Did we lose a snitch?
Iran nuclear official 'detained'
Mousavian was a senior nuclear negotiator in talks with Europe
A top Iranian former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian has been detained, according to sources in Iran who did not want to be named.
It is not clear why Mr Mousavian, who has also served as Iran's ambassador to Germany, was arrested.
Eight security officials reportedly took him from his house on Monday.
Hossein Mousavian was deputy to Iran's chief negotiator in talks with Europe on the nuclear issue before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power.
BBC Tehran correspondent Frances Harrison says he is still close to former President Rafsanjani.
Mr Mousavian has been working in a think tank since the change of government.
Reuter is reporting:
TEHRAN: Iranian authorities arrested a former nuclear negotiator on unknown charges, a judiciary official told the semi-official ILNA news agency on Wednesday.
"Former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian has been arrested," ILNA quoted an unnamed judiciary official as saying.
The reason for Mousavian's arrest and charges against him have not been announced yet, ILNA said.
Mousavian's office declined to comment over his arrest.
Mousavian, considered a moderate conservative by analysts, was a member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team with the European Union and head of the foreign policy committee on the Supreme National Security Council.
But like most other members of the team, he was replaced by more hardline officials when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005.
During the presidential race, Ahmadinejad said Iran's nuclear negotiators had been too timid, although after his election win Iran continued the talks with the European Union to find a diplomatic solution to its nuclear dispute.
Iran denies the West's accusations that it wants to use its nuclear programme to make bombs and says its atomic ambitions are limited to generating electricity.
The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran over its refusal to stop its sensitive uranium enrichment work.
Nancy has assured me, personally (via MoveON) that he will be treated fairly.
ReplyDeleteNancy with the Laughing Face:
ReplyDelete(found this under "Hyperbole" while analysing our friend, Allen)
"she broke a chisel trying to get it off last night!" ----
"she bought out Mary Kay just to have enough makeup for one day!"
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"Marilyn Manson freaked out when he saw her!"
Nizam, from Bukit Panjang Gov't H. S., Singapore
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"when she takes it off, my mom doesn't recognize her." Ashley, from Knoxville, Tennessee
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"she has to use a sandblaster to get it off at night."
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"when she smiles her cheeks fall off."
Ed
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"she leaves a colour trail behind her when she walks!"
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"you can't tell where the face begins and ends!"
Cara K.
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"by the time she gets it all on, it's time to take it off!"
Josh W.
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"she weighs 50 pounds more when she's done!"
Alex
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"at night she has to get the paint scraper to take it off."
Beth Atkins
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"when she takes it off she loses 30 pounds!"
Benny H.
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"she could pass as a clown at the circus."
Adriene T.
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"the artist formerly known as Prince gets ideas from her."
Ashley Christine
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"she looks like my grandmother!"
Shireen, from Singapore
I have changed the sequence of the posts so that Allen has an opportunity, if he chooses, to respond to Doug.
ReplyDeleteMakes one wonder, why?
ReplyDeleteIran is certainly a strange place, seems that it always has beem.
Since the days of King Leonidas and Alexander the Great and even prior.
There is more than Mohammed in the play.
Oh, the Indecency Of It All
ReplyDeleteIf a newspaper printed a picture of the event it should definitely be bombed.
Yous guys..we use "snitch" in da joint and now da ho-bitch nappy-rappas got a "no Snitch" campaign where dey don't talk to da pigs.
ReplyDeleteI had it from a good authority dat perhaps a bedda word in dis case woud be "asset"..we lost an "asset"
Kinda like in da Godfather where dey talk about "buffers"
My contact says Iran in da early 70's was an OK place. Says some o da babes are HOT.
ReplyDeleteda person says north of da Elburz Mountains we had some "electronic national technical means" listening to Ivans rocket tests...he ran security but got down to Tehran enough. Da Shah he be a friend and things was smoove.
OT--But I think this is kind of interesting though irrelevant to the great workings of the world. Imus to Sue
ReplyDeleteI'd bet Imus does pretty good here, even without going to court.
"But when, to fairly extrapolate these numbers, about a quarter of a billion Muslims are in favor of civilian terrorist attacks, I think prudent people are entitled to be alarmed at the magnitude of the threat."
