Two more Gold Star Families are heading to Crawford to fill in for Sheehan...
Daily KosEvelyn Allen and Patricia Roberts, two mothers who lost their sons to the war in Iraq, are on their way to Texas, demanding to see President Bush. (Story) What will the pack of hyenas say about these ladies? What type of dirt will they dig up? More exploitation? Are they tax cheats? Will the great Malkin speak for their dead kids?
What will they say? They haven't met with Bush. Will there be more coverage from the press? Will Bill O'Reilly call them traitors? Will Rush Limbaugh call them fakes?
If moveon and Michael Moore really wanted them to suceed in their quest they'd disassociate from those women. Getting a bunch of hate filled lefties to support them is just about the worst thing they can do to gain the ear of the American Public.
And don't you guys have some mexicans to racially discriminate against anyway?
Oh wait...you're too busy discriminating against those "savage Iraqis" that can't be civilized and don't deserve to live except under the boot of tyranny and opression.....
Whottt, why should we Americans die for Iraqis???
The US has never ever gone to war just to save another country from oppression. Look it up.
There are literally hundreds of oppressed countries in the world....do we go into each of them and spread freedom????
no.
Jelly, you do not understand a single thing.
What is you educational background? Community college, yes?
I have learned that you can not have any type of argument for a moron, so I will not answer to your idiotic thoughts any more.
Jim...how many of those countries lie in a region of the world that is the birth place of an ideology that has declared war upon us, invaded another country, lost a war and violated the cease fire agreement they signed a dozen times since signing it, thus ending the ceasefire agreement, and have the financial assets to develop WMD?
Give me that list....c'mon expert...see if you can do it without threatening me...
And that is the 4,090,012,345,675,079,456,678,768 time I have posted that....see if you can be the first anti to exhibit some kind of linear thought capability....
Yeah Jelly...Jim's dentistry education makes him more knowledgable on world politics than you...because as we all know...the world is really nothing but a big mouth.
Maybe someday Jim will realize that sometimes you just got to yank the ing tooth out.
man how soon they forget it's a VOLUNTEER ARMY ....[B]
The govt is no more...they are not a threat to us any longer. Sadam is in jail.
Do you understand????
Do you know that more al Qaeda terrorists have come from Saudi Arabia (icluding the most wanted all off of them) and Africa than any other areas of the world??
Whottt, how naive can you be???
Name one terrorist that has come from Iraq that is of any consequence.
Why are we not cracking down on the country that has supplied more money and men into terrorism than every other country? You know why? Because George Bush is in bed with the leader of Saudi Arabia, King Fahd, that is why.Saudi Arabia is a monarchy without elected representative ins utions or political parties....do we give a ???
We were allies with Iraq and Sadam at one time against Iran, after the Shah was overthrown. Do you know that the Shah and his policies made Sadam look like Mr Rogers in comparison?? He was a tyranical dictator who had thousands of people killed who opposed him. Yet, he was our "friend" so it was alright and we turned a blind eye toward him. He was not a bad man *wink wink*, he was a great man, blah blah blah.
Mohammad Reza, Shah to the Pea Throne ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Islamic Revolution, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection.
When Ayatolla Khomeini took over in Iran in 79, we switched over to Iraq as our "ally" because we were booted out of Iran and no longer got our greedy paws on Iranian oil.
Do you not see the trend here??? We are in bed with the Saudi govt because we make millions of dollars off their oil, even though they are an oppressed people(women have no rights what so ever), but they are playing ball with us, so we again turn a blind eye to their oppression.
How is that for "linear" thought???
And whottt, I had 4 yrs of college at a very fine academic ins ution, where I carried a 3.6 GPA, prior to dental school. It was there where I learned about a vast array of subject matter including political science and history, so I do think I am well qualified to think along a linear line.
What are YOUR academic qualifications???
Last edited by Jimcs50; 08-20-2005 at 04:59 PM.
Republican voices
"You can support the troops but not the president."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."
--Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
--Sean Hannity, Fox News
"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
--Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)
"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
--Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush
"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
--Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
--Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)
Republicans denouncing Clinton for committing troops to Bosnia.
So let's just pull out and create Afghanistant part 2...just let another despot take over...rendering every death there meaningless.
