Category: Foreign Policy

Blowback from Stupid Empire/Kingdom Decisions – This Time in Saudi Arabia

I do hope that the readers of this blog are well versed in what can happen after empires oppress people toward a degree of rebellion. The thirteen American colonies stood up to the powerful British army and navy and then formed their own federated republic in its aftermath.

In 2019, on the world stage, we have seen a 4 year war by Saudi Arabia (aided by US arms and the US military) on its neighbor Yemen. The blogger “Moon of Alabama” does a great job of not only covering the events of the evening of 13SEP2019 but also the context for this ongoing war that has led to a humanitarian disaster inside of Yemen:

The war on Yemen, launched by the Saudi clown prince Mohammad bin Salman in 2015, cost Saudi Arabia several billion dollar per month. The Saudi budget deficit again increased this year and is expected to reach 7% of its GDP.  The country needs fresh money or much higher oil prices.

How does one country get away with attacking another country without consequences in 2019. Enter the United States of America, the American Empire. The Saudis actually launched the war in late MAR2015 with the full support of the Obama administration. They had that agreement ahead of time that the United States would provide the logistical support, the bombs themselves as well as assistance in targeting.  Not necessarily explicitly targeting of each bomb, but sort of the strategic technical assistance in making decisions about how to approach the war. In addition to this, was the assurance the United States government would provide the political and even diplomatic cover for the war.

Is this sick or what? Actually, this is the same guarentee the American Empire has given to Saudi Arabia’s middle east partner (in crime) Israel, but I digress. (I sense another blog post is needed for that one right there)

The Saudis have actually felt that they could get away with not just continuing to bomb civilian targets, infrastructure targets and establishing a thorough blockade, but this economic blockade of Yemen preventing the fuel, food and medicine from coming into the country that this poorest nation in the Middle East needs to have in order to survive is lunacy. Only the US could enable a nation to operate above international laws in this world.

So the continuity from the Obama administration through the Trump Administration is that all they care about is to support the Saudis because the Saudis are anti-Iranian. Human life is second to keeping the US citizens in fear about what the Iranians might do. Millions starve because the American Empire is acting as the world’s bully. This ain’t no shining city on a hill. This ain’t no land of the free, it is a land of sheep who care less about what its masters do across the globe.

Again, I digress.

Back to the events of a few nights ago when 10 drones controlled by Yemeni Houthi forces targeted two major Saudi oil installations, Abqaiq and Babqaiq only 60 km (37 miles) southwest of Aramco’s Dhahran headquarters, and caused several large fires.

The oil and gas conditioning plant in Abqaiq is the largest of the world. It sits at the center of Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas infrastructure. Abqaiq processes 6.8 million barrels of crude oil each day. More than two thirds of all Saudi oil and gas production runs through it. It is not clear yet how much of the widespread facility was destroyed.

Looking at this map and the sheer distance from Yemen, one does have to wonder about these ten drones being this accurate. My own questions include, is this a false flag? Could these have been launched from within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or from Iraq or Iran even?

‘Moon of Alabama’ is on it:

But drones may not have been the sole cause of the incident. Last night a Kuwaiti fishermen recorded the noise of a cruise missile or some jet driven manned or unmanned aircraft coming from Iraq. Debris found on the ground in Saudi Arabia seems to be from an Soviet era KH-55 cruise missile or from a Soumar, an Iranian copy of that design. The Houthi have shown cruise missiles, likely from Iran, with a similar design (see below). After an attack on Saudi oil installations in August there were accusations that at least some of the attacks came from Iraq. Iran was accused of having been involved in that attack. While this sounds unlikely it is not inconceivable.

The August 2019 turning point of this war with Yemen has the Saudi’s on their heels. The Saudi’s have no protection setup to the south of their oil production facilities. ‘Moon of Alabama’ said last month:

Saudi Arabia finally lost the war on Yemen. It has no defenses against the new weapons the Houthis in Yemen acquired. These weapons threaten the Saudis’ economic lifelines.

Houthi drones on display

Blowback is like Karma .. sometimes it is a b****. In my mind, this is partial justice for the Saudi’s decision (along with Israel, UK and US) to create ISIS and all the havoc it did in Iraq and Syria.

The projected Saudi expenses to get protection is expense and takes time and will not necessarily work.

… would require hundreds of Russian made Pantsyr-S1 and BUK air defense systems to protect Saudi oil installations.

