US sees Iran as potential threat in Latin America

[sabra]

Source: AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Isolated Iran sees Latin America as a place to push back US influence, from which it could maintain a terrorist threat against the United States in the event of a conflict, a senior US official warned Wednesday.

Iran views Latin America as a chance to break out of some of its international isolation and defy Washington's major power status in its back yard, State Department official Thomas Shannon said in Washington.

"It's a way to push back on us," Shannon told a conference bringing together cabinet ministers and other officials from North and South America to promote greater economic integration.

Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said it also posed a threat there as he repeated charges that Iran was behind bombings against Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in the 1990s.

Read more: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j57wBT1cLqpU2lkdFvnlSwW7dpWw

[acmavm]

1. Oh sure. Just think of the shakes they could cause this bunch

if Iran announced a space program. They'd be shakin' like a dog shitting razor blades.

[Newsjock]

2. This is one of those headlines ...

... where you look at it, sadly shake your head, and say, "They didn't really say that, did they?" And when you realize that, yes, they did say it, you just sadly shake your head again.

[liberal N proud]

5. Still shaking my head

Latin America?

They are getting desperate to pin anything they can on Iran in lieu of war

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Can't there be a place where US influence is pushed back completely? Whatever happened to the

concept of sovereignty? I love to travel and want a world that doesn't look exactly like the US.

[Indenturedebtor]

14. No shit

Original Message
Can't there be a place where US influence is pushed back completely? Whatever happened to the
Posted by sinkingfeeling
concept of sovereignty? I love to travel and want a world that doesn't look exactly like the US.


--------------------

Like the US is doing so well that the world should emulate us? If we were so damn great then we wouldn't have to depose foreign governments in order to get them to use our economic and political model.


This is a bunch of nonsense anyways... these coldwar morons just need to retire already. :eyes:

[SpikeTss]

4. Now that might be an untrue statement ...

Because ... Didn't someone of the current administration claim just recently, that Venezuela and other rogue states support al-Qaeda on their territory? And because al-Qaeda Sunnis and Iranian Shias don't work together, only one statement can be true, right?

:sarcasm:

[bdamomma]

6. desperate men do desperate things.

our regime is out of control!!!!!!!!

[Hydra]

7. "Iran is Supporting Venezuela!"

Time to invade!!! 2 wars for the price of one. Or was that for the price of 4?

[ronnie624]

10. Dead on.

It's a way of leading the U.S. public into linking Iran, Venezuela and terrorism into a tidy little package.

And there's that "back yard" meme again. The article isn't even quoting anyone. I simply states unequivocally that Latin America is the "back yard" of the United States Instead of a large group of sovereign nations.

How I loathe corporate media monopolies and their filthy propaganda.

[Hydra]

12. Ya, I love how they basically declared Latin America our territories

"It's our continent, don'tcha know!"

I wonder who they want to invade. I'm assuming they have some wacko in the wings to have "elected" after Chavez has to step down, so Venezuela will be our gas pump again.

[dysfunctional press]

27. it's called the monroe doctrine...and it's been around for a LONG time.

it's not just our continent- it's our HEMISPHERE.

[politicaholic]

8. Throw Thomas Shannon out there to create a false headline & stack the deck against Iran...

Russia had enough money to bankroll rebel armies and install communist governments. Iran barely has the resources to combat maleria. Sure, Iran may send "operatives", but its not like the US doesn't have a massive network that has been established for 40 years throughout central and south america.

Thomas Shannon should eat his doctorate, the jerk off looks like he needs more fiber in his diet.

[Peace Patriot]

9. LOL!!!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :wow: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[IsItJustMe]

11. If you believe this, you most likely believed that Iraq had wmd. God, when will these people learn.

[jeff30997]

13. What?

That's nut!So now Latin America is part of the Axis of Evil too?What's next? Tahiti?

Recommended.

[Judi Lynn]

16. They often bet, and successfully, that a lot of citizens will never take the initiative to question

what they tell us, and will swallow it all, hook, line, and sinker.

There is another _{George Bush} remark on fooling people:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." -- GW Bush, Washington, DC March 31, 2001

[jeff30997]

17. Sad but true.

:(

[Canuckistanian]

15. OMG, those Iranians are EVERYWHERE

Pretty soon they'll be infiltrating YOUR neighborhood, Mr. and Mrs. America.

Wake Up!

