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Iran accused over Washington terror plot

Objective Voice said:
Gill,

I've been trying to wrap my mind around the public explanation given concerning this plot and things just don't add up. According to this NYTimes.com article, Manssor Arbabsiar is a naturalized U.S. citizen. But according to this article from MSNBC.com, Manssor Arbabsiar is described as an Iranian-American; gives the connotation that the man has dual-citizenship. Which is correct?

A few things about the MSNBC article doesn't add up. For instance, Arbabsiar allegedly met his contact, a convicted Mexican drug dealer turned DEA informant, in Mexico. Why would a used car salesman from Corpus Cristi, TX with no arrest on drug related charges go to Mexico? The article says Arbabsiar left the country, but doesn't say where he went. What's more bizzare is the fact that although the DEA informant does say that Arbabsiar inquired about acquiring explosives to blow up the Saudi Embassy here in the U.S., he turns around and recommends to Arbabsiar upon his return to the U.S. that HE, not Arbabsiar, could assassinate the Saudi Ambassador for $1.5 million with the help of others (four men was the number of assistance the informant said he would need)? Why wouldn't the informant just get the C-4 explosives Arbabsiar asked for instead of upping the anti?

And then you have this alleged Mexican cartle/Quds Force/Venezuela drug smuggling connection that doesn't make sense because nowhere in either article is there confirmation of Arbabsiar's involvement with drugs, drugs gangs, drug dealers - nothing! So, again, why is a used car salesman from Texas doing down in Mexico? And even if there's more to the relationship between Arbabsiar and this DEA informant, why have the money to carry out the assassination plot wired to a bank in New York? I could understand if both Arbabsiar and the DEA informant met up in NY after the informant received the money or the DEA agent going himself, but having two money transfers of $100,000 each wired to NY when Arbabsiar resided in TX makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. On top of that as stated earlier, it wasn't even Arbabsiar who was to carry out the assassination attempt. It was the DEA informant which makes this plot stranger still.

This plot just doesn't add up. Can you say, "Wag the Dog"?
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Yes, the whole thing is very odd, at least from we've been told so far. It appears that Arbabsiar met the Mexican informant through the guys aunt who lives in Corpus Christi. What are the odds for that???

I hate conspiracy theories normally, but I can't help but wonder if the Iranian government set up this dolt in a plot to embarrass the U.S. government and Obama.
 
Gill said:
Who said anything about accepting a claim. You merely asked where he got any evidence from, not if it was legitimate.
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Actually, that's not what I asked. I asked if he had evidence to support HIS claim. A claim that is unsupported is largely not considered evidence. To call an supported claim evidence is to accept the claim.
 
Boo Radley said:
Actually, that's not what I asked. I asked if he had evidence to support HIS claim. A claim that is unsupported is largely not considered evidence. To call an supported claim evidence is to accept the claim.
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And he claimed that there was evidence. Whether you choose to believe it is your right, but that does not mean it's not evidence.
 
Gill said:
And he claimed that there was evidence. Whether you choose to believe it is your right, but that does not mean it's not evidence.
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Again, a claim is not evidence. A public offical saying something is so is not sufficient evidence. That's why I pointed to Powell. Too many put too much stock in someone saying something. We need to demand more.
 
Dawud Salahuddin, an American fugitive who in 1980 was the last – and only – US citizen known to have killed on behalf of Iran's revolutionary regime, on US soil, says the plot borders on the unbelievable.
Both strategically and operationally, in terms of Iran's worldview and its way of doing business, the information made public so far about the assassination plot does not add up, says Mr. Salahuddin, a black American convert to Islam, who was born David Theodore Belfield.

"For all the noise that comes out of this country, the Iranians know full well they are no military match for the Americans; they know that better than they know their names," says Salahuddin, who spoke to the Monitor by telephone from his home west of Tehran. "So the notion that [the Iranians] are going to bring that down on them, that just makes no sense at all."

"Why would the Iranians blow up embassies in Washington DC? The last thing the Iranians want is a war with the Americans," he adds. "This regime: They're interested in staying in power."
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Former Iran assassin says alleged plot 'makes no sense' - Yahoo! News
 
Proud South Korean said:
I'm constantly amazed at how you manage to have every thread derailed into just another attack-the liberals-and-Obama-because-everything's-their-fault thread
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I never blamed the attempted terror attack on obama like you libs did Bush. I merely pointed out that it seems they still hate us even after Bush is gone so your blame Bush rhetoric falls on it's face. Or maybe it's because obama failed to close Gitmo. Remember when Gitmo was causing terrorisim? That doesn't seem to be what you libs say now. Now you say gitmo ****mo, big deal. :lol:
 
sawyerloggingon said:
I never blamed the attempted terror attack on obama like you libs did Bush. I merely pointed out that it seems they still hate us even after Bush is gone so your blame Bush rhetoric falls on it's face. Or maybe it's because obama failed to close Gitmo. Remember when Gitmo was causing terrorisim? That doesn't seem to be what you libs say now. Now you say gitmo ****mo, big deal. :lol:
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Or...the Obama administration is lying??
 
Simon W. Moon said:
What does "linked to Iran" actually constitute in this context?

Is there evidence that this was a state run operation?
Does the guy have a house in Iran?
Has he posted about Iran online?
GWB is "linked to" ObL.

What does "linked to Iran" actually constitute in this context?

does anyone know yet?
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So far as I can tell, there is no real connection, beyond the fact that this guy is Iranian.