In the mean time to shore up their financial state the Saudis recently renewed plans to sell a share of its state owned oil conglomerate Aramco.

What goes around, comes around. For whatever reason Saudi Arabia had for starting a war with the poorest country in the Middle East has coincided with low oil prices which is driving the Saudis to new levels of desperation in order to maintain control of the citizens of their country.

This will not end well.

Stay tuned

-SF1

War Can Be Avoided – Even for the US Empire! (Rarely) – Retro 1983

Service members pick through the rubble following the bombing of the USMC barracks in Beirut, Lebanon on Oct. 23, 1983. The terror attack resulted in the deaths of 220 Marines. File Photo by USMC/UPI

You can count on one hand the times that the United States of America refrained from its drive for war. While its third president said on 04MAR1801:

… peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none …

… in hindsight, presidents that followed Thomas Jefferson did not have those ideals and/or could not resist the unity that happens when the war path is decided on. War is good for the state as well, which statesmen back in the day and politicians today realize clearly. The state was meant for war.

However, there was a time in the early 1980s when the US backed off from the war path. It was tempting, but at the end of the day, cooler heads prevailed. As Kenny Rogers sang

He said, “If you’re gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run

In this article, the details emerge from a time in 1983-1984 when the US Empire acted more like a man of character than that of a bully. Confident that knowing when “to hold them, and knowing when to run” displayed more meekness, power under control, than most Presidential administrations to date.

While Reagan’s administration piled on the debt more than Carter’s, engaged in the drug trafficking trade called the Iran-Contra Affair, and also ratcheted up “gun-control”, this event in Lebanon and the US response is something that needs to be remembered and admired.

Setting the stage:

In October of 1983, a truck filled with explosives leveled the four-story U.S. Marine Barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 American military personnel. The intelligence community laid responsibility for the act at the feet of Tehran’s mullahs, who’d tasked Hezbollah, their proxy in Lebanon, with pushing the U.S. (which had deployed the Marines as part of a multinational peacekeeping mission) out of the region. The incident (the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War Two, as we were told at the time), touched off a legendary internal Reagan Administration dispute over how, and whether, the U.S. should retaliate.

As today, there were members of the administration that were more war-hawk in nature, and others who have been in combat, and acutely know what the unintentional consequences might be in ordering a retaliation.

I do like Caspar Weinberger’s (US Army veteran of some intense Pacific fighting in WWII) angle:

Secretary of Defense [Weinberger] had opposed the deployment of the Marines to begin with, and had the support of the military. Colin Powell, Weinberger’s senior military assistant, spoke for many of the military’s leaders when he described the Lebanon deployment “goofy from the beginning.”

On the other side was Secretary of State George Shultz:

For Shultz, however, revisiting the deployment decision was a waste of time. In a series of knock-down-drag-outs that pitted him against Weinberger, the Secretary of State argued that “American credibility” (that old standby), was being tested and that, therefore, the deaths of 241 U.S. Marines was cause enough for a military escalation.

The kicker comes here where Weinberger’s wisdom is revealed:

Weinberger disagreed: “retaliation against who?” he asked. Slow-rolling the president, he argued that the U.S. needed better intelligence before deciding who to punish. Weinberger was adamant: the U.S. had just left one unwinnable conflict (in Vietnam), and shouldn’t be so quick to start another. He dug in.

I do wish that this effort could be made today. Instead of lashing out like a bully swinging wildly to and fro, connecting here, connecting there mainly with innocent people and missing the real culprits, can’t today’s US government ever take time and wisely ascertain what is really happening? No more “WMD’s in Iraq”, no more Colin Powell holding some “chemical weapon” in his fingers at the UN, no more stories of babies in incubators left to die. The CIA/MI6/Mossad deep state “evidence” needs to be compared to truly independent science, if one can every practically get there.

Maybe, just maybe today’s announcement that Sen. Rand Paul has been chosen to be a point of dialog with the regime in Iran, is a rare piece of good news that I myself have been waiting years if not decades for.

Back to 1983.

