New Iran Hostage Crisis

Enough!

Let me start by saying that I’m so furious I don’t know what to say TO start.

Are we a nation of cowards? Are we a nation that would rather sit on our collective ass and “talk about it” while we’re being picked off one at a time on foreign shores? Are we so naive that we think we can trust a foreign government whose leadership has called for our destruction? Can we trust this government to release our people without harm unless we threaten to roll INTO Tehran?

I was going to do a piece today on how that we are at war against an enemy that is multinational, an enemy that belongs to a mindset that extends across national borders and boundaries. I was going to do a piece on how the media and certain members of Congress and the Senate (and yes, I mean the Democratic party and a few turncoat Republicans) are trying desperately to convince you, the American public, that our war in Iraq was unjust and “illegal.” If you can walk away from reading this without fully grasping that WE ARE AT WAR WITH A SECT OF RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS who pay NO REGARD TO INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARIES that were imposed upon them during the occupation of the Middle East by Europeans during the last two centuries then you are beyond any hope of redemption in regards to allowing your eyes to be opened to the truth.

Our enemy is not any particular nation.

Our enemy is Radical Extremist Fascist Islam.

Iraq is, has been, but ONE FRONT in this war. Afghanistan is another one. Make NO mistake in thinking that there will not be others as time progresses and our enemies regroup themselves. WE CAN NOT ALLOW THEM TO HAVE ONE MOMENT TO CATCH THEIR BREATH AND ATTACK US ON OUR OWN SHORES AGAIN. By their own admissions, by their own words, THAT IS THEIR INTENTION.

And until we secure our borders and stop this nonsensical debate over illegal immigration, BUILD the fence on our southern border to inhibit the free flowing of illegals crossing into our country from Mexico, and start rounding up, as Eisenhower did, those who are here illegally, we are leaving ourselves WIDE OPEN to more attacks within the United States. EVEN FRANCE has come to realize this danger to their own country and has started sending THEIR illegals back home.

ENOUGH!

Hat tips to Power Line and Blue Crab Boulevard for their commentaries on columnist Mark Steyn’s article Look who's holding hostages again.

Mark Steyn: Look who's holding hostages again

How do you feel about the American hostages in Iran?

No, not the guys back in the Seventies, the ones being held right now.

What? You haven't heard about them?

Odd that, isn't it? But they're there. For example, for two months now, Haleh Esfandiari has been detained in Evin prison in Tehran. Esfandiari is a U.S. citizen and had traveled to Iran to visit her sick mother. She is the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, which is the kind of gig that would impress your fellow guests at a Washington dinner party. Unfortunately, the mullahs say it's an obvious cover for a Bush spy.

Among the other Zionist-neocon agents currently held in Iranian jails are an American journalist, an American sociologist for a George Soros-funded leftie group, and an American peace activist from Irvine, Ali Shakeri, whose capture became known shortly after the United States and Iran held their first direct talks since the original hostage crisis.

Two months in an Iranian jail is no fun. Four years ago, a Montreal photo-journalist, Zahra Kazemi, was arrested by police in Tehran, taken to Evin prison, and wound up getting questioned to death. Upon her capture, the Canadian government had done as the State Department is apparently doing – kept things discreet, low-key, cards close to the chest, quiet word in the right ears. By the time Zahra Kazemi's son, frustrated by his government's ineffable equanimity, got the story out, it was too late for his mother.

Still, upon hearing of her death, then-Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham expressed his "sadness" and "regret," which are pretty strong words. But then, as Reuters put it, this sad regrettable incident had "marred previously harmonious relations between Iran and Canada." In his public pronouncements, Graham tended to give the impression that what he chiefly regretted and was sad about was that one of his compatriots had had the poor taste to get tortured and murdered onto the front pages of the newspapers.

With an apparently straight face, Graham passed on to reporters the official Iranian line that her death in jail was merely an "accident." The following year, Shahram Azam, a physician who'd examined Kazemi's body, fled Iran and said that she had broken fingers, a broken nose, a crushed toe, a skull fracture, severe abdominal bruising, and internal damage consistent with various forms of rape. Quite an accident.

The longer American prisoners are held in Evin, the more likely it is they'll meet with a similar accident. It would be nice to think the press has ignored these hostages out of concerns that they might inflame the situation. (To date, only National Review, Bill Bennett on his radio show and various doughty Internet wallahs have made any fuss.) Or maybe the media figure that showing American prisoners on TV will only drive Bush's ratings back up from the grave to the rude health of intensive care. Or maybe they just don't care about U.S. hostages, not compared to real news like Senate sleepovers to block unblocking a motion to vote for voting against a cloture motion on the best way to surrender in Iraq.