The bush family and the bin laden family have a long business history going back 100-150 years old, maybe longer. OBL had intelligence connections back during the afghan Russian conflict. Pm me if you have evidence to suggest that relationship had ended.

Back to topic: war with Iran is BAD NEWS. Remember : "yellow cakes in iraq".
 
Μολὼν λαβέ;1059873981 said:
So Holder is a liar?
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Well, ya... But I couldn't say for certain if this is the case this time, though I would not be surprised if this was lies.
 
Maybe it's just me but I have a terribly hard time believing anything this administration has to say about security after bombing multiple countries we've had no involvement with prior, and assasinating a U.S citizen without a trial. I'm wondering if this is the same administration that labeled Guantanamo as a crime against civil liberty.
 
Hare said:
Maybe it's just me but I have a terribly hard time believing anything this administration has to say about security after bombing multiple countries we've had no involvement with prior, and assasinating a U.S citizen without a trial. I'm wondering if this is the same administration that labeled Guantanamo as a crime against civil liberty.
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If you're talking about Libya....you should actually read your history books.
 
sawyerloggingon said:
I never blamed the attempted terror attack on obama like you libs did Bush. I merely pointed out that it seems they still hate us even after Bush is gone so your blame Bush rhetoric falls on it's face. Or maybe it's because obama failed to close Gitmo. Remember when Gitmo was causing terrorisim? That doesn't seem to be what you libs say now. Now you say gitmo ****mo, big deal. :lol:
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Wait, did liberals blame 9/11 on Bush?
 
sawyerloggingon said:
I never blamed the attempted terror attack on obama like you libs did Bush. I merely pointed out that it seems they still hate us even after Bush is gone so your blame Bush rhetoric falls on it's face. Or maybe it's because obama failed to close Gitmo. Remember when Gitmo was causing terrorisim? That doesn't seem to be what you libs say now. Now you say gitmo ****mo, big deal. :lol:
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Those who did are like birthers. A birther would be like those folks. Are you either? I'm not. So, who are you speaking to specifically?
 
apdst said:
I've seen several posters claim that they are convinced that there's no way that Iran had anything to do with this plot.

I'm simply asking for the evidence that has convinced them so. I've yet to see it and I think that stems from there being a little bit of trufer in them.
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I've seen the word doubt, along with linked explinations for the word doubt. This seems a far cry from could not. Are you reading anything into these posts that isn't there?
 
BmanMcfly said:
So far as I can tell, there is no real connection, beyond the fact that this guy is Iranian.

The bush family and the bin laden family have a long business history going back 100-150 years old, maybe longer. OBL had intelligence connections back during the afghan Russian conflict. Pm me if you have evidence to suggest that relationship had ended.

Back to topic: war with Iran is BAD NEWS. Remember : "yellow cakes in iraq".
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I have a better idea, post evidence that UBL was connected to the CIA.
 
Please post evidence of common knowledge shared by everyone? Do we have to tell you the sky is blue? Anyone in the government will tell you. :shrug:
 
Boo Radley said:
Those who did are like birthers. A birther would be like those folks. Are you either? I'm not. So, who are you speaking to specifically?
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You're one of the folks that suggested that 9/11 was an inside job.
 
Hare said:
Maybe it's just me but I have a terribly hard time believing anything this administration has to say about security after bombing multiple countries we've had no involvement with prior, and assasinating a U.S citizen without a trial. I'm wondering if this is the same administration that labeled Guantanamo as a crime against civil liberty.
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If you thought that was bad, you should hear the one about a President who took a country to war based of fake evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Oh wait...that was the last Administration. My bad...

Carry on.
 
Objective Voice said:
If you thought that was bad, you should hear the one about a President who took a country to war based of fake evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Oh wait...that was the last Administration. My bad...

Carry on.
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You still think Bush faked the WMD evidence?
 
Objective Voice said:
If you thought that was bad, you should hear the one about a President who took a country to war based of fake evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Oh wait...that was the last Administration. My bad...

Carry on.
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Bush was an absolute dumb*** and a crook to boot, but I still don't see how that makes what Obama has done any more excusable.
 
BmanMcfly said:
The bush family and the bin laden family have a long business history going back 100-150 years old, maybe longer. OBL had intelligence connections back during the afghan Russian conflict. Pm me if you have evidence to suggest that relationship had ended.
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Care to back that up?? Also, you DO know I hope that the bin Laden family had disowned Osama and the Saudi government revoked his passport in the 1990s...
 
apdst said:
What is Iran's style? Educate us.
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Gladly. Iran usually has a seriousness about them when they do assassinations. This horrid attempt at terrorism is "at odds with the level of skill associated with the Iranian Quds force." (Bizarre Responses to a Bizarre Plot | The National Interest Blog) In addition to this, terrorism always has a political side to it as well. For example, " Iran conducted assassinations in the 1980s and 1990s to eliminate expatriate Iranian dissidents." and "The terrorist operations in Argentina in the 1990s by its client Hezbollah were responses to specific Israeli acts in the Middle East." (Ibid) Iran does things for a clearly defined reason and doesn't fool around. This debacle contradicts what we have seen of them in the past, thus many are skeptical that the Iranian government was behind it.
 
apdst said:
I have a better idea, post evidence that UBL was connected to the CIA.
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Gladly.

As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.


By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan’s mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan’s freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.

Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to “read” than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.
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(emphasis added)

Source: Bin Laden comes home to roost - msnbc.com
 
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