It seems that the Vietnam War was not too far in the rear-view mirror as men with war experience from WWII in the South Pacific, who started as PRIVATES, who have seen the elephant, could wisely speak into:

NOTE: “Weinberger was a Harvard-educated lawyer, his formative experience came in World War II, where he served as an infantry officer during the 1942 Battle of Buna—a fetid, leech-infested Japanese base on the rim of northern New Guinea. For those who survived, including Weinberger, the swamp-slogging battle was an unrelenting nightmare: at its end, the Japanese resorted to cannibalism and used the bodies of the dead to reinforce their defenses. ”

Staying strong:

The Shultz-Weinberger tilt dragged on until February of 1984, when Reagan decided to “redeploy” the Marines to U.S. ships on station in the Mediterranean. The “redeployment” was seen by Shultz as an ignominious retreat, a sign of American weakness. But, as capably rendered by Marine Colonel and historian David Crist in The Twilight War, that’s not the way the Pentagon viewed it.

Only the insecure thinks this is a loss. The mature and secure person can see better the big picture and risk the possibility of this reaction to be seen as week.

Then the truth is unearthed, something that the US Empire struggles with to this very day:

The problem with American policy in the Middle East, Koch implied, was American hypocrisy—and our selective use of the word terrorism: when our friends plant bombs we say it’s because they’re defending our values, but when our enemies do it, it’s terrorism.

The entangling alliances will always cause hypocrisy. We had been warned from over 200 years ago and we (especially our leaders) still don’t get it.

Over reaction to the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, or to anything we might see in the Persian Gulf in the coming weeks and months is a recipe for a disaster that will over-shadow Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Things were very different even 5, 10, 15 and even 20 years ago. The world has changed, Russia and China have not only survived US sanctions and tariff wars, but they also have allies in other countries that have been bullied by the US Empire especially since the end of WWII.

.. striking back, killing who you can because you can (and simply to assuage your own anger) is not only “beneath our dignity”—it’s a signpost on the road to unwinnable wars.

Don’t we know it. The US Empire legacy lives on, and it ain’t a pretty sight.

-SF1

Iran STILL Upholds the Treaty it Signed with the US and Other Nations, But the US is UPSET?

* actual numbers may be dated, however, the true character of each nation should be obvious to the most casual observer!

Iran has yet to violate the JCPOA treaty that was signed by many countries almost four years ago. Have you read it?

There seems to be some angst in major media today, 01JUL2019, when they heard that Iran has announced that it has exceeded 300kg of enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6). Really? Did they not read the treaty and know what “triggered” this action? Did they not hear Iran warn about this during late-May and earlier last month? This should have been no surprise.

I had shared my own concerns of the heightened tensions between the US Empire and Iran in a post about a week ago when I mentioned:

A nations character is determined by its actions over time. The US’s character in domestic and world affairs has been going downhill for decades, even over a century. This nation has long passed the time when the world might see us as a “shining city on a hill”.

It takes TWO in any relationship, and in this case, the US has been nothing but a bully in “victim-blaming” Iran .. from when the CIA assassinated their president in 1953 to this April when Trump said:

“floods once again show the level of Iranian regime mismanagement in urban planning and in emergency preparedness.”

.. WHILE whole swaths of the US Midwest were underwater. You can’t make this up. Every administration assumes that the stupid American people will just nod their head and agree with main-stream-media and their masters, the US government (deep state, politicians and thousands of bureaucrats that suck the life out of the American taxpayer).

Moon of Alabama cuts to the chase about what is really going on here:

Iran does that [exceed 300kg UF6] within the frame of the JCPOA. It is not breaching it. Article 26 of the joint plan states that the U.S. will refrain from reimposing sanctions and that Iran will react in case that happens:

The United States will make best efforts in good faith to sustain this JCPOA and to prevent interference with the realisation of the full benefit by Iran of the sanctions lifting specified in Annex II. The U.S. Administration, acting consistent with the respective roles of the President and the Congress, will refrain from re-introducing or re-imposing the sanctions specified in Annex II that it has ceased applying under this JCPOA, without prejudice to the dispute resolution process provided for under this JCPOA. The U.S. Administration, acting consistent with the respective roles of the President and the Congress, will refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions. Iran has stated that it will treat such a re-introduction or re-imposition of the sanctions specified in Annex II, or such an imposition of new nuclear-related sanctions, as grounds to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part.

For the record, on 08MAY2019, the US broke the JCPOA when it reimposed sanctions on Iran. Period. There should be ZERO crocodile tears from the US on this latest development.

In addition to this, Mood of Alabama points out that on 03MAY2019:

the State Department removed sanction waivers that allowed Iran to export low enriched uranium in exchange for natural uranium:

In addition, any involvement in transferring enriched uranium out of Iran in exchange for natural uranium will now be exposed to sanctions. The United States has been clear that Iran must stop all proliferation-sensitive activities, including uranium enrichment, and we will not accept actions that support the continuation of such enrichment.We will also no longer permit the storage for Iran of heavy water it has produced in excess of current limits; any such heavy water must not be made available to Iran in any fashion.

