Nobel Laureate Says Iran Would Defend Self

[cal04]

The Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian activist who won the peace prize for her struggle for women's rights, warned Friday that the Iranian people would defend their country against any American attack. ``We will not allow an American soldier to set foot'' in Iran, said Ebadi, who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. ``We will defend our country till the last drop of blood.''

President Bush has not ruled out the use of force against Iran but has said force is not necessarily required to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Bush has dismissed recent reports of plans for a military attack against Tehran as ``wild speculation.''

The Iranian government has said the nuclear program is intended only for peaceful purposes, while the United States and others say the country is seeking nuclear weapons. Ebadi said Friday the program does not pose a threat, but repeated her calls for Tehran to open up its program, to persuade the international community that it is not building a bomb.

``The Iranian government intends to use the nuclear program for peaceful purposes, but must convince international public opinion of that,'' Ebadi told reporters in Paris. She called for democratic reforms in Iran, but said change can only come from within the country. ``The intervention of the American army will not improve the situation - the experience of Iraq has demonstrated that,'' Ebadi said, adding that Iranians would ``not allow another Iraq to happen.'' Ebadi, 58, a veteran human rights and democracy activist, was the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5771608,00.html

[kurth]

1. What self-respecting sovereign nation wouldn't?

Iran is not a paper tiger like Iraq.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Iraq hasn't been exactly a cake walk.

Just because the depleted and disorganized Iraqi army didn't die at their posts like they were supposed to doesn't mean that the Iraqi people aren't resisting the illegal occupation of their country. The best thing that the Iraqi army could do against the overwhelming superiority of the invasion force was to take their weapons and go home and survive to fight another day. That is pretty much what they did.

[flobee1]

3. There's a big diffrence

between an army that defends out of fear of its leader
and one that defends because it believes there is a cause worth dying for

Iraq is an example of the first
Iran will be an example of the second
and george will never ever understand this

[MADem]

4. Yep, that's a no-brainer. Iran has a history that makes us look like

a new blip on the radar. They have a strong understanding of their heritage, they are not one of those cobbled-together states that the west formulated; and despite a simmering unrest within the country, they are nationalists at the end of the day.

The surest way to unite the people of Persia behind those Ayatullahs is to attack them.

[sweetheart]

5. Total war

At dawns break, 100 nuclear lights,
destroy the largest 100 cities of iran,
1000 thousand air sorties bomb the shiite,
out of every power plant, light or EMF band.

The internet shuts off at the US borders,
No information passes the invisible hand,
and nuclear devices manufacture all the night,
dropping nevada's waste on persiastani sand.

All ships of unfriendlies are sunk,
nothing moves in the oceans or land,
until a firing solution they've thunk,
nukes all the submarine deterrents off their costastal stand.
Radioactive hundred millions rot and lie down,
lay the final wreath in empire's murderous crown.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. At the first sign of an American attack

all those students who have been campaigning for greater freedom and listening to American music and watching American DVDs in secret and wearing jeans under their chadors and holding private parties where boys and girls dance together will turn into ardent nationalists, and far from greeting the Americans as liberators, they will fight against them with everything they have.

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. exactly as the "Axis of Evil" baloney drove the reformers out of power

and the hardliners into power

One would think that the Neocons who make a constant habit of using nationalism and fear to whip up the American public against make-believe enemies -- imagine an ancient proud nationalistic society most of whom (even the relatively secular ones) follow the same religious leader (Ayatollah Khamanei) as their spiritual father who also happens to be head of state -- imagine such a society is militarily attacked by a real enemy.

What part of this do those clueless war nuts not get?

Thanks for your post--very nicely worded.



http://www.dontattackiran.org

[megatherium]

8. The US won't liberate Iran, there will be no invasion. Just bombing. nt