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GOP Senator: US Needs to 'Neuter' Iran
Sends ripples through an international audience in Halifax
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- A U.S. lawmaker sent ripples through an international audience Saturday saying his country should be prepared to launch a military attack on Iran that would "neuter" the hard line regime.
US Senator Lindsey Graham sent ripples through an international audience Saturday saying his country should be prepared to launch a military attack on Iran that would "neuter" the country.
(AFP/Mandel Ngan) But Defense Minister Peter MacKay, who was in attendance, said a military attack on Iran would have negative fallout, and that international sanctions are preferable.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Saturday his party would support military action against Iran that would destroy its ability to fight back while allowing its people to rise up.
Graham surprised attendees at the Halifax International Security Forum with his hawkish rhetoric, saying an attack could cripple Iran's nuclear program as well as its armed forces.
The U.S. and its Western allies, including Canada, believe Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Tehran maintains it is peacefully pursuing nuclear power to meet its energy needs.
Graham noted that international sanctions are beginning to work on Iran, but says U.S. President Barack Obama should make it "abundantly clear" that all options are on the table.
"So my view of military force would be not to just neutralize their nuclear program, which are probably dispersed and hardened, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard," Graham told a panel.
"In other words, neuter that regime."
Graham said the last thing his country needs is another war, but the last thing the world needs is a nuclear-armed Iran.
Asked about Graham's tough proposal, MacKay told a later panel: "No question there would be a negative reaction to that course of action. Although I know that has perhaps provoked some of the hottest discussions in the hallways."
MacKay said collective international sanctions can be used to fight Iran and change the country's thinking. He said sanctions are aimed at the regime, not its people.
Graham created the biggest buzz at the second annual security conference that MacKay is hosting in his home province. Graham serves on six senate committees, including armed services, homeland security and veterans' affairs. He also serves in the U.S. military as an active member of the Air Force reserves.
"Nobody would like to see the sanctions work any more than I would because I'm still in the military and I get to meet these young men and women on a regular basis and I know what it's been like for the last nine years," he told an audience of foreign politicians, diplomats and academics.
"And if you use military force, if sanctions are not going to work, and a year from now it's pretty clear they're not going to work, what do our friends in Israel do?"
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said "we are still in the stage of diplomacy and sanctions" but that Iran remains a threat.
"Based on experience and looking at the example they're using, which is probably the North Korean example, you can easily see the basic objective is to defy, defeat and deter the whole world," said Barak.
"I will be happy ... to end up finding myself wrong, based on future developments, but I wonder whether this is the case."
A fellow U.S. senator, Democrat Mark Udall, said he wasn't willing to completely support Graham because what he was advocating would have "worldwide repercussions."
"I'm not willing to put my support behind that step here in a theoretical context, but I think you've got to keep every option on the table and let the Iranian regime know that we're deadly serious, not just as the United States of America, but as a world community," Udall told Graham and his other fellow panelists.
154 Comments so far
Show AllU.S. needs to neuter Lindsay Graham.
I volunteer to make sure the knife is very dull.
I would like to supply the salt.
Garlic juice.
q
Clearly games are another vehicle for propaganda, and the pentagon is making the most of it. Lets face it, sanity is hopelessly outgunned.
you may have checked out The Onion "news service"...
there are some great parodies of these games on there that include the reality of daily life for our troops.
And a kick in the balls from me!
i would like to give him few kicks in the balls as well. what a lunatic asshole but hardly surprising from the rethugs and we are also hearing similar crap from the dims.
another war? how would it be paid for genius lindsay? what about the long term fallout? how would other countries and their people feel about seeing more people being killed in the mid east?
matt
harris county green party
It is the United States and Israel who need to be neutered. No need for a rusty knife. We can do it with budget cuts on the military forces of these two terrorist nations. But this does need your participation. You have to contact the persons who are supposed to represent you in the House and the Senate. Tell these people that you want a decrease in the military budget of the United States and to cease all military funds to the apartheid state of Israel.
