Iran is holding (and parading on television) American Hostages. But the press is not covering it. […] It’s what Robert Jackson said in his closing argument in the Nuremberg trial:
“They stand before the record of this Trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: ‘Say I slew them not.’ And the Queen replied, ‘Then say they were not slain. But dead they are.’ If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.”
In other words, if you do not report that Iran has seized American hostages, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there have been no hostages, there is no crisis.
Google News links to 400+ news stories on Haleh Esfandiari in the past month.
20/07/07 12h27 GMT+1
AFP News brief
Iran cleric says detainees’ interview exposed US plot
A top Iranian cleric said on Friday that televised interviews of jailed US-Iranian academics Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh had exposed a US plot to topple the Islamic republic.
Iranian state television ran a controversial documentary, which has outraged Washington, showing the two scholars jailed in Iran for three months speaking of their roles in an alleged US drive to destabilise the Iranian regime.
“The unconventional and severe reaction of US media and statesmen even before airing the programme shows the Great Satan’s concern about the exposure of its plot,” Hojjatoleslam Ahmad Khatami said in a Friday sermon carried live on state radio.
Great Satan is a term used by Iranian officials for its arch-foe the United States.
The prominent conservative cleric said US officials’ reaction showed the programme aired in two parts on Wednesday and Thursday “has hit the target exactly and has exposed them with this soft propaganda against their soft coup.”
The televised interviews were part of a documentary titled “In the Name of Democracy”, which sought to link the academics to the US push to bring about a “Velvet Revolution” in Iran.
Urban planner Tajbakhsh and Esfandiari, who heads the Middle East programme at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, face charges of harming national security.
Esfandiari said during the interview that she and other individuals were involved in creating a network between foundations and research institutes in the United States and Iran.
Khatami charged that “the operational base of this soft coup has been a combination of press and intellectual circles, penetrating student groups and creating feminist movements.”
“A soft coup project belongs to the last three decades, before that the United States followed violent coups.”
The United States broke off relations with Iran in 1980 after Islamic revolutionaries seized the US embassy in Tehran and held its diplomats hostage for 444 days.
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Just more reason to stay the heck out of Iran.
Well …. given that the story is over a month old what do you expect from the MSM? Or the general public?
On the other hand the last week has had a lot of attention paid to this story!
Do you expect the US media to go to bat for these hostages?
Do you expect Canadian Media to ?
The only reason it’s getting any play right now is because the Iranians made a show of their “Investigation” !!
Still notably absent from front page news that I see!
I seem to recall a story or two about these Great Satanic Empire spys but I think it was stuck between Paris Hilton and a commercial. Although the State Department might have been working on the case there was nothing in the MSM, which might be a good thing as any foreign power knows that CNN and the NYT will break the secret details before any spy network can get the information.
Of course the progressives see nothing wrong with media diplomacy or national and international policy by polls. twits.
Bennett: “Iran is holding (and parading on television) American Hostages.”
No they’re not. And it’s deceitful to refer to them as Americans. They are Iranians in Iran arrested for breaking Iranian law.
The use of the word “hostage” in this story is preposterous.
Woah, let me guess. Andrew and Jack Layton? = TG
There is nothing going on in Iran to warrant conventionalinvasion and another decade of military entanglement in the ME…if they are that much of a threat give them 2 months warning getting a full war declaration through congress before you launch the nukes at them.
The war debate time in congress is Iran’s grace time to depose it’s beligerent lunatics and straighten up their position in the world community before we let the isotopes do their pacifying work….freed nukes have pacified more fanatic regimes/cultures than any diplomatic efforts of equal strength..they rid us of Japanese militant imperialism, Russian soviet world domination lust, and next, fascist islam and Korean saber rattling 😉
Better nukes than the draft.
Andrew
“No they’re not. And it’s deceitful to refer to them as Americans. They are Iranians in Iran arrested for breaking Iranian law. ”
So why are typical Iranians being paraded on TV. Is this standard treatment for all Iranians breaking Iranian law?
“No they’re not.”
Universal leftard policy on , well, everything.
Richfisher
“Universal leftard policy on , well, everything.”
Not quite. I’m sure Andrew could find a reason to equate American policy with Hitler if he tried hard enough.
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Bush can read.
Hitler said 2+2 =4. Bush can add, too!
etc.
Andrew’s neuron got a sunburn today, give the guy a break eh? Its still weak from his time at Rabble/babble.
Phantom,
Sorry. Please take the appropriate AIDS cocktail to protect yourself immune system from that virus.
Good, nobody disputes my assertion that the use of the word hostage in this story is preposterous. I see a basis for building on this consensus.
Andrew
Why bother wasting energy refuting obvious nonsensical straw arguments like yours?
The Kremlin lied and people died.
Communism and socialism lost dude, get over it.
oh great see’er, tell us more of what you see!! (but try to use at least chimp chimpy my bush bushy mcbushhitler or haliburton in any combination)
And like what’s with the caps ?!
Obviously, Iran should release anyone being held illegitimately.
According to Human Rights Watch, however, the United States itself has been holding since January five Iranians identified as legitimate diplomats by both the Iranian & Iraqi governments.
The five were seized in Erbil, Iraq, by US forces, and are among thousands of Iraqi ‘security detainees’ being held without charge or trial.
[i]“Security Council resolutions do not give the US a free hand to detain people without a trial forever,” said Whitson [of HRW]. “Bringing the rule of law to Iraq means applying it to one’s own conduct.”[/i]
I wonder if the outraged Bill Bennett considers the five Iranians and the thousands of others held by his own country without charge, trial, or due respect for the rule of law to be ‘hostages’ as well.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/07/17/iraq16400.htm
The two people being held are both American and Iranian. They’re dual citizens.*
And that’s the problem. It doesn’t change the fact that their detention is outrageous of course. But it does make it extremely difficult for the US Government to go to bat for them 9though it should).
I must say, with their particular backgrounds as US academics, these two made a poor decision to venture back to their homeland – given the nature of the current Iranian regime.
* And for those who would be quick to carp about “dual citizenship”, Iranian considers all Iranians to be citizens forever, even if they emigrate and adopt the citizenship of their new country. Some of you might recall the death in 2003 of the Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi.
Corrected for typos! Sorry.
The two people being held are both American and Iranian. They’re dual citizens.*
And that’s the problem. It doesn’t change the fact that their detention is outrageous of course. But it does make it extremely difficult for the US Government to go to bat for them (although it should).
I must say, with their particular backgrounds as US academics, these two certainly made a poor decision to venture back to their homeland – given the nature of the current Iranian regime.
* And for those who would be quick to carp about “dual citizenship”, Iran considers all Iranians to be citizens forever even if they emigrate and adopt the citizenship of their new country. Some of you might recall the death in 2003 of the Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi.
It’s true, Andrew, they hold dual citizenship: Iranian-American. Of course, in this current case, it’s the “American” part that’s emphasized. And when those 40,000 Lebanese-Canadians needed emergency evacuation from Lebanon, oh, more or less exactly this time one year ago, for those who questioned the legitimacy of their Canadian citizenship status, it was the “Lebanese” part that was of central import. Odd, huh?