‘Washington Post’ runs op-ed pushing Iran attack without saying authors work for Israel’s registered foreign agent
-Phillip Weiss MONDOWEISS
More subterfuge in our discourse. The Washington Post published an op-ed piece yesterday on the importance of finding a legal basis for an attack on Iran. Not surprisingly, the op-ed's authors, Jeffrey H. Smith and John B. Bellinger III, lawyers at Arnold & Porter, supplied such a basis.
Grant Smith sent me this letter that he had sent to the Washington Post:
“Would it be too much to ask that WAPO reveal that according to the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Act section, Arnold and Porter has been serving as Israel's registered foreign agent since June of 1964? Would it be a lot more to mention that since 2010 the firm has been receiving a $10,000 per month retainer for advisory services and "special projects?" Could WAPO possibly trouble itself to inform readers that according to FARA filings the firm earned $1.2 million in fees in 2010 alone from the Israeli government? Arnold and Porter is now Israel's largest and longest serving registered foreign agent (not that there aren’t more than a handful of unregistered ones). "
More to the point, why should Americans believe such legalistic and non-contextual Iran attack propaganda courtesy of Israeli foreign agents?”
Smith wrote about Arnold & Porter in his book Divert. Excerpt:
“Arnold & Porter represented several Israeli government officials in US courts by arguing that sovereign immunity mandates provide blanket protection from legal liability for their actions. In 2007 the firm won dismissal of war crimes and crimes against humanity claims brought by Palestinians against former General Security Service head Avraham Dichter. In 2005 the firm won dismissal of similar claims against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other senior officials, Israeli military forces and an intelligence agency. In 2006 Arnold & Porter also won dismissal of similar claims focusing on a single Israeli official’s actions that resulted in civilian casualties in 1996. In 2008 Israel's Treasury paid Arnold & Porter $483,401 to defend such actions. In the year 2010 the firm signed a renewable contract with Israel for a $10,000 per month retainer for legal and advisory services and "special projects" with $8,000 in allowed travel expenses. Arnold & Porter reported $1.2 million in fees from the government of Israel for the year 2010.”
HAT TIP: Quirk
HAT TIP: Quirk
Drag the USA into another war?
ReplyDeleteNo thanks, the USA has done that all by it's self. Can you say Iran, Iraq, Afpak, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, Pakistan, Numerous Central American nations... (and so many other adventures it boggles the mind)(but it at least gave employment to people like Rat and Ms T who could never make it in the private sector)
America is already at war with Iran, has been since it overthrew the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. That war has been going on since then. You remember 1978? And so many other war like actions between the USA and Iran....
But if Israel attacks Iran and Iran retaliates by attacking the USA? Well then Iran is stupid.
It's an excuse for the USA to use up some inventory....
As for the article?
Michelle Obama spends more on ONE date night of tax payer dollars than the entire budget mentioned here....
Actually you make an interesting point about our politicians. It is amazing the amount of US government that can be bought for pennies on the dollar. The redistribution of the purloined wealth of US taxpayers by the corrupt occupiers on the Potomac in return for a pittance is awesome.
ReplyDelete…America is already at war with Iran, has been since it overthrew the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. That war has been going on since then. You remember 1978? And so many other war like actions between the USA and Iran…
All the meddling seems to have been done in Iran and not in Indiana, does it not?
America has had a PRO-Arab oil agenda since Prescott Bush DURING ww2 was selling oil to the nazis as his son George Bush 41 was FLOATING in the pacific after being shot down.
DeleteTruth told, the Brits? Also have supported the Moslems since they threw out the Husseins out of Arabia and put in the House of Saud in the 20's
It was the Brits that PUT two kingdoms in place in Iraq and Jordan.
Israeli President "Bibi" Netanyahu on Guy Fawkes. The super-terrorist plans to blow up parliament and the King; the very nation will be liquidated. Fawkes was a Catholic rather than a Muslim – though Renaissance Europe was pretty good at bestialising both – but what a cartoon! I loved the curly fuse and the "flashy" bit on the end – Dan Dare versus The Mekon – and the red line drawn on the black line. It was all oh-so-convincing. Ninety per cent convincing.