Linked to this is the US’s attempt to isolate Iran in all this by its threat to keep EU (European Union) partners (especially Germany, France and the U.K.) from trading with Iran.Do you see any similarities to how the US treated Japan in 1940 for force them to fire first? (from a 15JUN2019 post):

Especially damning was the economic manipulation FDR orchestrated against Japan the year before Pearl Harbor and the fact that his administration was well aware of the Japanese fleet’s route to Pearl but decided to keep the US Navy in Hawaii in the dark. So much for that “surprise”.

Deja vu, all over again. When will the masses learn? Oh yes, we are in the process of erasing our history, how convenient!

But there is some good news, according to Zero Hedge:

Europe announced that the special trade channel, Instex, that will allow European firms to avoid SWIFT and bypass American sanctions on Iran, is now operational.

The EU has *alls! This is great news and the price of oil reflected this event.

This also has some more unintended consequences for the US playing “hard-ball” with Iran (on behalf of Israel and Saudi Arabia you know, because what other reason would the US be upset with Iran about?). Zero Hedge again points out this aspect of the empire that has some more cracks in it:

Here is a simpler summary of what just happened: this was the first official shot across the bow of the USD status as a global reserve currency, and not by America’s adversaries but by its closest allies. And once those who benefit the most from the status quo openly revolt against it, the countdown to the end of the USD reserve status officially begins.

Yes. You may ask why would I be happy about the economic mayhem that is bound to occur when the effects of this ripple out through all the US economic “spinning-plates”? It is because the only way for the US Empire to quit thinking that “American Exceptionalism” gives it a license to operated above the law (natural law) in the whole world without penalty, the only way the US Empire finally understands that it can no longer be the world’s policeman, that the only way the US political class / elites and deep state finally come to terms with the immorality of its ways (not practicing the golden rule on the macro level) is for the financial rug be pulled out from under it so the “beast” (i.e. swamp) can finally be starved (i.e. drained).

I yearn for the day that the American people (together (doubtful) OR separately (ideally) in various federations of states and city-states) get back to that moment in time when the American Revolution concluded when life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were the top three in the minds of those that finally threw off the British Empire’s micro-managing / taxing agenda.

For the current US government who never saw a treaty that it couldn’t eventually break, it is no wonder why the political elite never wanted this deal with Iran to work, as one can see in the intro to the 2015 treaty:

The E3/EU+3 (China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) and the Islamic Republic of Iran welcome this historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which will ensure that Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful ..

Yes, it is that word “peace”. The US Empire has not nor has never wanted peace. Free trade is the antidote to war, and the state knows this!

Know your history!

-SF1

Collateral Damage: Can We Make Civilians Spectators Again? Probably Not

I am fully aware that the term “collateral damage” as used by the US Empire refers to the “unfortunate” death of innocent civilians as a result of “pre-war” sanctions. The most popular clip on the Internet is Secretary of State Madeline Albright being interviewed about the 500,000 children that died as a result of sanctions on Iraq between Gulf War I and II:

The reason I ‘air-quote’ the term pre-war is that in all reality, sanctions themselves are an act of war, even though it is on the economic variety. While there are no guns used, there is force used to ensure that the economic activity sanctioned actually does not take place, and that is indeed backed by guns. It is both coercion and violence-based. The state dictates that peaceful trade can not take place and its edicts will be followed, as the consequences to any business is well known. No business can go rogue in the sanction war.

Truth be told, we in the US on the domestic front are again close to having personal conversation scrutinized for words of support towards these sanctioned countries filled with people who desire peaceful trade with American citizens. If one supports Palestinian people, one is assumed to be anti-Semitic, if one supports Russian people, one is assumed to be a Russian-bot.

There was a time when war’s harm toward civilians caught in the crossfire was recognized and attempts were made toward international rules that safeguarded citizens as much as possible from the political conflicts that broke out across the world. By the 1700s in fact, this was the norm, which is why there was such disgust when British dragoon leader Banastre Tarleton would kill both the wounded enemy as well as civilians that appeared to “aid the enemy”.

By the time seven states decided to leave the American union in 1861, this norm had not yet changed. Most of the civilized world’s battles took place on the outskirts of cities.