ReplyDeleteMuslims Don't Like The USA
And following the long established Habuian principle that we kill about a quarter of a billion Muslims I think I've been just about right
Doug..to add to your 9:25, a quote by the great mystery writer, Raymond Chandler.
ReplyDeleteFrom 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
Raymond Chandler
Who is winning?
ReplyDeleteMay 2nd 2007
From Economist.com
Despite setbacks, al-Qaeda is not broken
AFP
ON PAPER, it has been a bad few days for al-Qaeda. Western and Arab counter-terrorist teams that have been trying to hunt it down seem to be enjoying a rare streak of success, with a string of recent arrests, killings and convictions. Does this suggest that al-Qaeda is on the back foot and may even be heading for defeat? Or are the terrorist networks likely to prove resilient for a good while yet? Most experts reckon that, despite welcome successes against al-Qaeda, the second course is still a lot more likely.
On Tuesday May 1st Iraq’s interior ministry said that the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq had been killed. A few days earlier, the Saudi authorities said they had caught some 170 terrorists apparently owing allegiance to al-Qaeda. Last week, the Americans said they were holding an Iraqi believed to be a crucial link between al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, and his cadres in Iraq. Again this week, a British court convicted a clutch of would-be terrorists tied to al-Qaeda’s headquarters in Pakistan.
Perhaps most hopeful is the suggestion that Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, also known as Abu Ayub al-Masri, who headed al-Qaeda in Iraq, had been killed in a shoot-out between insurgents. If true—and it is not yet certain that Mr Masri is dead—it suggests that Iraq’s homegrown Sunni insurgents may be getting fed up with foreign extremists tied to al-Qaeda types who practise such things as beheading hostages, denouncing Shia Muslims as being outside the pale of true Islam, and suicide-bombing markets frequented by Shia civilians. The Americans have also drawn hope from the detention of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, said to be Mr Laden’s “director of external relations” and his main link with Iraq.
Such hopes have been raised before, only to be dashed within weeks or less. Last June, when they had killed the previous head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they hoped it would knock back his cause. But it made no difference to the level of guerrilla violence.
Indeed, there is little sign that the reach of al-Qaeda is diminishing, nor is its determination, nor the size of the pool of recruits on which it must rely. On the contrary, trials of terrorists—such as the one that has just ended in Britain—demonstrate the range of the Islamist diaspora and the large number of plots being simultaneously concocted. There are also signs that al-Qaeda is trying to create a front of terrorism in north Africa, based on Algeria’s Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (known by its French acronym, GSPC), which has recently carried out terrorist attacks in the Maghreb. The Americans are also worried that would-be terrorists are looking for sanctuary in a belt of Sahelian countries just to the south of the Maghreb. The renewal of war in the Horn of Africa, where Islamists are hitting back after their short-lived defeat in Somalia, is further cause for concern.
Although the Saudi authorities are no doubt pleased with their recent catch, it also shows how widespread violent opposition to the Saudi monarchy is—and how many dedicated young men there are who are ready to die overthrow it in Islam’s name. Moreover, as long as Iraq burns and the Israel-Palestine conflict simmers (not to mention Kashmir, Chechnya and a host of other grievances), the Islamist cause will keep on refilling the pool for recruitment. There is no real sign that Islamist terrorism is on the defensive.
I'm still say'in mass bombing, firebombing,tac-nukes are still needed..won't you donate just $5,$10 or $1,000 dollars to day to HABU'S HELL ON ISLAM?
McCain Favors a 'League of Democracies'
ReplyDeleteIt's gotta beat the UN. My Jiffy-Lube beats the UN.
Where oh where has the USS Ike gone?
ReplyDeleteIs she out there... in the fog?
Or headed to another Port of Call?
It is May, now, isn't it?
Three big US carriers could be on station, off the Iranian cosat ...
or not.
Finding a carrier is the prerequisite to sinking it.
ReplyDeleteYou just WAIT, 'Rat, you'll see!
ReplyDeleteAt BC you got the good and you got the bad:
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The Bad:
dla said...
Just normal Wahhabbi-influenced "religion of peace" language.
I'm so glad GWB is in office. I shudder to think how it would be with either green-Al or Lurch in the driver's seat.
