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War On Iran: – Who To Blame?
Q: Why is the U.S. waging war on Iran?
Answer by the U.S. State Department:
As the United States has explained in multiple letters to the U.N. Security Council, including most recently on March 10, the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, …
Q: Why is the Strait of Hormuz still closed?
Answer by the President of the U.S. of A.:
“They came to us and they said, ‘We will agree to open the strait.’ And all my people were happy, except me. I said, ‘Wait a minute, if we open the strait, that means they’re gonna make $500 million a day.’ I don’t want them to make $500 million a day until they settle this thing. So I’m the one who kept it closed.“
Posted by: English Outsider | Apr 25 2026 14:44 utc | 231
Link given worked just now but now seems not to.
Volume XI, Summer 2004, Number 2
Drinking the Kool-Aid
W. Patrick Lang
Col. Lang is president of Global Resources, Inc. and former defense intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). For a printable pdf version of this article, click here.
Throughout my long service life in the Department of Defense, first as an army officer and then as a member of the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service, there was a phrase in common usage: “I will fall on my sword over that.” It meant that the speaker had reached a point of internal commitment with regard to something that his superiors wanted him to do and that he intended to refuse even though this would be career suicide. The speaker preferred career death to the loss of personal honor.
This phrase is no longer widely in use. What has taken its place is far more sinister in its meaning and implications. “I drank the Kool-Aid” is what is now said. Those old enough to remember the Jonestown tragedy know this phrase all too well. Jim Jones, a self-styled “messiah” from the United States, lured hundreds of innocent and believing followers to Guyana, where he built a village, isolated from the world, in which his Utopian view of the universe would be played out. He controlled all news, regulated all discourse and expression of opinion, and shaped behavior to his taste. After a time, his paranoia grew unmanageable and he “foresaw” that “evil” forces were coming to threaten his “paradise.” He decided that these forces were unstoppable and that death would be preferable to living under their control. He called together his followers in the town square and explained the situation to them. There were a few survivors, who all said afterward that within the context of the “group-think” prevailing in the village, it sounded quite reasonable. Jim Jones then invited all present to drink from vats of Kool-Aid containing lethal doses of poison. Nearly all did so, without physical coercion. Parents gave their children the poison and then drank it themselves. Finally Jones drank. Many hundreds died with him.
What does drinking the Kool-Aid mean today? It signifies that the person in question has given up personal integrity and has succumbed to the prevailing group-think that typifies policymaking today. This person has become “part of the problem, not part of the solution.”What was the “problem”? The sincerely held beliefs of a small group of people who think they are the “bearers” of a uniquely correct view of the world, sought to dominate the foreign policy of the United States in the Bush 43 administration, and succeeded in doing so through a practice of excluding all who disagreed with them. Those they could not drive from government they bullied and undermined until they, too, had drunk from the vat.
What was the result? The war in Iraq. It is not anything like over yet, and the body count is still mounting. As of March 2004, there were 554 American soldiers dead, several thousand wounded, and more than 15,000 Iraqis dead (the Pentagon is not publicizing the number). The recent PBS special on Frontline concerning Iraq mentioned that senior military officers had said of General Franks, “He had drunk the Kool-Aid.” Many intelligence officers have told the author that they too drank the Kool-Aid and as a result consider themselves to be among the “walking dead,” waiting only for retirement and praying for an early release that will allow them to go away and try to forget their dishonor and the damage they have done to the intelligence services and therefore to the republic.What we have now is a highly corrupted system of intelligence and policymaking, one twisted to serve specific group goals, ends and beliefs held to the point of religious faith. Is this different from the situation in previous administrations?
…
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Posted by: English Outsider | Apr 25 2026 14:56 utc | 231
Very contradictory messaging going on.
Araghchi said to be visiting Oman and then Moscow, US even appeared to air a plan for joint control of Hormuz with Iran, as in what they would aim for with a favourable new government maybe. US saying not sure who is in charge in Iran now ….’Dave’s not here’ .
Whatever can be made of the following, currently appears that any existing advantage in Lebanon will be used while Iran on pause, or to humiliate or antagonise Iran . I don’t know, but the military build up is also obvious.
Journalist Suhaib Al-Masalma
“The aircraft carrier Bush arrived in the Arabian Sea today.
The truce is supposed to end tonight with Iran.
Trump canceled the negotiating delegation today
A huge amount of ammunition and equipment arrived within two weeks to Israel and the American forces.
All these preparations indicate the return of war.
Israel will be the initiative”
“The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, according to sources: Security officials fear the collapse of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.
Netanyahu orders the army to carry out heavy bombing in Lebanon, according to an official statement by Netanyahu”
“Axios on Trump: It is remarkable that as soon as the flight was canceled within 10 minutes, we got a new paper that was much better.”
Journalist Youssef Fares
“Trump: Iran provided a lot, but it was not enough”
“Israeli Channel 12, citing a security source: The raids on Lebanon focus on the southern regions, and there is no change to the previous bombing instructions”
“Wall Street Journal, citing an Iranian diplomat and informed sources: The delegations of Washington and Tehran may meet in the coming days.”
Posted by: Ornot | Apr 25 2026 20:32 utc | 258
@267 sebgo
All are factual in the sense that they are attributed reporting. For those ‘new’ , where reader cannot discern , or even the method of presentation… then ‘they should learn to’ maybe; Given it is standard in today’s environment.