The phone numbers of your Representatives are in the phone book and your representatives have web sites to which you can send emails.
Right on, brother or sister.
There are many things that we need to do. We need to reverse the privitization of war and occupation. If we can get corporate profits out of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, then these occupations will soon end...
Our Dept. of Defense is misnamed. It should be called the Dept. of Imperial Occupations.
You can try but…. Your representative democracy does not mean that they even have to listen to you, especially when it was the banksters that put them there and whoever you may be “allowed” to choose to replace them with, on any side of the house. Thank you for your call, the Senator has noted your concerns..... Have a good day.
Seriously.
Now we have Netanyahu demanding that the U.S. use military action against Iran:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101107/ts_nm/us_usa_israel
And here's a photo of the Vice President of the United States of America Joe "I Am A Zionist" Biden with Bibi Netanyahu:
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//101107/ids_photos_wl/r2494275724.jpg/
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//101107/480/urn_publicid_ap_org8b706b9f4906437fab8f1b08e0fd3092/
All this chuminess between Netanyahu, Biden, Lieberman, Graham and McCain is disgusting.
If I were the Palestinians I would walk away from any B.S. "Peace" talks and just keep working on the U.N. to announce statehood for Palestine, hopefully with a return to the pre-1967 borders. The United States is clearly not acting as a fair and objective mediator between the two sides.
And the NERVE of the above crew as they blab endlessly about the potential for Iran to have a nuclear weapon when Israel has been threatening Iran with nuclear weapons (and the rest of the world with their despicable "Samson Option"), since about 1965!!!
Unbelievable.
trouble is, the coup has already happened and they don't need to listen to us anymore.
If I was was emperor for a year, I would send every SOB politician that is in love with War over to Iraq, Afghanistan, or in Grahams case Iran. I would give them 48 hours notice, so I could enjoy the show of them frantically calling an emergency session of congress to end all the wars so they could save their sorry hypocritical asses.
GRAHAM, OBAMA AND HARPER ARE SERIAL VIOLATORS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
It would indeed be nice to see a criminal like Graham administratively castrated in the public square and the amputated parts fed to the dogs. I will not apologize for using this horrific image. I use it to somehow emphasize the horror and irresponsibility of Graham's call for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranian civilians to be exterminated on his demented whim.
However, I have to ask why "gladtobeincanada" is glad to be in Canada? As if the right-wing running dog of the US Empire was a refuge from the delusional idiocy that has possessed the "government" of Canada every bit as much as that of the USA. Do you not have the first clue about Canada's foreign policy of integration into the US machine for perpetual war.
Harper and Obama need to be castrated as well, or - let's be a little less vengeful and a little more civilized here - put on trial and held accountable for their unashamed violations of Article 2 of the UN Charter. "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
Every time the delusional Obama or Harper open their mouths to bray about the imaginary "Iranian threat" and how "no option is off the table" in dealing with it, they are threatening an illegal unilateral attack on a sovereign nation that has done nothing to provoke them, violating the fundamental organizing principle of the international community. Yes, sounds quaint, doesn't it?
The endless horrific violence - much of it also a violation of the international laws of war - and military adventurism of the Empire have inured us all to these completely unacceptable threats against Iran by the psychotic Jewish Apartheid statelet and its running dogs, Canada and the USA.
Iran will persist as the peaceful nation it is for another thousand years, while the vicious genocidal would-be Jewish statelet will vanish from the page of history.
Very good comment, thank you.
Ever so true; the fascist cadre of nations : israel, amerika, canada, austrailia, england; will all slide into the abyss...together !
Like Jesse Jackson in regard to the same sentiment about D'Ohbama in '08, we would be far too late . . .
Like Jesse Jackson in regard to the same sentiment about D'Ohbama in '08, we would be far too late . . .
Prissy Southern Candy-ass Bully.
Egad, where is Obama and his Targeted Killing when we need it?