But I'll bet the mullahs wouldn't really care if everyone put Haleh Esfandiari on the front pages 24/7. It's only a few months since they seized a bunch of Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines in international waters (an illegal act) and paraded them all over Iranian TV (in breach of the Geneva Conventions) and dressed up the female sailor in Islamic garb (another breach).

And the U.N. and the EU and all the other transnational arbiters of global order sent a strong message: "Whoa, you guys really need to tamp things down, de-escalate, defuse the confrontation." But, for some reason, they sent the strong message to the British government, not the Iranians. And, with the sailors' humiliation all over the media, the British public was inclined to agree. Almost to a man, they rose up and told Tony Blair: "This is all your fault for getting us into Iraq."

But outrage at Iran? There was none.

The ayatollahs figure that's how it usually goes with a plump, complacent Western world that just wants to be left alone and wishes these crazies would stop trying to catch its eye. Officially, Iran is "negotiating" with the European Union over its nuclear program. If this were a real negotiation, instead of a transnational pseudo-negotiation, the Iranians would be concerned to stop any complicating factors coming into play. Instead, every week they gaily toss new provocations into their EU chums' laps: In recent days, they've stoned to death various fellows for adultery and homosexuality, two activities to which Europeans are generally very partial.

But why let a few stonings throw your negotiations off track? And, if the Americans are so eager to get a seat at the negotiating table, why not remind them of the rules of the game? Last week, the Iranians paraded their U.S. hostages all over TV as they confessed to engaging in espionage, along the way fingering the Woodrow Wilson Center and George Soros as key elements in the plot to overthrow the ayatollahs. If only.

The week before, Iran captured 14 spies near the Iraqi border who it claimed were agents of American and British intelligence equipped with surveillance devices. The "spies" in question were squirrels – as in small furry animals very protective of their nuts (much like the Democratic Party regarding Mr. Soros). I'm prepared to believe that a crack team of rodents from NUTS (the Ninja Undercover Team of Squirrels) abseiled into key installations in Iran and garroted the Revolutionary Guards, but not that the U.S. and British governments had anything to do with it. If they have any CIA or MI6 training at all, they must be rogue squirrels from the Cold War days who've been laid off and gone feral.

In America, public opinion is in no mood for war with Iran. In Washington, Congress is focused on finding the most politically advantageous way to lose in Iraq. In Europe, they've already psychologically accepted the Iranian nuclear umbrella. In the Western world, where talks are not the means to the end but an end in themselves, we find it hard despite the evidence of 30 years to accept that Iran talks the talk and walks the walk. Once it goes nuclear, do you think there will be fewer fatwas on writers, stonings of homosexuals, kidnappings in international waters, forced confessions of American hostages and bankrolling of terror groups worldwide? These latest hostages are part of a decades-old pattern of behavior. The longer it goes without being stopped, the worse it will be.

That’s not enough? How about that they’ve put these new hostages on IRANIAN TELEVISION?

Detained American-Iranian speaks on Iranian TV

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian-American detained in Iran said on state television on Thursday she had concluded that a network of research centers and universities she had helped create had aims which would weaken the Iranian government.

Haleh Esfandiari, 67-year-old director of the Middle East program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, was arrested in May when visiting Iran from the United States.

She told a documentary TV program on Thursday "Now, after nearly five months ... I have reached the conclusion that we had created a chain of research centers, foundations and universities ... the aim of such networks was to create very fundamental changes inside the Iranian regime ... which means really weakening the system."

Iran's top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned of a U.S.-backed "velvet revolution" using intellectuals and others to bring about "regime change."

Kian Tajbakhsh, another Iranian-American, was also arrested while visiting Iran in May.

A consultant with the Open Society Institute, founded by billionaire investor George Soros, he told the same program: "The Soros centre's job in eastern Europe is nearly finished. Its main focus now is the Islamic world, Arab countries, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc."

State television's promotional clips of the program on Monday outraged Washington, which warned that any confessions which were broadcast would have no legitimacy. The first episode of the program was aired on Wednesday.

The Woodrow Wilson Centre's president, Lee Hamilton, said on Tuesday Esfandiari has been held in solitary confinement, adding that "any statements she may make without having had access to her lawyer would be coerced and have no legitimacy or standing."

Iran's judiciary said on Tuesday the statements made by Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh on television carried no legal weight.