ReplyDeleteNot since the last set of cartoons flourished in the UN Donkey House has the world been so gobsmacked. Then it was Colin Powell (I was in the Security Council chamber as a witness to this nonsense in 2003) who displayed his own cartoon of white-coated Iraqi chemists making weapons of mass destruction in a mobile laboratory. It was a railway train, for heaven's sake. And, unlike Bibi's bomb and fuse, it was actually meant to be a railway train. Cartoons, you see, can be taken literally or metaphorically. Or just plain insult the intelligence of ordinary folk; like Bibi's – or cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed, for that matter. They all go "BANG" in the end. And I can see why Israel's sorrowful defenders had to trash Bibi's cartoon yesterday. Sure, it was awful – but the MESSAGE, that was the thing. Don't let the cartoon distract you from the truth (albeit that cartoons are supposed to contain an inner truth, are they not?) and the truth according to Bibi was that Iran could have a nuclear bomb “B/Y THE MIDDLE OF NEXT YEAR”.
{…}
The drawing worked.
DeleteNo one is talking about what Obama said, Abbas said or what Mr DinnerJacket said.
The truth? Intelligence game is never exact. If an enemy says "we are going to erase you"? It matter NOT when the enemy will have the adequate power to do so.
Iran has armed and trained tens of thousands of fighters and suppled tens of thousands in rockets, missiles & IED's to murder AMericans and Israelis.
Now Iran is hell bent on it's nuke program
It's time that Iran pays for it's threats and for it's war crimes.
Personally? I'd be comfortable with the complete destruction of Iranian nuke power, Iranian oil and power infrastructure and maybe even a complete destruction of Iranian Repubulican Guards.
{…}
ReplyDeleteBut whoops! Here's a little downgrading for the reader. "Iran is the centre of terrorism, fundamentalism and subversion and is … more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a nuclear bomb …" Bibi speaking on Thursday? Nope. The ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, in 1996. And – I'm indebted here to the indispensable Roger Cohen – Peres himself said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999! That's 13 years ago. And Ehud Barak – now Bibi's Defence Minister – said in 1996 that Iran would have a nuke by 2004. That's eight years ago. Maybe cartoons are all that's left.
Of course, the think-tank loonies waffled on the networks, grinning idiotically over the cartoon but nodding sagely at Netanyahu's warning – without bothering to recall those utterly false warnings in the past. You can't cry wolf when the wolf is called Ahmadinejad.
Bloomberg's columnist, Lisa Beyer, remarked that Netanyahu had noted "rightly, that Israel's intelligence agencies are superb". They are not. Israel's intelligence on Lebanon has been pitiful for two decades, and it was these same "agencies" who assured Powell back in 2003 that Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction. Later, we somehow forgot that little bit of false Israeli “intelligence” input.
{…}
To ignore Iran and say it's powerless learns nothing from history.
DeleteMaybe you can live in your castle on the hill and not worry that a nation like iran poses any threat to you or your family but Israel doesnt have that luxury.
I love those like you that minimize the genocidal danger of iran and jihadist islam to a people such as the Jews.
Your type sat on it's hands as my relatives were shoved into ovens in the past and guess what? We learned. We will not rely on others (such as yourselves) to protect us.
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ReplyDeleteOf course, the cartoon managed to distract us from the dignified speech by the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, whose condemnation of Israel's land theft in the West Bank was infinitely more accurate than Netanyahu's artwork. But Abbas spoke in Arabic, Netanyahu in American English. Only one man was going to be on the world's screens yesterday. He did seem oddly hot under the collar about the UN's almost-forgotten report on Israel's cruelty during the 2008-9 Gaza war, when Israel's "surgical strikes" – this is Bibi-speak – killed 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians. For a man obsessed with statistics, this one escaped Netanyahu's memory.