From an article written by one who has seen war with his own eyes since Vietnam, Tom’s Dispatch writes about this time period:

In fact, the classic American instance of war-as-spectator-sport occurred in 1861 in the initial major land battle of the Civil War, Bull Run (or, for those reading this below the Mason-Dixon line, the first battle of Manassas). “On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler sex,” wrote William Howard Russell who covered the battle for the London Times. “The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood — ‘That is splendid, Oh my! Is not that first rate? I guess we will be in Richmond tomorrow.’”

Yes, a picnic lunch adjacent to a large battle. You now know how everyone assumed that civilians would not be targeted. People in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya pretty much know the opposite is true with the US Empire in the 21st century.

Reflecting back once more:

That woman would be sorely disappointed. U.S. forces not only failed to defeat their Confederate foes and press on toward the capital of the secessionist South but fled, pell-mell, in ignominious retreat toward Washington. It was a rout of the first order. Still, not one of the many spectators on the scene, including Congressman Alfred Ely of New York, taken prisoner by the 8th South Carolina Infantry, was killed.

By in large, the southern armies were driven by principles. The leadership time and again desired to spare the civilian population of the havoc of war. When Robert E. Lee’s army invaded the northern states of Maryland and Pennsylvania, his men were under strict orders NOT to help themselves to the resources of these civilians but rely on their own supplies. This was even apparent at the end of the war in 1865 when a hungry, tired and destitute southern army under Robert E. Lee retreated from Richmond and came across a rare cow in the countryside. Robert E. Lee directed his hungry men to return that cow to its rightful owner.

We do however know that there were civilian deaths during this internal conflict where one section of the country desired to depart in peace. Tom’s Dispatch explains:

Judith Carter Henry was as old as the imperiled republic at the time of the battle. Born in 1776, the widow of a U.S. Navy officer, she was an invalid, confined to her bed, living with her daughter, Ellen, and a leased, enslaved woman named Lucy Griffith when Confederate snipers stormed her hilltop home and took up positions on the second floor.

“We ascended the hill near the Henry house, which was at that time filled with sharpshooters. I had scarcely gotten to the battery before I saw some of my horses fall and some of my men wounded by sharpshooters,” Captain James Ricketts, commander of Battery 1, First U.S. Artillery, wrote in his official report. “I turned my guns on that house and literally riddled it. It has been said that there was a woman killed there by our guns.” Indeed, a 10-pound shell crashed through Judith Henry’s bedroom and tore off her foot. She died later that day, the first civilian death of America’s Civil War.

We know she was not the last to die. Many would die as Union army cut swaths through the south in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Civilian’s fields, silver and homes would not be spared, nor were their personal bodies as many women were raped by the marauding troops from the north. As in many countries in the Middle East today, these atrocities would not soon be forgotten.

Tom’s Dispatch (Nick Turse) continues:

No one knows how many civilians died in the war between the states. No one thought to count. Maybe 50,000, including those who died from war-related disease, starvation, crossfire, riots, and other mishaps. By comparison, around 620,000 to 750,000 American soldiers died in the conflict — close to 1,000 of them at that initial battle at Bull Run.

So by 1865 these ratios were starting to change. Civilian deaths are hard to estimate, but you can be assured that military deaths these days are minimal when compared to those of innocent civilians.

In Vietnam, we saw this on black and white TV before the government decided to control more of what the masses would view:

A century later, U.S. troops had traded their blue coats for olive fatigues and the wartime death tolls were inverted. More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam. Estimates of the Vietnamese civilian toll, on the other hand, hover around two million. Of course, we’ll never know the actual number, just as we’ll never know how many died in air strikes as reporters watched from the rooftop bar of Saigon’s Caravelle Hotel ..

Since the 1960s, this trend has only accelerated and has not only produced more of what our own CIA calls “blowback” (I mean, when you blow up funeral processions with drones, you will multiply the number of freedom-fighters, errr I mean “terrorists” in a region) but it also has cause economic and political refugees seeking a better life in other regions of the world. For both the military-industrial complex and politicians, this is actually a win-win for them. How sick is that?