Do you?Do you understand????
Hmmm...Pakistan may have the edge on the Saudies...Do you know that more al Qaeda terrorists have come from Saudi Arabia (icluding the most wanted all off of them) and Africa than any other areas of the world??
And guess who is supplying those terrorists we are fighting in Iraq?
You think Saudis want a Shia dominated country in that region?
Saddam Hussein.Whottt, how naive can you be???
Name one terrorist that has come from Iraq that is of any consequence.
Why are we not cracking down on the country that has supplied more money and men into terrorism than every other country? You know why? Because George Bush is in bed with the leader of Saudi Arabia, King Fahd, that is why.Saudi Arabia is a monarchy without elected representative ins utions or political parties....do we give a ???
What are we supposed to do? Invade a charter memeber of the UN that is a member in full standing? That has invaded no other countries?
The home land of Islam...
Yeah...Brilliant idea there Jim...
And we have put pressure on them to Westernize for decades.
We were allies with Iraq and Sadam at one time against Iran, after the Shah was overthrown. Do you know that the Shah and his policies made Sadam look like Mr Rogers in comparison?? He was a tyranical dictator who had thousands of people killed who opposed him. Yet, he was our "friend" so it was alright and we turned a blind eye toward him. He was not a bad man *wink wink*, he was a great man, blah blah blah.
False...your 4 year dentistry education has left you ignorant both of the Shah, what his intentions were, why he became oppressive, and why we allied with him....Go check your history.
Mohammad Reza, Shah to the Pea Throne ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Islamic Revolution, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection.
False...it started with the PLO...backed by the Russians...which is what dictated our alliance with Israel...
Why are we allied with Israel? They have no Oil.
Why did we go into Korea and Vietnam? They have no Oil.
Why did we ait the Radicals in Afghanistan...Afghanistan has no Oil.
When Ayatolla Khomeini took over in Iran in 79, we switched over to Iraq as our "ally" because we were booted out of Iran and no longer got our greedy paws on Iranian oil.
I think it was the hostage and we are the great Satan thing that got the Iranians in hot water with us...
Do you think that is a just regime in Iran?
Have you looked at the things they do?
They make the Shah look like Santa Claus.
Do you not see the trend here??? We are in bed with the Saudi govt because we make millions of dollars off their oil, even though they are an oppressed people(women have no rights what so ever), but they are playing ball with us, so we again turn a blind eye to their oppression.
How is that for "linear" thought???
Pretty crappy...every country in the middle east is a hole...but we do not have legal cause, created by the violation of a cease fire agreement, to go into those countries and remove their leaders....and we have supported countries that have no Oil many times in the past.
And the reason we are allied with who we are allied with......are remnants of the cold war. Not because we love tyrants...check our history.
And better yet...check what is going on in the middle east right now...in terms of Democratic reform and free elections...check Saudi Arabia even.
I have a degree in Anthropology.And whottt, I had 4 yrs of college at a very fine academic ins ution, where I carried a 3.6 GPA, prior to dental school. It was there where I learned about a vast array of subject matter including political science and history, so I do think I am well qualified to think along a linear line.
What are YOUR academic qualifications???
Again...if all we wanted was Oil...what makes you think we couldn't have gotten it from Saddam?
And we don't use as much of that Oil as the rest of the World does....
I can see the argument for saying we are supporting corrupt regimes by Cana da being our leading Oil import partner...I can't see you saying it based on the mid-east.
Go find out where France and Germany get their Oil from...they are 100% dependent on Oil imports. We aren't.
I am not saying invade Saudi Arabia, you are clueless. I am saying that we are hypocrits because the Saudi govt is just as oppressive and tyranical as Iraq was, yet we have no reason to invade them because we already have many Western fingers in their oil pie. YOU UNDERSTAND THAT!!!???
Why allied with Isreal????
You are even dumber than I thought. if you have to ask that question. oooo???? Jewish money owns our politicians...that is why.
The PLO had very little to do with Ayatolla Khomeini's takover, the fundamentalists took over because of the Shah's policies and his secular govt and because of his tyranical dictatorship, not to mention his love affair with Western idealogies and politicians who were making millions off their countries resources.
