Not "another" Iran...just a BIGGER Iran

Imaginary borders will not matter once the Shia are in control..

Our military will end up trapped in Iraq, and will be vastly outnumbered. It will end up being
about the oil", because the Shia Iranians who will inevitably take control, will not be that eager to do "biddness" with us..


Iraq's infrastructure is still shit, and Iran has the money and manpower to flood in and "help their brethren"...They speak the language, they ARE the same culturally, and will be the ones who are welcomed like Rummy said WE would be welcomed..


It's a dark day for the women and girls of Iraq, but for the men it's a huge victory

lol

cheeseheads!

You might be a Minnesotan if. . .
by John Chromy

http://www.gray-duck.com/gray-duck/minnesotaisms.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-you live in Texas but vacation in Minnesota in January.

-you have friends who schedule their wedding in the middle of January without a thought about weather conditions.

-you are always interested in how the gooofers football team is doing.

-your state pays a bounty for killing the state mascot.

-you consider a six inch snowfall a blessing for "the cities" because it provides instant urban renewal.

-you consider it a sport to gather your food by drilling through 18 inches of ice and sitting there all day hoping the food will swim by.

-you keep the snow tires on your truck all year because it ain't worth taking them off for only two months.

-you are proud that your state makes the national news 96 nights each year because International Falls is the coldest spot in the nation.

-you have ever refused to buy something because it's too "spendy."

-you believe that the Vikings would have won four super bowls by now if they were still playing in Metropolitan Stadium.

-you have a town with men foolish enough to play a tackle football snow bowl on the Sunday after Christmas for 37 years in a row.

-you believe that rushing out on the lakes with your pick-up in November is nature's way of upgrading the state's gene pool.

-you think a basketball team consists of twelve white boys.

-all your kids at school are above average.

-all your women are strong.

-you like to come in out of the sun when the temperature gets above 72.

-you're a card-carrying member of both the NRA and the ACLU.

-your local Dairy Queen is closed from December through February.

-you instinctively walk like a penguin for three months out of the year.

-someone in a store offers you assistance, and they don't work there.

-your Dad's sun tan stops at a line curving around the middle of his forehead.

-you have ever apologized to a telemarketer.

-you believe the only REAL vehicles have skis in front and a loud motor under your seat.

-you have a nickname for your chain saw and you pat it on the fuel tank at the end of a hard day's sawing.

-you are STILL convinced the Twins will never win the pennant because the owners are too cheap to pay the good players, so they all leave.

-you may not have actually eaten it, but you have heard of Lutefisk.

-someone mentions Old Hubie or the Humph, and you know exactly who they mean.

-you like the Winter Olympics better than the Summer Olympics.

-you beam with pride when some King or Hollywood super star comes to the Mayo Clinic to save their lives.

-you consider snow banks to be "just another rough" on the golf course.

-you have no "spring" sports season.

-you have ever worn shorts and a parka at the same time.

-you were proud when you turned 12 and got a pair of "5 bucklers" for your birthday.

-you have ever thought Michelangelo's statue of David was "indecent."

-you have either a pet or a child named "Kirby."

-you were delighted to get a miniature snow shovel for your 3rd birthday.

-your birthday was in April, and you still got to use the shovel right away.

-your town has an equal number of bars and churches.

-you go to a high school basketball game, the score is 12-8 at halftime, and you don't think there's anything strange about that.

-you have ever had an entire telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number.

-you know how to say Wayzata, Mahtomedi, and Shakopee.

-you grew up thinking rice was only for dessert.

-there are four superstar college basketball players turning pro, and your state's team draws the fifth pick.

-you think that ketchup is a little too spicy.

-you support the preservation of forests, farmland and wetlands because that's where you hunt deer, pheasants and geese.

-your daily meals are breakfast, dinner, and supper.

-every January, from age 2 to 13, you let your older siblings talk you into putting your tongue on a steel post.

-you believe human beings must all go through a frozen dormant period for four months every year.

-you consider Lime Jell-O a highly versatile food: a breakfast dish when it is filled with fruit, a salad when it has shredded carrots and a dab of mayonnaise, and a dessert when topped with dreamwhip.

-you never heard the word mayonnaise until you went to college.

-your local bars still have "The Friday Night Fights" even though boxing is no longer on television.

-it makes perfect sense for you to be in-state AND out-state at the same time.

-the physician giving a lecture on gastro-intestinal disorders talks about your "tummy."

-you firmly believe Bronko Nagurski was the greatest football player that ever lived.

-you voted for Mondale.

-you know that Kareem, Wilt, Shaq and Alonzo could never have stood up to George Mikan in the paint.

-you never had to rewind any part of "Fargo" because you missed some of the dialogue.

-your town isn't trying to be ironic when it plans a "winter carnival."

-you always believed that vacation meant "going up north."

-the first time you entered the Metrodome you looked up and said, "sure could stack a lot of hay bales in here!"

-you KNOW there is no such place as Lake Wobegone, but you have drunk St. Wendell's beer.

-your gas station thinks FULL SERVICE means filling your gas tank, washing the windshield, checking the oil and being friendly to the customers.

-your bank has the name of your town included in its name.

-your town has an annual festival honoring a fruit, vegetable or ethnic food.

-you know where the "iron range" is.

-you praise the parents of the state's top basketball player for pulling him off of the team until his grades improve.

-an old lady has ever helped you cross the street.

-the temperature in March is above freezing for three days in a row, and you think it's summer.

-you think it's best to eat Jell-O after it's molded.

-your state's most successful college football coach never cuts anyone, lets his quarterback call all the plays, and has no-contact practices.

-you laugh out loud every time you see a news report about a blizzard shutting down the entire east coast.