But there you go. Iran is a dodgy place. Ahmadinejad is a crackpot, though he came across, in his new "moody" grey specs, as a bit more laid back than Bibi. Of course Iran's going to have a nuke. Saddam was making one, too. Wasn’t he?
Robert Fisk: Benjamin Netanyahu's warning reveals his moments of memory loss- INDEPENDENT
That is closer to the truth than anything coming from bought and paid for Washington and their shills in MSM.
ReplyDeleteMore from the Middle Ages of the Middle East:
ReplyDeleteThe expulsion has begun of 1,100 Nigerian women pilgrims who violated the kingdom's rule prohibiting Muslim women from travelling without a male guardian.
The women were detained after landing at the international airport in Jeddah, and the first 171 were sent back on Thursday.
Women must be accompanied by or have permission from a mahram – a male guardian – in order to travel in Saudi Arabia. But in the past women have been allowed to perform the annual haj pilgrimage in groups with male tour operators.
…and here we go again. From the Hillary Clinton playbook:
ReplyDeleteMembers of Congress and supporters of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) are to press the Obama administration to recognise it as the "legitimate opposition" to the Iranian government after the group is removed from the US list of banned terrorist organisations in the coming days.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, delisted the MEK as a terrorist group on Friday following a well funded campaign to change the image of the group – which was banned in 1997 because of a history of killing Americans, assassinating Iranian politicians and violent support for Saddam Hussein – and portray it as Washington's ally in confronting Tehran.
The state department said it is not overlooking "the MEK's past acts of terrorism" and that it has "serious concerns about the MEK as an organisation, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members". But the group’s renunciation of violence and “the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade” had led to it being unbanned.
…John Limbert, a state department diplomat who was held hostage in the US embassy after the 1979 Iranian revolution, and later served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran, called the delisting decision a "strange and disappointing decision".
ReplyDelete"I know the group claims it has abandon its violent and anti-American past. I wish I could believe them. They have a very dubious history and a similarly dubious present," he told Lobelog.
The state department will not publicly discuss the decision to delist the MEK until Clinton formally announces it. But it follows a multi-million dollar campaign that won the support of members of Congress and a slew of prominent former officials, including former heads of the US military and ex-White House officials for unbanning the MEK.
Iranian American groups recognised that contribution as they praised the decision to unban the group.
“The delisting was in part due to the perseverance of members of Congress and the courage shown by senior former US officials,” said Ross Amin of the Iranian American Community of Northern California.
An ethanol refinery in every county, and we can tell the whole bunch to go diddle themselves.
ReplyDeletestart with the conversion of every truck and bus to natural gas...
Deletethen tell opec to defend it's self
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DeleteBut we wouldn't even if we could.
It's the big game where elitist pricks graduate from Ivy League schools with degrees in political science and foreign relations and decide it is their mission to change the world. Get a job under naifs like Hillary and Clapper and they are in a position to do it; unfortunately, either for good or, as in most cases, for bad.
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http://www.cngnow.com/Pages/information.aspx
DeleteLet’s see, what is the MEK?
ReplyDeleteI don’t like anyone that uses the word “mujahedeen" to describe themselves. How have all the other mujahedeen groups, that we have supported, worked out for us? I am less fond of groups that refer to them as the”people’s anything”
The MEK is The People’s Mujahedeen of Iran
MEK’s ideology--a blend of Marxism, feminism, and Islamism.
*MEK was founded in 1963 by leftist Iranian students opposed to the monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its supporters in the West, including the United States. Many of MEK's leaders--including current chief Massoud Rajavi--were imprisoned by the Shah in the 1970s, and several were executed. MEK participated in the 1979 revolution that swept Ayatollah Khomeini into power and supported the takeover of the U.S. Embassy that year.
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DeleteThis must be the Iranians WiO was talking about that were killing the Americans.
But, hey, they said they were going to be good boys. That's a good thing, right?