[jeff30997]

19. And kids...

We count on you. If you suspect your parents and/or teachers to be Iranians to call this number:

1-800-555-UNCLEJO* or 1-800-555-KGBINUS and you'll receive the Chocolate Medal of Freedom.

*Nickname of Joseph Stalin

[Megahurtz]

18. That's got to be the funniest one yet.

:rofl:

[jonnyra]

20. More threats from the terrorist group

known as the Bush administration. They have, in my mind become terrorists. The Bush administration (and the cult like republican party) are the worlds biggest terrorist threat. They have already destroyed cities (Falluja, Baghdad, New Orleans etc), nations (Iraq, Afghanistan, America) reaped havoc on the environment...environmental terrorism, hollowed out ALL government agencies and filled them with incompetent political hacks...political terrorism, and destroyed Americas economy...you guessed it, economic terrorism.

The world has more to fear from America than from any other nation, group or militia. We are now the worlds biggest terror threat.

[satya]

21. No, the "US" does not. But TPTB and their investors do. nt

[otherlander]

22. Ridiculous, yes...

But I can't say that the Iran-Venezuela alliance doesn't bother me at all. T The Iranian government is repressive, sexist, and homophobic.

Those who would stand up against tyrants for women's rights, gay rights, and free speech deserve the support of all true socialists.

[fshrink]

23. They're also targetting Vermont,

which, with the help of Latin America, would allow them to encircle Washington. Luckily for us, Israel has passed an alliance with the Basques and Mexico, which might be able to thwart this devilish plan.

[LeftishBrit]

24. So what are they going to do, send in Ollie North?

[LynnTheDem]

25. Dear Shannon;

Fuck off.

[spanone]

26. the criminals in charge of U.S. want war so bad they can taste it....

[dysfunctional press]

28. sounds like they'll be taking troops out of iraq fairly soon...

via iran.

[struggle4progress]

29. Bush's Iran/Argentina Terror Frame-Up (Gareth Porter / The Nation / Jan 08)

January 18, 2008

... The keystone of the Argentine case was Carlos Alberto Telleldin, a used-car salesman with a record of shady dealings with both criminals and the police -- and a Shiite last name. On July 10, 1994, Telleldin sold the white Trafic the police claimed was the suicide car to a man he described as having a Central American accent. Nine days after the bombing Telleldin was arrested on suspicion of being an accomplice to the crime ...

... In January 1995, Telleldin was visited by retired army Capt. Hector Pedro Vergez, a part-time agent for SIDE, the Argentine intelligence agency, who offered him $1 million and his freedom if he would identify one of five Lebanese nationals detained in Paraguay in September 2004 -- men the CIA said might be Hezbollah militants -- as the person to whom he had sold the van. After Telleldin refused to go along with the scheme, an Argentine judge found that there was no evidence on which to detain the alleged militants.

The Buenos Aires court, which threw out the case against Telleldin in 2004, determined that a federal judge, Luisa Riva Aramayo, met with Telleldin in 1995 to discuss another possibility -- paying him to testify that he had sold the van to several high-ranking figures in the Buenos Aires provincial police who were allies of Menem's political rival, Eduardo Duhalde. In July 1996, Judge Juan Jose Galeano, who was overseeing the investigation, offered Telleldin $400,000 to implicate those police officers as accomplices in the bombing. (A videotape made secretly by SIDE agents and aired on television in April 1997 showed Galeano negotiating the bribe.) A month after making the offer to Telleldin, Galeano charged three senior Buenos Aires police officials with having involvement in the bombing, based on Telleldin's testimony.

In an interview last May James Cheek, Clinton's Ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing, told me, "To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence . They never came up with anything." The hottest lead in the case, he recalled, was an Iranian defector named Manoucher Moatamer, who "supposedly had all this information." But Moatamer turned out to be only a dissatisfied low-ranking official without the knowledge of government decision-making that he had claimed. "We finally decided that he wasn't credible," Cheek recalled. Ron Goddard, then deputy chief of the US Mission in Buenos Aires, confirmed Cheek's account. He recalled that investigators found nothing linking Iran to the bombing. "The whole Iran thing seemed kind of flimsy," Goddard said ...

<and much more of the same, over a period of years>

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080204/porter

[fascisthunter]

30. LOL!!!!

What a bunch of fruitcakes.... W.O.W

[NuttyFluffers]

31. OMG, they are making Iran into Monty Python's "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition"

next we'll hear the imams are sending covert ops with ice picks to antarctica to chip off ice shelves...

[bitchkitty]

32. Huh? n/t