So:
Questionable, highlight the western presentation:
“The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, according to sources”
“Wall Street Journal citing an Iranian diplomat and informed sources”
“Israeli Channel 12, citing a security source”
“The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, according to sources”
Factual:
“The aircraft carrier Bush arrived…”
“Netanyahu orders the army to carry out heavy bombing in Lebanon…”
“Trump: Iran provided a lot, but it was not enough”
On Moscow:
“Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi). Embarking on timely tour of Islamabad, Muscat, and Moscow. Purpose of my visits is to closely coordinate…”
But don’t exagerate please, it is not all false, and people following the various events make a point of noting what we in the west are being told, are also attentive to the forms of manipulation under way, for what it does say when read ‘correctly’.
Posted by: Ornot | Apr 25 2026 21:54 utc | 270
@273 Sebgo
The military preparation and media framing is pointing to a new attack on Iran.
However, there is a poise to it, meaning the impression of ‘allowing’ Iran to finish its own deliberations before acting.
In strategic terms, this can be anything from waiting until having a clear presentation against Iran prepared, to using the uncertainty or attention to act on another front, or simply to wait for certain targets to appear. I can think of other.
I’m speculating with all of that obviously, and there are diplomatic avenues possible, unsatisfactory given the divergence and questions of trust, but possible.
Even by obliterating the productive economy of Iran, and possibly gaining control of Hormuz, I still don’t see that any concession of defeat by Iran would be at all certain, meaning there is a lot of downside for US to reinitiating conflict, or that it could be a long war; That is not something US would initiate the moment a set of talks failed, or just because those talks failed.
There is sure to be a whole lot going on behind the scenes also, and including by other large powers.
So we are left guessing, conflict might start at any time, within, at, or well after any deadline, and for different reasons.
Equally, diplomatic resolution of an unknown kind might already by underway.
The hype of imminnent conflict though, that is also a metric, because the US does prepare expectations of own population on purpose; it seems stupid from outside maybe but the impression of ‘going to plan’ and proving own reliability extends to this kind of demonstration, which also helps generate a form of public acceptance or cohesion.
So we just follow it all as best we are able to, I suppose.
Posted by: Ornot | Apr 25 2026 23:38 utc | 278
The Americans have a most frightening ability to lie with such complete confidence that even subject matter experts would have their own confidence shaken when Americans make pronouncements in the experts’ area of expertise. People would doubt the evidence of their own written words under the relentless onslaught of American lies. This terrifying ability is one of the key ingredients to American success in subjugating the entire world.
Take this blatant series of lies as an example:
Lenin was a professional revolutionary. His motto was replace the Imperialist war with a civil war. He and Trotsky saw the working class of the US and really every country as a revolutionary force. The only one in fact that could actually seize power and remove the Imperialist ruling class. Then on that theory they actually did that in Czarist Russia ending WW1. Had they taken the line of AUH that would never have happened. Instead they would he calling for the genocide of the Russian working class on the argument that they were the Czar’s “whip crackers”.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 25 2026 16:22 utc | 241
Lenin’s own words completely contradict Ahenobarbus’s portrayal of him.
The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War V.I. Lenin, 1915
Those who write against “high treason”, as Bukvoyed does, or against the “disintegration of Russia”, as Semkovsky does, are adopting the bourgeois, not the proletarian point of view.
Those who stand for the “neither-victory-nor-defeat” slogan are in fact on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, for they do not believe in the possibility of inter national revolutionary action by the working class against their own governments, and do not wish to help develop such action, which, though undoubtedly difficult, is the only task worthy of a proletarian, the only socialist task.
“Disintegration of Russia”? Yes, Lenin advocated for it! Death to America is as Leninist as it comes.
Of course, City of London Deep State Zionist Israeli Khazarian Jewish liars like Ahenobarbus and steven t johnson would deliberately confuse “Death to America” with a call for genocide. If these liars lived during the cusp of the October Revolution, they would screech about people calling for the disintegration of Russia and lie that it is equivalent to the physical disintegration of Russians into tiny little pieces.
Lenin also explicitly wrote that the bourgeois proletariat/labor aristocracy is a separate and distinct class from the proletarian masses, and that the bourgeois proletariat are not revolutionary. There’s no ambiguity about this.
Preface to Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, V.I. Lenin, 1916
Obviously, out of such enormous superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their “own” country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the “advanced” countries are doing: they are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.
This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers, take the side of the bourgeoisie, the “Versaillese” against the “Communards.”
And despite Lenin advocating for the disintegration of Russia, Lenin was clearheaded enough to recognize that Russia is far from the most egregious imperialist of his time. Lenin grouped the republican America together with monarchist Germany and Japan.
X. The Place of Imperialism in History, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, V.I. Lenin, 1916
In the United States, economic development in the last decades has been even more rapid than in Germany, and for this very reason, the parasitic features of modern American capitalism have stood out with particular prominence. On the other hand, a comparison of, say, the republican American bourgeoisie with the monarchist Japanese or German bourgeoisie shows that the most pronounced political distinction diminishes to an extreme degree in the epoch of imperialism—not because it is unimportant in general, but because in all these cases we are talking about a bourgeoisie which has definite features of parasitism.
It’s no coincidence that post-WW2, both Japan and Germany are the two countries with the highest number of American troops, serving as the springboards for American aggression against Russia and China.
Death to America
Marg bar Âmrikâ
Marg bar Âmrikâ
Marg bar Âmrikâ
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Apr 25 2026 23:45 utc | 281
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