Ransom
- Thread starter stollcpa
- Start date
And I agreed with all of them. I was only intending to add that there are situations where a principled protest vote has value, which is something I didn't appreciate living in a swing state.
Well, it's worth pointing out that it was their money, anyway, and we've owed it to them for nearly 40 years, but even so, that's not actually the position that's being taken here. The position that's being taken here is that stoll was simply incorrect to characterize it as a ransom. But here you are, changing the subject. Surprise, surprise.
I want to know where people get the shots that inoculate them from reality.
What if we sold them weapons? Would that be ok?
You're onto something important here, and toastedbread should pay attention. Our traditional "allies" are the Sunni elites in places like Saudi Arabia who have maybe served our interests transactionally to serve themselves, but we are fundamentally opposed to them. Our terrorist enemies lie within the extremes of Sunni Islam, and not with Shia Iran.
People rail against Iran with good reason, but in the bigger scheme of things our future would best lie with an Iranian alliance against the Wahhabi tendencies among our current supposed allies, which served as the fount of the 9/11 hijackers..
We hate Iran because they kidnapped our diplomats and blew up our Marines. That's ample reason. But if we look ahead, it may not be sufficient reason. We have a base of support among the Iranian people. And the Iranians implacably hate ISIS and al Qaeda, who regard Shiites as pigs to be killed.
Iran and Israel are enemies. This distorts our self interest. But we can protect Israel and serve ourselves -- so long as we understand which comes first.
No. We live in a world where it's a bad thing because the other team did it. That's it.
We've been allying ourselves with Iran since 9/11, in many ways. Discrete, but also very real. From toppling the Taliban, toppling Saddam, up until today, where Iranian backed militias fight ISIS with our airpower and ground support.
The saddest part of this thread to me is that we live in a world where there is a position, inexplicably divided along party lines, which supports utter dumbassery.
I think you and Rock have really nailed the crux of it. Our future interests in the region are best served by gradually and successfully thawing the ice between us and Iran.
don't know if it is technically "ransom"
but it would require a suspension of disbelief to accept Obama's assertion that the events occurring on the same day, and the hostage plane not being allowed to take off until the money plane landed, are all a coincidence. Obama's caving on the impounded funds claim was clearly a quid pro quo for the hostage release.
It's amazing how fast and willing he is to pay adversaries in the Middle East against our own sanctions. I'm surprised he didn't shrink wrap it and deliver it himself.
Meanwhile he left 3 Americans to be tortured in Iran and didn't even demand their release. He's been played for what he is, a fool. He certainly didn't do what is in our best interest and he left Israel to dangle.
If a drug dealer is arrested in this country, the cash is confiscated and the government doesn't save it and turn it over once the criminal is out of prison. This clearly was a ransom payment from Obama who just can't wait to appease Iran and has no policy or direction in the Middle East. He's pathetic.
It can be called whatever you guys like but the $400M landed in Iran at night secretly in a plane and our hostages didn't leave the runway until the money plane was in Iran.
The president can give Iran Fort Knox and it's not going to change their hate of us. You can be sure Iran and every other country and terrorist group now believes they can get money for hostages from the US. Maybe the next exchange we can call it war reparations instead of ransom.
And why would reasonable minds differ on giving that money to the Iranians when their negotiators asked for it so they could go back home with a "win"? I will help you, because it looks like a ransom payment to free the hostages. The Iranians have more money that they feel we owe them and in some respects we may owe them and guess what, they now have 2 more hostages that they can give back to us right in time for our next delivery of owed cash.
There are many of you guys that like to play bull shit semantics around the "facts" so that you and yours can be "right". The fact that you acknowledge that reasonable minds can differ on giving that money at that time is because, as the OP mentioned, it looks like and is being touted by the Iranians as a f---ing ransom.
We owed Iran that money like anyone being sued "owes" money to the litigant before a judgment is rendered. We decided to settle at that time and suddenly our prisoners got released. You are just running defense for Obama and Kerry who are about the most pissed poor negotiators on the planet. They started negotiating on that nuclear deal from a position of strength and basically gave away the farm for nothing but promises in return. I am sure we can expect more of the same from the smartest woman ever's administration too.
He's another who's been successfully inoculated against reality. Like Trump who claims he saw an airplane with stacks of cash. Seriously delusional people.
Yep. Iran paid us for fighter planes we didn't deliver and recovered less than they were owed. The "ransom" claims are as unhinged as everything else that opponents of the Iran deal say.
Apparently Iran had paid $400 million for fighter jets prior to the overthrow of the Shah. We obviously didn't deliver the jets but we did keep the cash. They sued at an international court at the Hague for the return of their money. They wanted the money with interest, roughly a $1.2 billion, we gave the original $400. I'm guessing the timing of the release of the hostages was just them being dicks.
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12370848/ransom-iran-400-million
No we never had to pay them. We had severe economic sanctions on them so no payment should have been made.