Time to open the flood gates to all that US aid. Sure, they used to be terrorists but now that they are on our side they are 'legitimate opposition.' Of course, when I say on our side, I mean on our side for now.
We've seen it before. Bad guys until we give them money and support. Then they are good guys until they get what they want. Then they are bad guys again.
SOP
As the world turns with the idiots at State and the CIA.
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Rather than fund either side of the syrian and/or iranian situations, I would convert trucks and buses to natural gas and drill oil in America to push down (as policy) the price of oil.
DeleteBankrupting OPEC is the solution.
Not arming jihadist crazies for temporary situations.
Not to worry, Let's give egypt another 450 million dollars in cash...
ReplyDeleteNot bad for one embassy storming and one islamic flag raising...
WiO is turning Libertarian on me. Now if he could only extend his isolationism to the Little Satan too.
DeleteMs T, the former lesbian makes a funny!!!!
DeleteTrust me, I dont do ANYTHING on you.....
More on the MEK
ReplyDeleteIn fact, as the US made its case for invading Iraq in 2003, it cited the Iraqi leader’s support for the MEK as evidence of his support for terrorism.
But now, after a two-year lobbying campaign that enlisted many prominent US politicians and former military officers, the group will no longer be considered a terrorist organisation.
Former US officials have received tens of thousands of dollars to give speeches to and on behalf of the MEK.
Millions of dollars have been spent on a campaign to get the MEK dropped from the banned list of terror groups.
Three top Washington lobby firms have been paid a total of nearly $1.5m over the past year to press the US administration and legislators to support the de-listing if the group.
The US treasury department is believed to be investigating whether speaking fees paid to MEK supporters are restricted by a law that prohibits Americans from doing business with designated terrorist groups.
Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, has accepted more than $150,000 in speaking fees at events in support of the MEK's unbanning.
Tom Ridge, who served as secretary of homeland security under George Bush, has also received speaking fees.
"They certainly appeared on the list at a time which was politically very convenient for the US government which was trying to reach out to Iranian government … it was the Iranian government that brought to their [US] attention that the MEK was not on the list."
- Patrick Clawson, the research director at the Washington Institute
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chair of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, has accepted at least $20,000 and has spoken out against the ban.
Other prominent American politicians who have spoken in favour of the MEK include Democratic governors and former presidential candidates Howard Dean and Bill Richardson. Another Democratic support is NATO commander Wesley Clark.
al jazeera
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DeleteThe US treasury department is believed to be investigating whether speaking fees paid to MEK supporters are restricted by a law that prohibits Americans from doing business with designated terrorist groups.
Right.
What do you think the odds are that that will happen?
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I added a video on the post which goes into some detail about the MEK delisting.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, Washington harlots for dollars have an extraordinary impact of the lives of ordinary Americans and for what?
They've probably been doing some of the sabotage that we've been so cheerful about.
ReplyDeleteYou were blaming the israelis just the other day...
DeleteNo, you're confusing me with someone else. For one thing "blame" would be the wrong word. I'm slightly in favor of covert operations against Iran's nuke program (it might delay, by a bit, our eventual involvement in this idiocy.)
Deletesorry
DeleteRat is right about one thing, none of it will change under Obama or Romney.
ReplyDeleteIt's the republicans that have been fighting biofuels tooth and nail.
DeleteGo Jug Ears.
Jug ears is destroying America.
DeleteBut that's what you want....
Are you still angry about the Indian wars?
Is this your way of payback against the evil white man???
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DeleteSilly conflation of facts.
You and the rat and WiO think all our problems would be solved by being independent of foreign oil.
Haven't you heard? The US is a player, a mover and shaker, the font of democracy. Hillary, Obama, Bush before them, all the rest tell us so.
We don't have it in us to keep our nose out of other peoples business. If it wasn't oil, it would be agriculture, if not agriculture it would be some other commodity, if not a physical asset, it would be in the name of democracy or for humanitarian reasons. There will always be an excuse. You stretch credulity to think otherwise.