Yeah - lets have another war - the last two are such a success.
A lunatic, in the dying days of empire. It's falling apart, rapidly, and obvious to all except these true believers.
Don't you guys realize that people like this are a threat to life on this planet? You are now- and have been for some time- the worlds dangerous rogue. We are all, as a species, on the edge, facing the abyss. There will be no super hero in the sky to rescue the faithful. Your war mongering will bring us to, what Eric Hoffer wrote, "The agonized firey embrace of involuntary brotherhood".
Know that no empire that ever got this near collapse, ever pulled back. Ever.
Please stop.
"Know that no empire that ever got this near collapse, ever pulled back. Ever."
You are so very right.
"A lunatic, in the dying days of empire."
You are absolutely right but remember this is exactly the type of apocoliptic lunacy dying empires embrace.
Frankly the neutering is urgent but needs to be of the US military global threat and the Zionist conspiracy that wealds it. It is this terrorism that is tearing the planets humanity to peaces. The collapse of the dollar, the spiralling inflation of life sustaining commodities, combined with "natural" disasters attributable to unabated climate change, will all contribute to global insecurity and potential chaos. Their may be those who see this as the desired opportunity, that then the only decisive strength left will be in the hands of USA, the only global superpower with a military foot-print all over the face of the world and with experience in "managing" disaster capitalism profitably.
It's a flawed assumption of course, made by self deluded fascists with their heads up their asses in think tanks in Washington and surrounded by yes-men, but hey, it does not mean that they will not succeed in causing considerable suffering and damage to billions of people on the way, costing many millions of lives. They are well on their way there already.
There is no democratic process, nor Ghandian peace marches, nor non-violent actions at international conferences that will get rid of these sociopaths at the core the system. This is a cancer that must be cut out, the knife must be sharp and we must be ready to cut deep, and the recovery will be slow and long. The system must be changed at its root and rebuilt. It is our system too. We share vital organs, but not benefits with the parasites. This is the corporate capitalist system, that today keeps the usurers in charge behind the curtains and that appoints with its donations of filthy lucre, people like Senator Lindsey Graham as a supposed representative of "the people", but really he is just another paid servants of some demented, delusional NWO.
I would rather have my Social Security and national health care. How are you going to pay for your new war Lindsey? Was not your '10 election about cutting my taxes? Maybe Lindsey can get Boeing to donate the missiles. He got Boeing to build a new plant in SC.
Just say no to warmongers like Graham and McCain. Lindsey just put a chill in all of Canada. The conservative government in Canada is having a hard enough time keeping their cover by allying with the US war on terror. Canada is scheduled to bring home their troops soon. The conservatives would like to extend the stay through slight of hand. Lindsey just farted out the true intentions. IMHO, Now Harper is on the defensive and no slight of hand will stop Canada from bringing home the troops.
Harper, now there is another NWO cheerleading sociopath, paid for and owned by the global banksters.
if graham doesn't tow that line, he will be neutered by his real bosses.
Go ahead. Attack Iran.
Watch as OPEC embargoes the US, cutting the throat of the economy.
You think you have job losses now? Think of the suffering a winter oil embargo would unleash on the country, Hell, on all of North America! Hudreds of thousands of people freezing in their homes, thousands of businesses shut down because goods and supplies simply can't be moved because there is NO GAS!
How long would it take before one *tiny* incident makes the already unstable US population explode into justifiable homicidal rage that they then take out on anyone publicly identified as a politician, banker or CEO?
Sounds like fun times are coming soon to a city near you...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5pmDgWMaU
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
"How long would it take before one *tiny* incident makes the already unstable US population explode into justifiable homicidal rage that they then take out on anyone publicly identified as a politician, banker or CEO?"
So you believe that the American public will develop the ability and will to figure out for themselves who has been hurting them? Is it not more likely that, as usual, cunning demagogues will steer them against some convenient scapegoat?