Obama is a tool for Iran and, at best, he's a real embarrassment to the negotiating process. At worst, his intentions need to be investigated. Before any "treaty" was considered, he should have ordered the unconditional release of all Americans. And this payment never would have happened.
I'm not sure you understand what's going on here. I suggest reading about how this transpired instead of making things up.
http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/03/obama-bribed-iran-400-million-to-release-u-s-prisoners/
You are unhinged. A tool for Iran? You expect people to do anything but point and laugh at you when you say things like that?
We shouldn't pay the largest state sponsor of terrorism a dime for anything past, or present. It's like buying a lawn mower off and asshole neighbor you personally detest to help out his family in a time of need. You agree to pay for it at the end of the month. In the interim every night he comes over to your house and takes a dump on your sidewalk by the front door, cuts down your shrubs, tramps down your flowers and landscaping and continues to do something of this nature nightly. In fact a couple of times his fingerprints were discovered on your car when the brake line was cut and your tires slashed. Your son gets a concussion when the brakes on his bicycle fails, and one of your neighbors this guy hated is found dead in his front yard by nefarious means. You install security cams and catch him in the act doing this type of crap to you and the neighborhood. The ass wipe escapes to his home of origin and starts demanding payment. Pay him for the mower.......nah.
Iran is in fact the top state sponsor of terrorism. The State Dept. confirmed it again in a June 2016 report. The report also includes statistics on terrorist activity worldwide, and said 11,774 terrorist attacks in 92 countries occurred in 2015. Wow....that's a big number and you can bet your arse that Iran was involved in a lot of it either directly or indirectly.
It's been reported that Iranian proxies killed an estimated 1,100 US troops in Iraq. Iran's Quds force has provided training, equipment, funding, and direction to terrorists. The 9/11 Commission Report stated that 8 to 10 of the hijackers on 9/11 previously passed through Iran and their travel was facilitated by Iranian border guards. Two defectors from Iran’s intelligence service testified that Iranian officials had "foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. It has also been reported that they provided flight simulators for training terrorist. Ramzi bin al-Shibh traveled to Iran in January 2001.
We could go on with stories, facts, and evidence linking Iran to incidents all over the globe, their training and support of terrorist in the gulf region and elsewhere, and point our their documented involvement in horrific attacks around the globe for decades. I think the loss of humanities most precious resources, human life, is much more valuable than that 1.7 billion.
My silly example I started out with might appear silly to some but its basically what we are doing. Whether it was a ransom or just as Obama stated we shouldn't give this terror regime a dime. The Iran deal sucks. Saying we owed Iran the money and then say we saved the taxpayers millions by doing so is nothing more than trying to polish up a turd.
It was their money. We were going to lose the case. We were always going to lose the case. I can't believe it took 4 decades. Iran paid us for products we never delivered. If there's a clearer case of breach of contract, I've never seen it. There is no doubt we owed them the money. No one has ever doubted we owed the money. The only question was how much would we pay them, and when.
We paid them far less than they wanted, and the when was determined by the short window that American and Iranian diplomats were actually talking to each other.
Everyone needs to take a deep breath here. This isn't a scandal. We actually found time to talk to someone whom we owed money, they agreed to accept less than they thought we owed them, and we paid them. End of story.
You are correct it was their money. The scandal should have been refusing to pay them back their money. Big deal if we refused to ever pay it back win or lose in the court. We aren't dealing with a good neighbor and ally country. We paid the number one state sponsor of terror in the world. Directly responsible for killing over a thousand of our troops. Involved in training and supporting terrorist groups and directly linked to horrific terrorist acts around the globe.
Goat if I purchased a vehicle from you on time and you killed off my family and you eluded the police etc do you think I would honor my contract with you? Sure refusing to pay might be a breach of contract but whoopeeeeeee. What is the value of all the lives this nations leaders are directly linked to in killing via terrorism? We should be elated that we paid much less than we owed is a sad commentary. It's a sad commentary that Irans activities involving terror around the globe wasn't even brought up in these discussions here. Even Kerry stated its quite possible some of this money ends up in the hands of terrorist. So we owed them and we paid them and we should be deliriously happy we got off so cheap even if these barbarians send the money to groups killing off dozens, hundreds or more in the future.
I'm sure all the thousands of Gold Star moms and the huge number of maimed and crippled by IEDs linked to Iran are tickled shitless we got off so cheap and honored our 40 year old contract with a terrorist ruled nation. There would be no shame in telling these scoundrels to go .......off in regard to this decades old debt. But.......perhaps they would not have released the hostages.....but no....the two aren't linked remember.
No, it's actually like your asshole neighbor bought something from you, you never delivered, then a court ordered you to give the asshole his money back. Get your story straight
Some one outside the socialist left has to moderate. Imagine YOU with the job. Imagine Rock, Imagine Goat...Oh.