The more you grow the government the more people you have standing around waiting to do 'something'. When they can print unlimited money to fund their wet dreams and care little about mundane things like international law or collateral damage, what is to stop them?
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Yep, Jug Ears is
Deletepromoting Renewable Energy (including biofuels,)
Trying to make healthcare available
Pushing back against Chinese Unfair Trade Practices
Pushing for Training and Education affordability
Disengaging from disastrous foreign adventures
Sending Jobs Bills to Congress
Sending bills to Congress to keep low tax rates for the middle and lower classes
and throwing support behind "personal freedom" initiatives.
He's just downright "Hatin' on America," Big Time.
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DeletePersonal freedom initiatives?
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Gay rights, birth control, abortion
DeleteQuirk: Silly conflation of facts.
DeleteYou and the rat and WiO think all our problems would be solved by being independent of foreign oil.
I think it would make opec and jihadists less powerful
Quirk: Haven't you heard? The US is a player, a mover and shaker, the font of democracy. Hillary, Obama, Bush before them, all the rest tell us so.
We don't have it in us to keep our nose out of other peoples business. If it wasn't oil, it would be agriculture, if not agriculture it would be some other commodity, if not a physical asset, it would be in the name of democracy or for humanitarian reasons. There will always be an excuse. You stretch credulity to think otherwise.
I have no issue or problem with America poking it's nose anywhere except my ass...
quirk: The more you grow the government the more people you have standing around waiting to do 'something'. When they can print unlimited money to fund their wet dreams and care little about mundane things like international law or collateral damage, what is to stop them?
I agree, shrink government, make those free loaders that in habit about 40% of government positions actually earn a living.
Deuce: The redistribution of the purloined wealth of US taxpayers by the corrupt occupiers on the Potomac in return for a pittance is awesome.
ReplyDeleteOnly three red states get less back than they send in.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/states-federal-taxes-spending-charts-maps
WiO: Personally? I'd be comfortable with the complete destruction of Iranian nuke power, Iranian oil and power infrastructure and maybe even a complete destruction of Iranian Repubulican Guards.
ReplyDeleteIf Israel can do it, go ahead. Just don't drag the US into it. We don't have a dog in the hunt. Maybe China and Japan and Europe do. But Israel can't tick off your shopping list of destruction, because they would have done it already, just like the Syrian reactor.
America is already at war with Iran. Israel cannot "drag" America into something America has been actively involved in for decades.
ReplyDeleteAmerica, under Obama, released classified info about American attacks on Iran.
So now that we have established you are not up on the issue let me ask, is this why you never got a real job and just exisited off of the government tit for all these years?
WiO: Ms T, the former lesbian makes a funny!!!!
ReplyDeleteAll 'r nuttin'. Yer either with Netanyahu 'r yer with Qaeda. Yer either supportin' Israel 'r yer supportin' terrah. Yer either hot for Kenny Chesney 'r yer hot for the Dixie Chicks. Black 'r white. There ain't no middle ground.
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Ohio Under #Obama: 1,790,955 people on food stamps, UP 1.3% from a year ago. The White House admits Obama failed on 100% of his promises but promises that his new promises will be better promises!
WiO: I agree, shrink government, make those free loaders that in habit about 40% of government positions actually earn a living.
ReplyDeleteAnd the next time the Air Force CASREPs a Blackhawk that took a round in its fuel transfer system after hunting Mullahs for Israel, or an attack submarine on its way to the Gulf of Oman to stomp on Iran with some TLAM-Cs for Israel but it's stuck in port because they're short piece parts and can't get a full loadout of torps, they'll ask where's the tech with twenty-eight years of experience who used to work this stuff, and you'll go, "We had to let her go, freeloader you know."
Who is the 40% aint my call...
DeleteHowever with someone like you who spends as much time on the internet doing all sorts of non-productive stuff?
Cannot fathom how you'd be "tops' in your field.
I think the term to describe you is narcissist....
DeleteBut I think there is a song that describes you...
amended for content and space..
No, my reverberated friend,
you are not the beginning and the end.