Pakistan might have terrorists but they are not being funded by the Pakistani govt. We will do nothing to Pakistan because the have nukes and we are smart enough to leave that alone.
As far as Afganistan, we only gave a about them because Osama was hiding there after 911 and the Taliban had terrorist training camps there, otherwise, they would have been left alone by our govt. Politics dictated that we invade Afganistan....otherwise they were left alone.
Anthropology?
Well, your ancestors can study our people a million yrs form now and try to figure out how we all died...it will be because of greed...Republican greed.
France has no ing oil...duh!
WTF else are they going to get it from???
Whottt, why do you THINK we care about oppression in Iraq. when we never cared about it when we were allies with Iran????
Can you NOT SEE THIS!!!????
Having a degree don't mean .
Look at Bush.
Whottt, do me a favor and go to Barnes and Noble and buy "All The Shah's Men," by Stephen Kinzer. You can learn how a covert CIA operation( operation Ajax) caused the overthrow of the elected Iranian govt in the 50's, putting the Shah in power. The Shah's repressive regime directly led to the Islamic Revolution which in turn gave rise to the climate that caused 911.
Our government can give a less about oppressed people...our history, if you will read it, will show you that.
Money and power is what drives the US govt...and if you do not see that, you are naive and ignorant.
Please read that book!!!
Last edited by Jimcs50; 08-20-2005 at 06:18 PM.
Bush was drunk and stoned his whole college enrollment.
He is not too bright, and is probably the dumbest president in our history.
Had he not come from a rich and powerful family, he would be a drunken bum or at best a blue collar worker living from paycheck to paycheck.
We did care about oppression in Iran...we put pressure on the Shah for Democratic reform...in fact he was doing it.
Um...the Shah was in power before the CIA even existed..
and that elected government we "overthrew" was one that he put in power that was trying to overthrow him.
And it also wasn't an Islamic Government.
False. You need to read our history. You are wrong.Our government can give a less about oppressed people...our history, if you will read it, will show you that.
Yeah we made a ton of money in Afghanistan didn't we....Money and power is what drives the US govt...and if you do not see that, you are naive and ignorant.
Please read that book!!!
And what do you think drives every government?
Nearly every alliance we made since WWII was related to the Coldwar.
Do you want to buy some swamp land from me?
Whottt, you are digging yourself a hole that is getting deeper and deeper. Admit that our govt will jump in bed with anyone, if our special interests are served....please stop being so ing ignorant...please....I really thought you were an intelligent man before I read your blind, follow the company line discourse in this thread.
The Shah would still be killing people and we would still be turning a blind eye to it had the 79 revolution not happened.
Stop using Afganistan as an example of our compassion!!!!
oooo!!!!
We did nothing for them at all until Osama retreated there after 911.
We gave aid to the mujadeen only because the USSR was fighting them and we always fought on the other side as the USSR. After the Soviet Union withdrew, we left Afganistan high and dry with very little aid at all. Yes???
The Shah was overthrown because of his being a dictator, a ruthless one, one of the top 5 worst dictators as far as human rights policies in the last 50 yrs.
READ your history!!!
I am going to the movies now.
Peace, out.
Jane...er Jelly, you ignorant ......
Have a good night.
Um...standing up against communist expansion and the loss of individual freedom is our ing compassion...show me another country that's had more.
False, we gave them what they needed to defeat the Russians.We did nothing for them at all until Osama retreated there after 911.
We gave aid to the mujadeen only because the USSR was fighting them and we always fought on the other side as the USSR. After the Soviet Union withdrew, we left Afganistan high and dry with very little aid at all. Yes???
That's because all of the lefties would have ed about us installing a puppet regime if we hadn't.
Bull ...the only ones the Shah was a dictator to were those that were trying to overthrow him...The Shah was overthrown because of his being a dictator, a ruthless one, one of the top 5 worst dictators as far as human rights policies in the last 50 yrs.
IE the Islamic Revolution....do you see what they do in that country now...Go there..
READ your history!!!
I know....while you...to steal a phrase from Spurminator once again...sound like a left wing blog on autopilot.
The 40 Yr old Virgin is freaking hilarious.
2 thumbs up!
Whottt, are you seriously this naive?That's because all of the lefties would have ed about us installing a puppet regime if we hadn't.