I graduated from IU. I reveived my degree through the Kelley School of Business and proud of it. IU is a far left school with many kids from the east coast and now getting some from west coast. It also has a large LBGT community and students of all nationalities.
It was all a shock to my system being from a small southern Indiana community whose world travels consisted of a weekend trips to St Louis in the summer to watch a couple Cardinal games. We were dirt poor and that was our summer vacation if dad had enough money to take us. I ended up moving into Walnut Knolls my sophmore year with two white kids from the region and and African American kid from Indy. They all ended up being in my wedding party in a little town of 1000 before the start of my junior year. We've all remained freinds along with many other kids from Wissler 3. I can't thank IU enough for everything it gave me. I hope my son who's a junior at IU is getting the same experience.
A mother from California sit next to me on a flight to Vegas. She told me kids out west start studying for the SAT & ACT tests as early as junior high. She explained to even get in public colleges out west takes extremely high scores and many migrate to Indiana because of less competition. I know I found with my son that our local school system was pathetic in preparing him for the tests.
It's a shame you're bigoted and will not let your kids consider a degree from IU and all the diversity that entails. Racist, bigoted and homophobic thinking populates both sides of the isle. I challenge anyone on here when it comes to my activities and giving to kids and adults of all races and sexual preference.
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VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
Isn't the real question whether they would have let the hostages go without this money being given back to Iran? Were the hostages waiting for the plane with the money to arrive? And again would they have been released without the cash?
Why pay them anything especially for something going back to 1990. Of all people I did not think you would be so gullible. Time will prove it was a quid pro payment for the release and the parties agreed to use the 1990 freeze as an excuse. If it was like you said why were not more of frozen assets unfrozen?
I have a degree from IU and am originally from Ft. Wayne...and for those not good with geography that is about 3 hours from southern Indiana.
Funny thing about going to IU. You end up bumping into people who have a different outlook on life than you may have. And generally speaking, most of them are fairly intelligent. I took that as a chance to grow and/or test my beliefs. You may "choose" to send your kids elsewhere (although if my parents told me, you cannot go to XYZ school at that age it would not have gone over well...) but you are doing a disservice to them by insulating them against differing opinions. The people on this board who disagree with you are not bigots. They just have a differing opinion. If you are "triggered" by differing opinions, perhaps you should stick to someplace like Democratic Underground as opposed to a site linked with a University...you know, the places people used to go to challenge themselves and grow up until recently.
Do you know any of this; or are you just speculating again?
I have conducted a small search for the terms and conditions of the original arms deal we entered into with Iran when the Shah was in power. I didn't find one. Have you seen it? I think that agreement would be pretty important to determine if Iran is entitled to a refund of its down payment and if so how much of a refund.
I know the current US administration has now decided we owe the money; but it is not unreasonable to assume that the administration dropped some defenses as part of the bigger picture negotiations. There must be some legitimate dispute about this particular claim given that the claim has drug on for almost 40 years while the other claims existing at the time of the original embassy hostage release have long since been litigated, settled, or otherwise resolved. I am unaware of any other large or significant claims that have drug on like this one.
I am sorry on personal attack. I thought you were including me in the group you mentioned.
If your comments even made sense to my comments I would respond in kind. Whether we owed the Iranian bastards legally or not I wouldn't have given them a dime...period. I guess it doesn't bother some of you that Iran is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world and responsible for thousands of your fellow Americans lives by aiding, supporting, training etc of terrorist and reaks havoc around the world. If you had a brother, sister or even a father killed with and IED made in Iran would you be happy about paying the bastards off? Maybe you wouldn't. We all have different opinions.
It should be pointed out that the original discussion wasn't whether or not we should fulfill our legal obligations, but whether or not this was an obligation, or just a poorly disguised ransom. Can I assume from your arguments that you agree OP was wrong to characterize this as a ransom?
Frankly I don't give a rats ass what you personally think. I suspect that simply disagreeing with you is in your mind stirring the pot. You confirmed that in one of your other feeble post when you commented that you came here seeking like minded individuals.
People use the Cooler to discuss issues and often times they disagree and represent opposing opinions and political positions. That makes it interesting. It has been this way for years.
It appears all you are looking for is a location where you and those individuals who think and feel as you do can hold hands and sing Kumbaya or participate in a congenial circle jerk.
Calling our posters here who might disagree with you as Southern Indiana bigots is offensive to them. Most IU grads I know are proud of graduating from IU and frankly are a lot better at verbal and written communication than you.
Bloomington is in Southern Indiana and the people living out their lives in this area are proud of it and their heritage. Frankly its people who think like you and the pseudo-intellectuals like you who taint the image of IU and human race.
Unlike your post mine didn't violate any rules. It isn't a requirement for moderation to remain silent and agreeable with those who think as you do.
And by the way post here again that you can't wait till the old conservatives die off and calling the posters here bigots and assholes and other offensive remarks will result in getting your wish as you won't have to put up with our board and posters for awhile.
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