There'll be spring every year without you. America still will be here without you.
There'll be fruit on the tree.
And a shore by the sea.
There'll be crumpets and tea without you.
Art and music will thrive without you. Somehow Keats will survive without you.
And there still will be rain on that plain down in Spain,
even that will remain without you.
We can do without you.
You, dear friend, who lie so well,
You can go to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire.
You can be a fake lesbian there.
They can still rule with land without you.
Windsor Castle will stand without you.
And without much ado we can all muddle through without you.
:
Without your pulling it the tide comes in,
without your twirling it the Earth can spin,
Without your pulling it, the tide comes in
Without your twirling it, the earth can spin
Without your pushing them, the clouds roll by,
If they can do without you, ducky, so can Israel and the USA
We shall not feel alone without you
We can stand on my own without you
So go back in your shell
we can do bloody well
Without you.
Oh, My; Bad news in religious nutter land:
ReplyDeleteRasmussen - Obama +2
WiO: I think the term to describe you is narcissist....
ReplyDeleteGreat minds discuss ideas, small minds discuss people.
I don't come here to socialize. I want to air out my concerns over policy, economics, military affairs. WiO wants to discuss whether people here prefer women or men, ice cream or cake, or how their desire to avoid foreign entanglements like the first George W. makes them a crypto-Nazi.
t states: I don't come here to socialize. I want to air out my concerns over policy, economics, military affairs. WiO wants to discuss whether people here prefer women or men, ice cream or cake, or how their desire to avoid foreign entanglements like the first George W. makes them a crypto-Nazi.
DeleteSo tell us Ms T, Teresita, Zena.
Why did you create a fake persona, fake girlfriend, fake lesbian status? WHY? IF you came here to air out concerns over policy and such?
You are a disruptive liar....
Nonsense. To your statement?
ReplyDeleteThat is all you did..
Your fake persona was a lie. Your cancer sobs stories, a lie.
As for your concerns?
who cares.
I think the term that describes your style of discussion?
DeletePassive Agressive...
Was listening to Dr. Bill Wattenburg taking over for Savage last night.
ReplyDeleteThey already have the 'device'. They just need the enriched material. They may well already have that. They will hand off to terrorists. USA on the list as Number One target. Cause if Israel goes she takes everyone else.
How will you folks be doing without Seattle, LA, San Francisco, Dallas, New York, Chicago and Miami?
Dr. Bill takes it seriously. Perhaps you should as well. Since he knows what he is talking about, and you don't.
Told the old story I've heard him tell before, how in 1962 he and the boys were in Vegas and some labor dispute delayed the tests in the desert for a week, how they over breakfast wondered if in Vegas at that time they could find all the means to make a bomb, minus the enriched materials. Two days later, from the machine shops there, they had what they needed.
Only the Amish may survive....
Cheers.
....
I feel like the Bolshevist in 1917 who finally turned the entire factory against the government. Took half the town too, and the railroad switching yards. The Whites countered attacked through town twice, trying for the railroad depot, beaten back, in a month I had the whole town. That is how it's going here.
Romney Rally this afternoon!
....
I believe I heard Henry Kissinger say the other day he gave Israel ten more years of existence.
http://endtimeheadlines.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/henry-kissinger-says-israel-will-not-exist-in-10-years/
But I am not sure of the accuracy of it.
Heard a blurb on the radio.
Survivor.
ReplyDeleteMakes great pastries, too, as I can attest.
We have hired four Amish to work on the place.
...
Our Catholics, Quirk and deuce, try as they might, can't cover their catechismal dislike of Israel.
The only sane country in the entire region. It's sad.
But, remember Wattenburg.
We're going to get it first.
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DeleteBob, you are an idiot.
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Yeah, after becoming billionaires those old mullahs just can't wait to commit suicide. What could cause a grownup to start believing shit like that?
DeleteThe phrase "bats in the belfry" comes to mind.
The Mullahs have no problem sending millions to OTHERS to their deaths.
ReplyDelete