Join In On The Action "Register Here" To View The Forums

Already a Member Login Here

Board index Forum Index
User avatar
Administrator
 
Posts: 11284
Joined: 14 Feb 2000, 8:40 am

Post 13 May 2016, 7:49 am

of course terrorists do not require a lot of money but the more money they have, the greater terror they can (and will) unleash. As DF pointed out, Bin Laden supported many terror attacks thanks to his wealth, ISIS is supporting an entire army and that requires money as well. Hitting them in the purse is not the only answer of course but it sure is ONE of them!
User avatar
Statesman
 
Posts: 11324
Joined: 15 Aug 2000, 8:59 am

Post 13 May 2016, 10:17 am

The point being argued Tom, is Fates claim that the ending of sanctions against Iran will allow them billions of dollars to use in exporting terror.

If they have been successful to date in supporting terror they've been doing it without the money tied up by the sanctions. And therfore its obvious they don't need billions.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, the 9/11 plotters spent between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct the attack:

Thats mostly to house and move about the group of plotters.
Thats not a great deal of money for a nation the size of Iran.
It wasn't a great deal for Al Queda.
So to argue that somehow the deal with Iran is going to generate a great deal more terror based on billions now being used to generate terror is counter factual. Money isn't the missing ingredient when it comes to the creation of terror events.
User avatar
Ambassador
 
Posts: 21062
Joined: 15 Jun 2002, 6:53 am

Post 13 May 2016, 11:39 am

rickyp wrote:The point being argued Tom, is Fates claim that the ending of sanctions against Iran will allow them billions of dollars to use in exporting terror.

If they have been successful to date in supporting terror they've been doing it without the money tied up by the sanctions. And therfore its obvious they don't need billions.


Right--and reality is they will do more of it and do it better with more money.

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, the 9/11 plotters spent between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct the attack:

Thats mostly to house and move about the group of plotters.
Thats not a great deal of money for a nation the size of Iran.
It wasn't a great deal for Al Queda.
So to argue that somehow the deal with Iran is going to generate a great deal more terror based on billions now being used to generate terror is counter factual. Money isn't the missing ingredient when it comes to the creation of terror events.


You're really being moronic. You've stumbled into an indefensible position and you want stop digging.

Let's say they fund one more terror attack and twenty more people die. Of course, we'll never know that--but can you honestly say that is not a very real possibility?

Oh, and what about this idea: how about we actually link behavior re terrorism with the money? What is wrong with that?

Oh, but then we wouldn't have this "sweet deal" with Iran. Yeah, so "sweet" that they keep testing missiles, taking our boats and sailors hostage, and proclaiming their intention to wipe out Israel--and us.

Sweet, sweet deal--for suckers.

It's so sweet that Ben Rhodes played reporters for losers so they would mislead the American people.

Sweet, sweet deal.
User avatar
Ambassador
 
Posts: 21062
Joined: 15 Jun 2002, 6:53 am

Post 20 Jun 2016, 8:33 am

Behind the pay wall:

June 19, 2016 7:59 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—The Obama administration has concluded that uranium particles discovered last year at a secretive Iranian military base likely were tied to the country’s past, covert nuclear weapons program, current and former officials said, a finding that contradicts Tehran’s longstanding denials that it was pursuing a bomb.


So, they were lying about pursuing a nuclear weapon, but we should believe them now?

Obama Administration = ridiculously naïve
User avatar
Ambassador
 
Posts: 21062
Joined: 15 Jun 2002, 6:53 am

Post 25 Apr 2017, 1:30 pm

It's so surprising!

Obama lied? Who'd have thunk it!

Who would have said he was so desperate for a deal that he'd do anything?

Oh yeah. I did.

When President Barack Obama announced the “one-time gesture” of releasing Iranian-born prisoners who “were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses” last year, his administration presented the move as a modest trade-off for the greater good of the Iran nuclear agreement and Tehran’s pledge to free five Americans.