What the does Afganistan have that we want? Nothing. That is why we left.
Now, had heroin been legal in this country in the 80s, then yes, we would have stayed there and stolen all the poppy fields and place American drug companies there where they could be making billions of dollars on that product. But since it is a God forsaken wasteland which has no natural resourses that we can exploit, we left them without so much as a bandaid to stop the bleeding after their war with the Soviets.
Wake the up and use your ing brain for a change.
-WhotttWe didn't put the Shah power...this is something I see every ing liberal say...and it amazes me how ignorant they are of history. We did not put the Shah of Iran in power. We did not do it. We didn't put him in power...we didn't put his father in power.
READ your history!!!!
The US did put the Shah in power, for many reasons, one of which was Iran's border with the Soviet Union, as almost every US foreign policy move since WWII involved the USSR. A pro-American Iran under the Shah would give the U.S. a double strategic advantage in the ensuing Cold War, as a NATO alliance was already in effect with the government of Turkey, also if you did not know whottt also borders USSR.
In planning their covert operation, the CIA organized a guerrilla force in case the Stalinist Party seized power as a result of the chaos created by Operation Ajax. "Top Secret" do ents released by the National Security Archive, showed that the CIA had reached an agreement with tribal leaders in southern Iran to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and intelligence agents could operate.
Operation Ajax was the first time the Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated a plot to overthrow a democratically-elected government.
This is all in the public record Whottt....just read it for yourself and stop with all this naivette that you are showing with your every post.
Widespread dissatisfaction with the oppressive regime of the reinstalled Shah led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the occupation of the US embassy.
As a condition of restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company the U.S. was able to dictate that the AIOC's oil monopoly should lapse. Five major U.S. oil companies, plus Royal Dutch S and French Compagnie Française des Pétroles were given licences to operate in the country alongside AIOC.
The U.S. involvement in the fall of Mossadegh was not publicly acknowledged until five years ago. In a New York Times article in March 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted that "the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."
No, Whottt, oil had nothing to do with the Shah and his tyranical regime starting up again.
Again...READ YOUR HISTORY!!!
Last edited by Jimcs50; 08-20-2005 at 11:54 PM.
I found this on Kinzer's book. This was an interview done on the 50th anniversary of the coup.
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Well, it's good to have you with us. Stephen Kinzer, why don't we begin with you. This month, August 2003, 50 years ago, the C.I.A. orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. Can you briefly tell us the story of how this took place?
STEPHEN KINZER: This was a hugely important episode, and looking at it from the prospective of history, we can see that it really shaped a lot of the 50 years that have followed since then in the Middle East and beyond. But yet, it's an episode that most Americans don't even know happened. As I was writing my book, I had the sense that I was dredging up an incident that had been largely forgotten. During my work, I realized early on that Mossadegh, the prime minister of Iran, had been the Man of the Year for Time magazine in 1951. And after I realized that, I went to some trouble and I finally located a copy of that Time magazine. And I framed it, and I have it up on my wall. And it gave me the feeling that, not only am I digging up this episode again, but I'm bringing back to life this figure of Mossadegh. He was really a huge figure in the world of mid-century. This was a time, bear in mind, before the voice of the Third World, as we now call it, had ever really been raised in world councils. This was a time before Castro, before Nkrumah, before Sukharno, before Nasser. Mossadegh actually showing up in New York and laying out Iran's case and by extension the case of poor nations against rich nations was something very, very new for the whole world. And what a figure he was. This book is full of amazing characters. Not just Kermit Roosevelt, the guy who planned the coup. But Mossaugh--tall, sophisticated, European-educated aristocrat--but also highly emotional, a guy who would start sobbing and sometimes even faint dead away in Parliament when giving speeches about the suffering of the Iranian people. When he embraced the national cause of that period, which was the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, he set himself on a collision course with the great powers in the world. And that collision has produced effects which we're still living with today.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company.