Jay Gould said, "I can always hire half the working class to kill the other half." The Tea Party demonstrates that this is still true.
I think you are correct. It is more likely that, as usual, cunning demagogues will steer them against some convenient scapegoat. Such is the power of the media.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guardians, watch the watchers, etc?)
Hello Galenwainwright,
Another point to consider. China has financial dealings with Iran and would be pissed if she lost any of her property. This might cause a boycott of Chinese manufactured goods exported to the US. The boycott could be targeted or general. How long could we survive as a nation as essential good let alone luxury goods do not flow from Chinese factories? The same for the Russians as they might side with the Chinese at the UN and attempt to get a UN sponsored boycott but the US and maybe some others will cast a negative vote causing the boycott to fail but it will show the US that our actions have consequences.
Why would anyone invite this moron to speak? Clearly he has nothing of intellectual substance to bring to the table.
To be clear, this was not a conference of doves. Even the most dovish amongst them, Canadian and USAn, promote brutal sanctions (remember Iraq) and the openly terrorizing threats of "leaving all options on the table".
Per Chomsky's dictionary: "threat" means "a country that is attempting to defend itself, as a sovereign nation, against the US military and business interests."
So then, why the shock at Graham's comments?
Most people who read this site aren't shocked by Graham's comments. In light of the looney results of Tuesday's election, the possibility of war with Iran took a giant step forward. There are those in the Obama cabal now telling him loudly (not whispering) to go ahead and do it. It will "neuter" the Republicans and insure his reelection.
He probably had John Bolton under the table, coaching him, and Joe Lieberman was coaching Bolton. I suggest that we give these idiots a mandatory job as truckers bringing supplies from Pakistan to our troops in Afghanistan. What should anger everyone is that the WH and State Department are both parroting the Zionist lies about Iran's Nukes even though all the intell states that it isn't so. And Obama still can't figure why the base didn't come out and vote? This is only one of the many reasons.
And the American public doesn't even blink an eye when our Congressmen make statements that could lead to another war.
I'm just wondering when the next round of a raised anti-Iran rhetoric will come. Perhaps after the holidays but in 2011 so not to interfere with the election season. Another event (exaggerated real or illusional) is needed by our powers to alarm the public enough to justify taking additional action.
I seem to remember Senator McCain singing: "bomb, bomb, bomb Tehran.."
Graham needs to be shut up in a small room, somewhere, like maybe a closet... oh wait, he's ALREADY IN ONE.
What a completely STUPID thing for ANYONE, let alone a senator, to say. Lord knows, we've done SUCH a great job in BOTH Afghanistan and Iraq, we can't HELP but do a similarly wonderful job in Iran as well.
And the cost will no doubt happily be paid by the Chinese, not like they are friends of Iran, or anything. Or the Russians. No friendship there, other than the fact that they have been allies for decades, just like the Chinese have been.
Republicans NEVER learn anything if they are making money off of it. It's time, kids, to kill off the M/I complex once and for all. It's been nothing but a huge hammer that the gov't can use on everything, no matter what the problem really is. And those who have made money off of it should be locked up as being enemies of the country, which they have proved more than once to be.
I would also like to publicly apologize for Mark "I'm really just another republican" Udall. I have been trying to get rid of that piece of crap since BEFORE he entered the senate. He is a selfish, arrogant asshole who doesn't have the moral compass of his father, and stands for everything that I personally despise, like invading countries that are not and have never been dangers to ourselves.
And let's not forget, according to international law, it's ILLEGAL to attack a country that hasn't attacked you. BOTH of W's wars are illegal, and he should be in jail for that ALONE, not even counting the rest of the damage he did to this country. For this country to attack YET ANOTHER country that hasn't attacked us should lead to the strongest sanctions against US as the world can possibly muster.