Tom’s Dispatch article winds down by saying:

In this century, it’s a story that has occurred repeatedly, each time with its own individual horrors, as the American war on terror spread from Afghanistan to Iraq and then on to other countries; as Russia fought in Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere; as bloodlettings have bloomed from the Democratic Republic of Congo to South Sudan, from Myanmar to Kashmir. War watchers like me and like those reporters atop the Caravelle decades ago are, of course, the lucky ones. We can sit on the rooftops of hotels and listen to the low rumble of homes being chewed up by artillery. We can make targeted runs into no-go zones to glimpse the destruction. We can visit schools transformed into shelters. We can speak to real estate agents who have morphed into war victims.  Some of us, like Hedrick Smith, Michael Herr, or me, will then write about it — often from a safe distance and with the knowledge that, unlike Salah Isaid and most other civilian victims of such wars, we can always find an even safer place.

A safer place. I am sure this is what those imprisoned in Gaza feel, or those in Libya near Tripoli these days, or in various areas of Iraq and Afghanistan and even in areas of Syria.

This will probably all “come home to roost” as our foreign policy of intervention and disruption plus regime change causes people to uproot and move. There is always “baggage” involved when violence displaces families.

This all will not end well, nor will this country be exempt from the fallout.

-SF1

Words Matter: What Happens When it is the Right Word, But the Wrong Translation?

Don’t worry, I am not talking about the Bible which has been misinterpreted time and again from the original languages as well as from the context of the time in which it was said centuries ago.

I am talking about Western Media misinterpreting Iranian leadership’s words, whether mistakenly or on purpose, ends up giving those that worship their government-directed news sources a false impression of what really is. Remember, this nation is driven lately with “feelings”, and so how better a way to get people back on-board the war-train but to twist what is said, and hope no one catches it.

Moon of Alabama reflects on the time when someone mentioned that a certain country must be:

“wiped off the map”

Can you remember this? Almost fifteen years ago, in 2005 it was reported that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad said this about Israel. Can you imagine the brouhaha? Oh yes, tensions between the US (protectorate of Israel) and Iran flared, even though those specific words were never said in Persian.

“He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.” Since Iran has not “attacked another country aggressively for over a century,” he said in an e-mail exchange, “I smell the whiff of war propaganda.”

Also, ..

Jonathan Steele, a columnist for the left-leaning Guardian newspaper in London, recently laid out the case this way: “The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran’s first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that ‘this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,’ just as the Shah’s regime in Iran had vanished. He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The ‘page of time’ phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon.”

However, the misinterpretation stuck. I bet you remembered this phrase from 2005 if you are over 30 years old. It made an impression on you.

Retractions don’t stick except for those who are critical thinkers and can do their own research. The damage is done, however, for the masses as the propagandist and manipulators in our midst use it for their own purposes, even if it could lead to WWIII, they don’t care.

So when the trustworthy AP (Associated Press, with the emphasis on the first three letters) publishes this:

The Associated Press @AP – 7:52 utc – 25 Jun 2019

BREAKING: Iran’s President Rouhani mocks President Trump, says the White House is “afflicted by mental retardation.”

Donald Trump believes his own propaganda source:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – 14:42 utc – 25 Jun 2019

Iran leadership doesn’t understand the words “nice” or “compassion,” they never have. Sadly, the thing they do understand is Strength and Power, and the USA is by far the most powerful Military Force in the world, with 1.5 Trillion Dollars invested over the last two years alone..

….The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else. The U.S. has not forgotten Iran’s use of IED’s & EFP’s (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many more…

….Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!

Truth is, words matter. If one takes the exact Persian words and translate them, retarded is not one of them:

Reza H. Akbari @rezahakbari – 15:58 utc – 25 Jun 2019

Absolutely incorrect. There is a word for “retarded” in Persian & Rouhani didn’t use it. Prior to him saying “mental disability” he even prefaced his comment by saying “mental weakness.” Those who speak Persian can listen & judge for themselves. Here is a video clip of Rouhani’s comment: link

In this day and age when one has seen the United Nations with everyone having headsets on hearing in almost real time the speeches in their own language, how can this still happen in 2019?

Actual word for word translation:

“They have become stricken with mental incapability [Persian: natavani-ye zehni]. The White House has become stricken with mental disability [Persian: ma’luliyat-e zehni]. They don’t know what to do.”

As Moon of Alabama says:

It is hard to believe that such significant mistranslations of official ‘enemies’, left without a timely correction, happen accidentally.

For sure. This was no accident, this was done intentionally to keep stoking the fires towards war and more sanctions that only serve to hurt the less fortunate in Iran, which makes the US officials like Bolton and Pompeo smile and laugh out loud:

“This is a sick world we’re living in. Sick people” – Sinbad in Jingle All the Way (1996)

-SF1