BUSH SPEECHES

Their comments were broadcast in a documentary "In the Name of Democracy," which used parts of speeches by U.S. President George W. Bush about spreading democracy and images of popular uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine apparently to imply that Washington had similar plans for Iran.

The documentary also showed Ramin Jahanbeglou, an Iranian-Canadian writer detained for four months last year for endangering state security. "I am sorry for what I have done and I regret it," he said.

State television has in the past broadcast what it said were confessions by dissidents serving jail sentences for alleged attempts to undermine the Islamic Republic. Some have remained in jail even after the "confessions" were aired.

Many Iranian intellectuals say such measures are aimed at deterring any academic debate about the clerical establishment.

Rights groups and Western diplomats say Iranian authorities have increased pressure on dissidents, intellectuals and critical journalists, possibly in response to mounting international pressure over its atomic program.

The documentary made no mention of two other American-Iranians arrested this year on security-related charges, one of whom has been freed on bail.

Long-time foe Washington is leading efforts to isolate Iran over what it says are its plans to build nuclear arms. U.S. forces have detained five Iranians in Iraq on charges of backing militants there. Iran denies the charges.

The two countries will hold fresh talks in Iraq soon, following a landmark meeting in Baghdad in May.

Need more?

Iran TV shows detained American-Iranian academics

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's state television aired on Wednesday a program featuring two detained American-Iranian academics accused of endangering national security in the Islamic state.

Iranian officials have suggested Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh may have been involved in a U.S.-backed plot to stage a "velvet revolution" in Iran. Rights groups and U.S. officials had deplored Iran's plans to put the pair on television.

But in the first part of a documentary entitled "In the Name of Democracy" the two dual nationals, arrested separately in May while visiting Iran, did not make explicit confessions of conspiring to topple Tehran's clerical establishment.

"My job was to identify lecturers through contacting Iranians in America or contacting Iranian intellectuals when visiting Iran," said Esfandiari, an academic at the U.S.-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.

"A network of these contacted speech-makers was created ... The main aim was to identify key figures ... and to connect them to the network," said Esfandiari, who wore a black headscarf.

Tajbakhsh, a consultant with the Open Society Institute, founded by billionaire investor George Soros, said: "My job was to give social, political and cultural advice to the centre about Iran."

"The fact that America's Congress financed (the) Soros (centre), shows the American government and the centre share the same views on Iran," he added, referring to a sheaf of notes.

Their comments were interspersed with images from popular uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine to imply that the United States had similar plans for Iran. The second part of the documentary will be shown on Thursday night.

Although they are being held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, the interviews with them were conducted in comfortably furnished rooms and both appeared relaxed and healthy.

State television's promotional clips of the program on Monday outraged Washington which warned that any confessions which were broadcast would have no legitimacy.

Iran's judiciary said on Tuesday the statements made by Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh on television carried no legal weight.

PRESSURE MOUNTS

Rights groups and Western diplomats say Iranian authorities have increased pressure on dissidents, intellectuals and critical journalists, adding this may in part be a response to mounting international pressure over its atomic program.

The documentary made no mention of two other American-Iranians arrested this year on security-related charges, one of whom has been freed on bail.

The Woodrow Wilson Centre's president, Lee Hamilton, said on Tuesday Esfandiari has been held in solitary confinement, adding that "any statements she may make without having had access to her lawyer would be coerced and have no legitimacy or standing."

Iran and the United States are at odds over a range of issues, including Tehran's refusal to give up sensitive nuclear enrichment work, which it says will be used solely for power generation and not, as Washington believes, to make bombs.

Washington also accuses Tehran of backing militants in Iraq, a charge it denies, and U.S. forces have been holding five Iranians in Iraq since January.

Nevertheless, the two countries have said they expect to sit down for fresh talks about Iraq soon, following a landmark meeting in Baghdad in May.

When is our government, when are the American people, going to learn that you CAN NOT TRUST the Iranian government to keep their word about anything? How much more is it going to take before we realize, each and every one of us, that we are at war with a coalition of people from several “countries” in the Middle East, not with any particular individual nation there?

Just when I think that I can’t get any MORE disgusted, something like this finds it’s way to the light of day.

ENOUGH!

Mr. President, SECURE OUR DAMNED BORDERS! And to ALL of our governmental officials, STOP PUSSY FOOTING AROUND WITH TERRORISTS! To the main stream media, STOP LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND STOP HIDING THE TRUTH FROM THEM.

WE don't NEED this bullshit.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man

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