Graham needs to go back to his closet and leave the rest of the world alone. Every time he opens his face, something worse than the last time comes out. That needs to stop, and stop damned soon. But of course, now, thanks to all the IDIOTS who voted for republicans last Tuesday, we will have to put up with his constant blathering for at least 2 years, and there won't be any reason for him to shut up. Thanks a whole lot, you BONEHEADS!
According to the Washington Post Graham's statement was opened with "If Iran obtains a nuclear weapon....". Bad enough, but not nearly as threatening as Secretary Clinton's promise of total annihilation of Iran's population.
In essence Graham did not break new ground. President Obama agrees with him. "Everything, including our nuclear bombs is still on the table". For breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Thank you Jill for being also wide awake to the fact that Senator Graham's remarks are really rumblings from our national war-establishment that needs our nation riled up by some new threat now that the public is beginning to get tired of Iraq, Iraq, Iraq and Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan. Focusing only on Senator Graham's remarks (which are anodyne in the world of neo-con warmongers)is short sighted if not dangerous.
What Graham, among others, implied was: "Mr. President Obama, be assured that whatever you decide to do with Iran we will support you".
Interesting was his shot at Rand Paul whom he sub rosa called a contemporary Chamberlain!
And President Obama's responsibility for this to happen now? Here is my opinion. Because he did not on day one of his Presidency unequivocally set his Middle-Eastern policy as: all wars in the Middle East in which we are involved must end this year. I will order the Service Chiefs to prepare the withdrawal of our forces from Iraq and Afghanistan with the utmost urgency and speed. Instead he demanded an expansion of the war in Afghanistan/Pakistan which our nation is getting tired of. Instead he ratcheted up the mostly unilateral sanctions on Iran which implied that he considers Iran a menace.
The delightful poem of Wolfgang von Goethe about the sorcerer's apprentice could have been written with President Obama in mind. Once you set the war-train in motion it is almost impossible to stop it because you do not remember the magic word to stop it. It is sad but true that President Obama, as I fully expected after his election, has been a politician's apprentice. He lost total control over war or peace on day one of his Presidency. He will never regain that control after having given it away.
And here is my take on "increased risk of Al Qaeda terrorist attacks if we withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan". The presence of all these soldiers, tanks, airplanes, drones, all the shots, shelling, bombing, and killing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, none of all that had any input on the foiling of attempts to plant bombs in U.S. airplanes or on Times Square NYC. Nothing. De Nada. Rien. Nichts. Niets.
Lindsey Graham's rant is merely one of the many last gasps of an Empire that knows that its days are severely numbered.
He is a kind of ventriloquist's doll through which the Empire in the thralls of contraction is voicing its deep despair, its infinite resentment, and its self-loathing.
These sorts of irrational screams will grow in intensity as the Empire nears total implosion -- not unlike a dying star that is about to turn into a black hole.
Oikos- you're right about the empire collapsing but I don't think people like the Senator realize it. This is an increasingly dangerous time for us all, with no guarantee of species survival. I think it's that serious. My fear is that there are among us people willing to risk all of us for their insanity. The weapons available are poised, the rhetoric gets more shrill, the marches are playing, the flags waving.
Good luck to us all.
Yes, I hear you; you may be right. They may well take the whole place down rather than give up Empire. I am aware that these nasties are that sociopathic.
Be careful with your analogies! Most dying stars go supernova before they turn into a black hole. The US and Zionist sociopathic corporate oligarchs have the means, the motives, and the total lack of morals to make Hitler look like a boy-scout. As far as I can tell they've started already. The perfect storm is being orchestrated.
Interesting point about supernova before total collapse.....
Yes, you are right, and a supernova precisely takes everything down in its vicinity.
Come to think of it, he does look very much like a ventriloquist's dummy. He's got the face.
i say we neuter south carolina. talk about a hotbed of dangerous lunatics!
and my heart goes out to lindsey graham whose active military duties actually require him to "meet" the young men and women whose lives he is willing to bravely sacrifice so that his campaigns can continue to receive an unfettered flow of funds from EXXON and AIPAC.