-you understand, and can explain, illegal defense, the infield fly rule, and icing.

-the first time you saw "Grumpy Old Men" you thought it was a documentary.

-you think that "UFF DA" is a standard English phrase.

-your favorite sport when it's cold outside is played where it's cold inside.

-your neighborhood has a 20-hour parking zone.

-you can recite, from memory, more than a half-dozen "Ole and Lena" jokes.

-you know people named Ole and Lena.

-your state's pro football team beats San Francisco, but loses to Tampa Bay.

-you thank God every morning for not making you an Iowan.

-you believe that bitter cold, a slippery surface and speed go together in a sport and on the Interstate.

-you hear that the stock market is up and you think the price of hogs has gained 50 cents per hundred weight.

-you think of SPAM as a quality, all-purpose meat product whether served with eggs for breakfast, in a sandwich at noontime, or in a hot-dish for supper.

-everytime you see moonlight on a lake you think of a dancing bear, and sing, gently, "From the land of sky-blue waters . . . Hamm's, the beer refreshing. Hamm's, the beer refreshing."

-you remember the thrill of going to the top of the Foshay Tower.

-you don't understand why everyone thinks Garrison Keillor is so funny.

-your dog dies, your spouse leaves you, you lose your job, and your car breaks down, all on the same day, and the first thought that comes to your mind is, "It could be worse".

-it gets worse.

:D

:)

Well, actually... they don't speak the language. The Iraqis are Arabs and speak Arabic, while the Iranians are Persians, for lack of a better word (i.e. a different ethnic group) and speak Farsi.

Nevertheless - if the Iranians play it as a religious brotherhood thing with the Shia majority in Iraq, then they'll go in and have a good chance of long-term success as a more well-funded "elder brother". Only if they use religion as a veneer to shield a game of traditional secular nation-state power politics will they not succeed. And in that case, they will still attempt to obtain influence, which the Iraqs will resent (assuming that they see through the religious brotherhood ruse), and which will lead them to enter conflict with the Iranians.

I.e., if the Iranians act like just another bunch of invaders looking for a free hump, then the chances for a second Iran-Iraq war would seem good.

It's undoubtable that there will be an alliance, but the Iraqi Shia are Arab, while the Iranian Shia are Persian. It would take forever to go over the historical backstory, but suffice it to say that the Persians have been trying to stave off an Arab "takeover" of their country for centuries, and that there's a basic distrust between the two groups.

The Iran/Iraq thing goes beyond religion and delves into ethnic differences between the two nations. Since most middle eastern Arabs see Iraq as "Arab" land, many of them would object to it falling under "Persian" rule. Also, the Iranians speak FARSI, not ARABIC. Farsi uses Arabic lettering, but it's a completely different language (like English and Spanish...same letters, some common words, but different languages).

As if that weren't enough, don't forget to factor in lingering resentments from the last Iran/Iraq war, which killed a million people on both sides.

A political alliance is likely, and could be worked out based on some of the religious commonalities that they do share, but the two nations will never become one, and it's extremely unlikely that one will ever be ruled by the other.

speak and understand arabic. The population of both countries is quite young, and who knows? they might look forward to a denouement..I think their common dislike of US might be the glue that holds them together

Arabs, historically, have been an expansionistic people who tend to move into new areas and dominate them both culturally and ethnically. It happened in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Sudan, and everywhere else they expanded into. The only major exception to that has always been Persia. The Persians adopted their religion from the Arabs, but have fought off every major attempt by the Arabs to settle their land and "Arabize" it. They may share a religion, but they do NOT see themselves as one people.

In many ways, it really is similar to Europe. Even with the EU and other attempts to unify the nations, the cultural, linguistic, and historical differences between the nations are too major for anyone to seriously suggest merging them into a single nation (this generation, anyway). The French and the Germans may like to trade with each other, they may even arrange political and military alliances, but we'll never see a day when they dissolve the border and build a new capitol on the Rhine valley. Not without MAJOR protests and insurrection on both sides of the border anyway.

Iran would have the upper hand, and a country (Iraq) that has been secular (apparently not willingly) for all those years, is ripe for the picking.. Saddam probably had no further designs on Iran, and the "new Iraq" is in no position militarily to cause much trouble. Iran seems to be in the best position they have been in in DECADES.. They may be the ones to send in "missionaries" to "fix" Iraq..

You're right in that the Iranians have an opportunity to be the dominant party here, but there's some question about how the rest of the Arabs in the Middle East would react to seeing such a historically important Arab nation become a vassal state to the Persians. The hardcore jihadists have openly proclaimed their desire to see a new Caliphate established, and the Caliphate was an Arab empire, not a Persian one (on the contrary, the Persians vigorously fought the Caliphate every chance they had). The fundamentalists might react very badly to what might be perceived as a non-Arab takeover of Arab lands.

You are right.. the others will be unhappy, as will Israel. but the one who has the might..has the right..


I doubt that a caliphate could be re-established.. people are more well-informed these days, and so many countries are in the mix, meddling.

I foresee trouble in Turkey too as the Kurds puch to have their own Kurdistan, and Kuwait will be ery nervous with the new Iraq.. The US is dimished int he area, and I doubt that support for another war in the area could be drummed up.

I honestly believe that we will see the fall of the Saudi's in our lifetime, and with the number of fundamentalists and the vast Wahabbi network in that country, I can't see it becoming anything short of a fundamentalist theocracy. Since it is home to Mecca and Medina, I see it as being very likely that any fundamentalists taking over would attempt to establish it as the heart of a new caliphate. The real question will be whether or not anyone JOINS them, and how they respond when neighboring nations refuse.

A very ironic turn on John Lennon's "Imagine"..

;-)