You folks should watch the movie "Obsesson, Radical Islam's War Against the West". There's much about the hatred of Jews that is common with the Nazis.
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and the Good:
Cruiser said...
Aristides wrote:
"This won't happen, of course. It's too imaginative for Bush."
I don’t think a lack of imagination is the reason it won't happen. It won't happen because Bush believes, and has invested all of his policy, on the fallacy that Islam is a "religion of peace". If he had such a film made (I don't think it would be hard - I suspect this kind of stuff is said in mosques every Friday all around the world) and distributed he would completely undercut much of what he has done and much of what he has advocated.
I thought I read somewhere that Bush said something like "if this becomes a war on Islam then we will lose". It appears that he will not even contemplate that this is a war against a very substantial percentage of Islam (the militant portion). As a consequence, his administration is paralyzed and the tide of the war has turned against us.
I'm starting a recylcled Florescent Bulb Outfit Here to raise funds for Habu and the Tater's Hellraisin Project.
ReplyDeleteAnd the winner is...
ReplyDeleteThe AP asked the presidential candidates what item each would "most like to have if he were stranded on a desert island."
Democrats:
* Sen. Joe Biden: "Jill, my wife."
* Sen. Hillary Clinton: "A good book."
* Sen. Chris Dodd: "Coffee with cream and sugar."
* John Edwards: "A book."
* Rep. Dennis Kucinich: His wife, Elizabeth.
* Sen. Barack Obama: "Other than my wife and my kids, an inanimate object I would have to have would probably be a good book."
* Gov. Bill Richardson: "Blackberry and a Davidoff cigar."
Republicans:
* Sen. Sam Brownback: "Tarp."
* Rudy Giuliani: "Books and music."
* Mike Huckabee: "Laptop with satellite reception."
* Rep. Duncan Hunter: "Mrs. Hunter."
* Sen. John McCain: "Books."
* Mitt Romney: "My wife, Ann."
* Rep. Tom Tancredo: "Boat."
Excerpts from the Winograd report
ReplyDeleteExcerpts from partial report on Second Lebanon War submitted Monday
Ynetnews
Published: 04.30.07, 22:35 / Israel News
"The decision to respond with an immediate, intensive military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and authorized military plan, based on careful study of the complex characteristics of the Lebanon arena. A meticulous examination of these characteristics would have revealed the following: the ability to achieve military gains having significant political-international weight was limited..
"Consequently, in making the decision to go to war, the government did not consider the whole range of options, including that of continuing the policy of ‘containment’, or combining political and diplomatic moves with military strikes below the ‘escalation level’, or military preparations without immediate military action -- so as to maintain for Israel the full range of responses to the abduction. This failure reflects weakness in strategic thinking, which derives the response to the event from a more comprehensive and encompassing picture...
"Some of the declared goals of the war were not clear and could not be achieved, and in part were not achievable by the authorized modes of military action."
"The ability of Hezbollah to sit ‘on the border’, its ability to dictate the moment of escalation, and the growth of its military abilities and missile arsenal increased significantly as a result of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in May 2000 (which was not followed, as had been hoped, by The Lebanese Army deploying on the border with Israel."
Edward's wife may be terminal, he takes a Book!
ReplyDeleteTrue Quack Class Action Attorney.
Mixed w/southern Preacher Snake Oil Salesman.
I'll take Tancredo,
ReplyDeleteand Brownback if there's a hole in the boat.
* Sen. Barack Obama: "Other than my wife and my kids, an inanimate object I would have to have would probably be a good book.
ReplyDelete---
Allen and Barack are Soul-Mates, clear up to their eyes.
...and furthermore, let me expound further on the ramifications of my choice to...
ReplyDelete"I'll take Tancredo"
ReplyDeleteMost definitely.
Allen gets points for exquisite sanctimony, which, far as I know, is harmless at any number of paces.
A couple of years ago, Jonah Golberg challenged Juan Cole to an online debate that went back and forth between NRO and Informed Comment for some days. Goldberg eventually withdrew, having failed to make his case (which I cannot now recall).
ReplyDeleteBut as my daughter once concluded (and as Cedarford, for instance, undoubtedly recognizes) "Debating on the internet is like participating in the Special Olympics. You may win. You're still retarded."
(Er, developmentally disabled.)