STEPHEN KINZER: The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company arrived in Iran in the early part of the twentieth century. It soon struck the largest oil well that had ever been found in the world. And for the next half-century, it pumped out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil from Iran. Now, Britain held this monopoly. That meant it only had to give Iran a small amount--it turned out to be 16 percent--of the profits from what it produced. So the Iranian oil is actually what maintained Britain at its level of prosperity and its level of military preparedness all throughout the '30s, the '40s, and the '50s. Meanwhile, Iranians were getting a pittance, they were getting almost nothing from the oil that came out of their own soil. Naturally, as nationalist ideas began to spread through the world in the post-World War II era, this injustice came to grate more and more intensely on the Iranian people. So they carried Mossadegh to power very enthusiastically. On the day he was elected prime minister, Parliament also agreed unanimously to proceed with the nationalization of the oil company. And the British responded as you would imagine. Their first response was disbelief. They just couldn't believe that someone in some weird faraway country--which was the way they perceived Iran--would stand up and challenge such an important monopoly. This was actually the largest company in the entire British Empire. When it finally became clear that Mossadegh was quite serious, the British decided to launch an invasion. They drew up plans for seizing the oil refinery and the oil fields. But President Truman went nuts when he heard this and he told the British, under no cir stances can we possibly tolerate a British invasion of Iran. So then the British went to their next plan, which was to get a United Nations resolution demanding that Mossadegh return the oil company. But Mossadegh embraced this idea of a U.N. debate so enthusiastically that he decided to come to New York himself and he was so impressive that the U.N. refused to adopt the British motion. So finally, the British decided that they would stage a coup, they would overthrow Mossadegh. But what happened, Mossadegh found out about this and he did the only thing he could have done to protect himself against the coup. He closed the British embassy and he sent all the British diplomats packing, including, among them, all the secret agents who were planning to stage the coup. So now, the British had to turn to the United States. They went to Truman and asked him, please overthrow Mossadegh for us. He said no. He said the C.I.A. had never overthrown a government and, as far as he was concerned, it never should. So, now, the British were completely without resources. They couldn't launch an invasion, the U.N. had turned down their complaint, they had no agents to stage a coup. So they were stymied. It wasn't until November of 1952 when British foreign office and intelligence officials received the electrifying news that Dwight Eisenhower had been elected president that things began to change. They rushed one of their agents over to Washington. He made a special appeal to the incoming Eisenhower administration. And that administration reversed the Truman policy agreed to send Kermit Roosevelt to Tehran to carry out this fateful coup.
AMY GOODMAN: When we come back from our break, we'll find out just what Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, and Norman Schwarzkopf, the father of the man who led the Persian Gulf War, Norman Schwarzkopf, did in Iran. Stay with us. We're talking to Stephen Kinzer. He's author of All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. [¶MUSIC BREAK¶]
AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman on this 50th anniversary of the C.I.A.-backed coup that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh. We're talking to Stephen Kinzer. He is author of a new book, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. In a minute, we're going to go to old film about the coup where former C.I.A. agents talk about their role in it. But talk about the man in the C.I.A. who spearheaded this, Kermit Roosevelt.
STEPHEN KINZER: One of the reasons I wanted to write this book was because I've always been curious about exactly how you go about overthrowing a government. What do you do after you choose an agent and assign a lot of money? Exactly how do you go about doing it? Kermit Roosevelt really is a wonderful way to answer that question. What happened was this: Kermit Roosevelt, who as you said was Teddy Roosevelt's grandson, was the Near East director for the C.I.A. He slipped clandestinely into Iran just around the end of July 1953. He spent a total of less than three weeks in Iran--that's only how long it took him to overthrow the government of Mossadegh. And one thing that I did realize as I was piecing together this story is how easy it is for a rich, powerful country to throw a poor, weak country into chaos. So what did Roosevelt do? The first thing he did was he wanted to set Tehran on fire. He wanted to make Iran fall into chaos. So he bribed a whole number of politicians, members of Parliament, religious leaders, newspaper editors and reporters, to begin a very intense campaign against Mossadegh. This campaign was full of denunciatory speeches and lies about Mossadegh, dated and passed, without bitter denunciations of Mossadegh from the pulpits and in the streets, on the houses of Parliament. Then, Roosevelt also went out and bribed leaders of street gangs. You had a kind of "Mobs 'R' Us," mobs-for-hire, kind of situation existing in Iran that that time. Roosevelt got in touch with the leaders of these mobs. Finally, he also bribed a number of military officers who would be willing to bring their troops in on his side at the appropriate moment. So when that moment came, the fig leaf of the coup was, as you said, this do ent that the Shah had signed, rejecting the prime ministership of Mossadegh, essentially firing him from office. Now, this was a decree that was of very dubious legality since in democratic Iran only the Parliament could hire and fire prime ministers. Nonetheless, the idea was that this decree would be delivered to Mossedegh at his house at midnight one night and then, when he refused to obey it, as he probably would, he would be arrested. That was the plot. But what happened was that the officer that Kermit Roosevelt had chosen to go to Mossdegh's house at midnight, presented the decree firing Mossadegh and preparing to arrest him but other, loyal soldiers stepped out of the shadows and arrested him. The coup had been betrayed. The plot failed. The man who was supposed to arrest Mossadegh was himself arrested. And Kermit Roosevelt woke up the next day with a cable from his superiors in the C.I.A. telling him, My God, you failed, you better get out of there right away before they find you and kill you. But Kermit Roosevelt, on his own, decided that he would stay. He figured, I can still do this, I was sent here to overthrow this government, I'm going to make up my own plan.