“Iran had a significantly higher number of individuals, of course, at the beginning of this negotiation that they would have liked to have seen released,” one senior Obama administration official told reporters in a background briefing arranged by the White House, adding that “we were able to winnow that down to these seven individuals, six of whom are Iranian-Americans.”

But Obama, the senior official and other administration representatives weren’t telling the whole story on Jan. 17, 2016, in their highly choreographed rollout of the prisoner swap and simultaneous implementation of the six-party nuclear deal, according to a POLITICO investigation.

In his Sunday morning address to the American people, Obama portrayed the seven men he freed as “civilians.” The senior official described them as businessmen convicted of or awaiting trial for mere “sanctions-related offenses, violations of the trade embargo.”

In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware. As part of the deal, U.S. officials even dropped their demand for $10 million that a jury said the aerospace engineer illegally received from Tehran.

And in a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives. The administration didn’t disclose their names or what they were accused of doing, noting only in an unattributed, 152-word statement about the swap that the U.S. “also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.”

Three of the fugitives allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities say had supported Hezbollah, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. A fourth, Behrouz Dolatzadeh, was charged with conspiring to buy thousands of U.S.-made assault rifles and illegally import them into Iran.

A fifth, Amin Ravan, was charged with smuggling U.S. military antennas to Hong Kong and Singapore for use in Iran. U.S. authorities also believe he was part of a procurement network providing Iran with high-tech components for an especially deadly type of IED used by Shiite militias to kill hundreds of American troops in Iraq.

The biggest fish, though, was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who had been charged with being part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China. That included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran whose progress had prompted the nuclear deal talks in the first place.

When federal prosecutors and agents learned the true extent of the releases, many were shocked and angry. Some had spent years, if not decades, working to penetrate the global proliferation networks that allowed Iranian arms traders both to obtain crucial materials for Tehran’s illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs and, in some cases, to provide dangerous materials to other countries.


In its determination to win support for the nuclear deal and prisoner swap from Tehran — and from Congress and the American people — the Obama administration did a lot more than just downplay the threats posed by the men it let off the hook, according to POLITICO’s findings.

Through action in some cases and inaction in others, the White House derailed its own much-touted National Counterproliferation Initiative at a time when it was making unprecedented headway in thwarting Iran’s proliferation networks. In addition, the POLITICO investigation found that Justice and State Department officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice and State, at times in consultation with the White House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects already in custody overseas, according to current and former officials and others involved in the counterproliferation effort.

And as far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating in the U.S. These previously undisclosed findings are based on interviews with key participants at all levels of government and an extensive review of court records and other documents.


By the winter of 2014, federal agents and prosecutors began to detect waning support at the higher rungs of the Obama administration for their counterproliferation efforts against Iran, according to numerous officials involved. Also, they said, Justice Department management — and an interagency Iran working group — suddenly were scrutinizing Iran cases more closely, asking a lot more questions and holding up requests and approvals that in the past had been routine.

No specific guidance or order was given, some said, but the message was clear.

“They didn’t want to have cases just popping up in the workup to the agreement or shortly after the agreement. The administration would not look good if there were [cases documenting] these acquisition attempts. And the Iranians kept doing it,” MacDonald, the former senior Homeland Security official, said of Tehran’s illegal procurement efforts.

“They were never told no, just to wait,” MacDonald said of the agents. “It was a common theme among the people working these cases. The official response was that nothing had changed, that if you brought the case forward, it would be worked. But unofficially, that was just not the case.”

Some of the cases involved significant investigations into nuclear and missile proliferation that required State Department approval, including visas to lure suspects to the U.S. for arrest, said MacDonald, who had also served on the White House Task Force on Export Control Reform. “I’ve been told that the highest levels of the State Department weren’t processing those, and the cases couldn’t move forward.”


Read the whole thing. It's a wonder Obama and Kerry are not honorary citizens of Iran.