourable to the supreme leader. The military coup d'etat to enforce the fake results were announced took place in a rush possibly with Russian guidance. The regime is in a mess, panicking, making rash decisions. That will be their downfall, and that hole their digging is getting bigger!

Originally posted by john124
I made a thread on this yesterday, but no replies? lol

Anyway yes we know the official results and this is evidence the Iranian election was a sham. So now if the opposition gets massacred or gives up, we intervene with regime change in mind before the illegal Islamic regime can rearm and regroup!

How anybody left on this planet can still support the Islamic regime in Iran is beyond me!

Sorry, but have you seen the outcomes of Iraq, Afghanistan, and now it so appears Pakistan?

Do you really believe in the either/or false dilemma in the US of republicans/democrats?

Do you really believe that the next "PTB", if able to "win" in a "revolution," i.e, "the opposition" in Iran will be any different than the current status quo; if so, how and why (but please do your historical research first)?

Are "we" the US? If so, I think we've completely failed in the regime changes of too many countries to count in the last century.


IMHO, time for US to look out for our own, and protect our own borders before we go trying to change cultures thousands of years older than oours that's for sure

reply to post by Oatmeal




[edit on 18-6-2009 by Oatmeal]

Originally posted by sillyboystrucksare4girls

Originally posted by john124
I made a thread on this yesterday, but no replies? lol

Anyway yes we know the official results and this is evidence the Iranian election was a sham. So now if the opposition gets massacred or gives up, we intervene with regime change in mind before the illegal Islamic regime can rearm and regroup!

How anybody left on this planet can still support the Islamic regime in Iran is beyond me!

Sorry, but have you seen the outcomes of Iraq, Afghanistan, and now it so appears Pakistan?

Do you really believe in the either/or false dilemma in the US of republicans/democrats?

Do you really believe that the next "PTB", if able to "win" in a "revolution," i.e, "the opposition" in Iran will be any different than the current status quo; if so, how and why (but please do your historical research first)?

Are "we" the US? If so, I think we've completely failed in the regime changes of too many countries to count in the last century.


IMHO, time for US to look out for our own, and protect our own borders before we go trying to change cultures thousands of years older than oours that's for sure

By "we" I mean US/UK/other UN and NATO allies. Of course not China and Russia though. The Islamic regime fooled a lot of people, even though to some it was apparent that their violence, lies and deceit were commonplace. Any shred of credibility the regime had with European countries is fading away altogether the more they keep on the path of self-destruction.

The evidence that the Ayatollah Khamenei & the other mullahs are ruthless dictators is now obvious to all, nobody in the West can just ignore this.

We may not be able to get a UN resolution passed, but regime change will not only be the priority of the US, but also many other countries as well making this a unique situation which cannot be compared to Iraq.

We must not interfere now though, only if the opposition gives up or gets massacred. It would be counterproductive to do anything now. The Iranian people have spoken, and they want rid of the dictator.

If you want examples of successful revolutions; we have the Georgian Rose revolution, the Ukranian orange revolution. Afghanistan is an ongoing war, Pakistan have an ongoing war with the taliban and only recently got to grips with the situation. Previously they did not want to take them on.

We could go on for days about Iraq so I won't bother going into too much detail. I do agree though that Iraq was a disaster; too many deaths, too little planning. But the end result minus those bad points is almost satisfactory.

We have to make sure we don't make those same mistakes again and learn from them without dwelling on them too much to make different mistakes. The past is the past, regretably we can't bring back the dead, we just have to move on, and more importantly learn from mistakes.

Why can't we "look after our own" and look after other peace-loving people that want to be free? We are all human beings after all. We all live on the same planet. When everyone finally realises how this connects us all, then we can work together towards a better future for everyone.

And I'd also like to add we should not have the intentions of changing anyone's cultures, especially Iran's. They are a very patriotic people as you can see from the rallies. It is apparent they want democracy, and to be rid of medevil style Islamic regimes. They want choice and freedom which should be universal values.



[edit on 18-6-2009 by john124]

By intervening should the opposition collapse or get massacred to prevent the illegal regime taking full control again this does not necessarily mean full-scale military airstrikes followed by land invasion.

I don't endorse the Bush method of go in and "smoke 'em out" cowboy tactics. If things get so bad that we have to go into Iran so to speak then we may have to. But with careful planning, I don't expect that to be necessary.

What I would expect though is a few covert operations, possibly surgical airstrikes, destruction of key regime buildings such as state tv, assassination of key regime members (Khaminei & Ahmadinejad to name a few). All these need to be done whilst corresponding with surviving key opposition members should this be possible. We will need to help them install a temporary government until they can hold a free election, where I would expect many women candidates to stand for president.

If the opposition persists with protests for months the regime will get worn down and weaker, so can be taken out piece by piece so to speak. And after months many more key opposition leaders will become apparent, and the regime will be stuck as whether to kill them and probably dig themselves into a bigger hole or just try and contain them.

I fully expect the regime to dig themselves into a bigger hole, that is one thing they are getting good at, and that won't change much soon. It's their response in desperation that may result in a massacre which may determine whether outside help is needed, soon rather than later, or at all.

If the opposition just gives up, it will be difficult for us to intervene, but all this depends on too many factors to decide right now, including how long the current stalemate goes on for. It depends whether there's a split in the opposition, and Mousavi is a so called leader but it's really the group that's leading him, and the strong members of this group possibly.

Ayatollah Khamenei is going to make a speech later to the Iranian's, this should be interesting. I'm guessing he will once again talk more lies and nonsense about telling them to get behind Ahmadinejad and that he won the election etc. This will just enflame the people even more. But for him to go back on what he previous said discredits the Islamic system and so he never will. From his point of view, he can die slowly or die quickly. And he's choosing to die slowly whilst hoping for a miracle.

I still stand by my original view that letting the regime restore its original power status before the election is bad for the world, and I doubt Israel will hold out much longer either.

So we have a chance to prevent a major war here, but should the regime crush the opposition in the next few days or couple of weeks then it will be a difficult decision to intervene so soon. We would have to weigh the larger risks of intervening this soon with the risks of allowing this illegal regime stay in power for the long-term future.

We want to be careful not to give the regime an opportunity to instate anti-American and anti-Western views into their people. Whether those views were ever really there in Iranians in the first place is another matter altogether. Although we know the regime has a track record of lying to their own people and the world, and as such they would resort to these pathetic tactics again.

In the past in anti-western rallies the secret police told the crowd to chant "death to America, death to Israel", and it's vey likely members of this crowd were regime officials who were dressed accordingly for the camera.

Of course there are the few with anti-western sentiment who are easily persuaded by the secret police to chant "death to America", as we saw some Ahmadinejad supporters in his rallies, even though the images were photoshopped to make the rally look bigger than it really was. But this is not the majority, and is now more apparent. By comparison opposition crowds = 3 million vs 20,000.




[edit on 18-6-2009 by john124]

Some other factors to determine how we approach this that I can think of are what Russia and China's precise involvement in the area is, which we the public have no idea about (hopefully our intelligence sources provide better insight). This makes it impossible for the us here to determine how this affects decisions.

Also the state of the US economy and risks of driving the US into further debt have to be Obama's primary concern, so that may be a factor to not interfere. How far that goes only Obama and his close aides know.