AMY GOODMAN: Now he had had help before from Norman Schwarzkopf, is that right, Schwarzkopf's father?
STEPHEN KINZER: There's a fantastic cast of characters in this story and one of them is Norman Schwarzkopf, who had been the head of the investigation into the Lindhburg kidnapping while with the New Jersey state police, had spent many years in Iran during the 1940s, and was a very flamboyant figure with great influence on the Shah. He was one of the people that Kermit Roosevelt brought in to pressure the timid Shah into signing this fateful decree. Now, the decree finally failed to have its desired effect, as I said. And then Roosevelt on his own devised this plan where, first of all, he sent rioters out into the streets to pretend that they were pro-Mossadegh. They were supposed to yell "I love Mossadegh and communism. I want a people's republic!" and then loot stores, shoot into mosques, break windows, and generally make themselves repugnant to good citizens. Then he hired another mob to attack his first mob, thereby creating the impression that Iran was falling into anarchy. And finally on the climactic day, August 19, 1953, he brought all his mobs together, mobilized all of his military units, stormed a number of government buildings and then, in the climactic gunbattle at Mossadegh's house, a hundred people were killed until finally the coup succeeded, Mossadegh had to flee and was later arrested, and the Shah, who had fled in panic at the first sign of trouble a few days earlier, returned in triumph to Tehran and began what became 25 years of increasingly brutal and repressive rule.
AMY GOODMAN: That issue of the U.S. government funding both the people in the streets who pretended that they were for Mossadegh but communist, and against Mossadegh, pro-Shah, I would like our guest, professor Ervand Abrahamian, Middle East and Iran expert at Baruch College, to comment on. This was a time, the British had used the ruse of anti-communism supposedly to lure in the U.S. Do you think the U.S. was fully well aware of the issue of oil being at the core of this, and also them possibly getting a cut of those oil sales.
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yes, I think oil is the central issue. But of course this was done at the height of the Cold War, so much of the discourse at the time linked it to the Cold War. I think many liberal historians, including of course Stephen Kinzer's wonderful book here, even though it's very good in dealing with the tragedy of the '53 coup, still puts it in this liberal framework that the tragedy, the original intentions, were benign.--that the U.S. really got into it because of the Cold War and it was hoodwinked into it by the nasty British who of course had oil interests, but the U.S. somehow was different. U.S. Eisenhower's interest, were really anti-communism. I sort of doubt that interpretation. For me, the oil was important both for the United States and for Britain. It's not just the question of oil in Iran. It was a question of control over oil internationally. If Mossadegh had succeeded in nationalizing the British oil industry in Iran, that would have set an example and was seen at that time by the Americans as a threat to U.S. oil interests throughout the world, because other countries would do the same. Once you have control, then you can determine how much oil you produce in your country, who you sell it to, when you sell it, and that meant basically shifting power from the oil companies, both British Petroleum, Angloversion, American companies, shifting it to local countries like Iran and Venezuela. And in this, the U.S. had as much stake in preventing nationalization in Iran as the British did. So here there was not really a major difference between the United States and the British. The question really was on tactics. Truman was persuaded that he could in a way nudge Mossadegh to give up the concept of nationalization, that somehow you could have a package where it was seen as if it was nationalized but, in reality, power would remain in the hands of Western oil companies. And Mossadegh refused to go along with this facade. He wanted real nationalization, both in theory and practice. So the Truman administration, in a way, was not that different from the British view of keeping control. Then, the Truman policy was then, if Mossadegh was not willing to do this, then he could be shoved aside through politics by the Shah dismissing him or the Parliament in Iran dismissing him. But again, it was not that different from the British view. Where the shift came was that after July of '52, it became clear even to the American ambassador in Iran that Mossadegh could not be got rid of through the political process. He had too much popularity, and after July '53, the U.S. really went along with the British view of a coup, indeed to have a military coup. So even before Eisenhower came in, the U.S. was working closely with the British to carry out the coup. And what came out of the coup was of course the oil industry on paper remained Iranian, nationalized, but in reality it was controlled by a consortium. In that consortium the British still retained more than 50 percent, but the U.S. got a good 40 percent of that control.
AMY GOODMAN: I said at the top, this month marks the 50th anniversary of America's first intervention in the Middle East. I should have said, of America's first overthrow of a democratically elected government. But, Stephen Kinzer, the statement that you make in your book, it is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax, which the U.S. had called the coup through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York. Can you flush that out?
STEPHEN KINZER: The goal of our coup was to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadegh and place the Shah back in his throne. And we succeeded in doing that. But from the perspective of decades of history, we can look back and ask whether what seemed like a success really was a success. The Shah whom we brought back to power became a harsh dictator. His repression set off the revolution of 1979, and that revolution brought to power a group of fanatic anti-Western, religious clerics whose government sponsored acts of terror against American targets, and that government also inspired fundamentalists in other countries including next door, Afghanistan, where the Taliban came to power and gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. So, I think you can--while it's always difficult to draw direct cause and effect lines in history--see that this episode has had shattering effects for the United States. And let's consider one other of the many negative affects this has had. When we overthrew a democratic government in Iran 50 years ago, we sent a message, not only to Iran, but throughout the entire Middle East. That message was that the United States does not support democratic governments and the United States prefers strong-man rule that will guarantee us access to oil. And that pushed an entire generation of leaders in the Middle East away from democracy. We sent the opposite message that we should have sent. Instead of sending the message that we wanted democracy, we sent a message that we wanted dictatorship in the Middle East, and a lot of people in the Middle East got that message very clearly and that helped to lead to the political trouble we face there today.
AMY GOODMAN: Right after the Shah was deposed by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution of 1979 and then the Iranian students took over the U.S. embassy, I'm wondering, Professor Abrahamian, how often did the press, and understanding through the hundreds of days that the hostages were held, go back to the 1953 coup and explain the fears of the students that in 1953 the Shah had fled thinking that the coup had been fought back and the U.S. brought him back and that now that Jimmy Carter had allowed him into the United States, that they might be staging another possible coup, leading the students to fear this and to take the hostages.
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: I think on this issue actually you see a big cultural gap between the American public and the Iranian public. For the Iranian public, the '53 coup shapes basically Iranian history, as Stephen shows very much in his book. But for Americans, the '53 coup was something unreal for them. It wasn't something they were aware of. If they were aware it, it was like Jimmy Carter saying that this was ancient history. For the U.S. it may have been ancient history but for Iranians it was not. So when the students took over the embassy, they actually called it the "den of spies" because they knew that in '53 the coup had been actually plotted from the U.S. compound. So they were--
AMY GOODMAN: That very building that they took over.
ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: That very building. And that, for Iranians, was a central issue. In the United States, if you watch how the media covered it here, it saw the hostage crisis as Iranian emotional rampaging mobs in the streets calling for death of America and the '53 coup was intentionally not brought into that context. So you can go for reams of programs on the main channels in the United States about the hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days, and you rarely get the mention of the '53 coup. This was intentional. The media here did not want to make that link to '53.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we're going to go right now back to an older do entary that very much lays out what happened in '53, with interestingly enough, former C.I.A. agents. I want to thank you, Professor Abrahamian, for being with us from Baruch College, and Steven Kinzer, author of the new book, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Stay with us.
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