Ask an Iranian

People's Cube

Dan Truitt  "I saw my Iranian refugee friend Kaveh in church this morning and asked him what he thought of the killing of Qasem Soleimani.

“I’m a little unhappy with it,” he said. “My wife’s unhappy, too. So are our parents in Teheran.”“Why””“Because he didn’t suffer.”“You’re a Christian, right?”“Right.”“Trust me, brother, he’s suffering,” I said.

"I’m an ex-pat living next door to the Middle East, and I don’t think most Americans understand what a significant historic event this is. Most Iranians are completely fed up with the oppressive reign of the mullahs, and most Middle East countries are completely fed up with the organized terrorism being exported by Iran, which has been destabilizing the region for the last four decades.

"It all began when a rather gullible peanut rancher from Plains, Georgia, who occupied the White House for a mostly unfortunate four years, allowed the foxy old cleric to convince him that a Khomeini-led Iran would be friendly to the United States. Not long after that the U.S. embassy fell to an organized Iranian mob. To be fair, Khomeini wasn’t behind the embassy seizure, but he quickly understood that he held a huge bargaining chip in the face of the Carter-led USA’s lack of resolve.

"Mark Steyn, substituting for Rush Limbaugh last Friday, said that Soleimani arrived at Bagdhad Airport, collected his luggage, and then about five minutes later collected his seventy-two virgins. “The reason he got seventy two virgins,” Steyn quipped, “was because he was blown into seventy-two pieces.' ” . . .

Biden: Trump Doesn't Want to 'Face Me in November'

What if Joe treats Trump as he did Paul Ryan in 2012?

Newsmax  "Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed his presidential campaign is gaining strength "despite months of lies and vicious attacks" against him by President Donald Trump.

"Biden made his comments in a column posted Tuesday by USA Today.  

"Here's the only question we should be asking: Did Donald Trump abuse the presidency for personal, political gain?" he said. "The answer is clear. He openly, brazenly and repeatedly called for foreign interference in our elections. He indicted himself in full view of the American people, attacking the foundations of our democracy in the process.

"Pushups, Donald? C'mon!"

"It's also clear why he did it. Trump knows that in a fair election, if I am the nominee, it will be a tough fight. Poll after poll shows me beating him in key battleground states like Florida and Pennsylvania. That's why he's trying to smear me now. He wants to pick the Democratic nominee so that he doesn't have to face me in November."

"Biden said he has already shown he can stand up to Trump's "dirty tricks." He maintained his own campaign is getting stronger "because the truth is not up for debate."

"He accused Trump of "deflecting attention from his own abuses." And Biden claimed that whenever the president "has gotten into trouble, he has tried to lie, cheat or bully his way out of the consequences.' " . . .

Ricky Gervais Deserves a Medal for Roasting the Wankerati at the Golden Globes

Ricky Gervais Deserves a Medal for Roasting the Wankerati at the Golden Globes

. . . "Gervais is right, of course. The offence-taking industry has got grotesquely out of hand – and no institutions have been more responsible for promoting this cry-bully culture of entitled victimhood than the ones that Gervais lambasted at the Golden Globes.
"It’s a great start to the 2020s – a decade which, I believe, will see a growing backlash to woke culture, as we normal people realise that it’s us, not the snowflakes of academe and the mainstream media and the entertainment industry, who are the majority and that for the last two decades we’ve had our culture stolen away from us by a small, shrill minority of brainwashed fruitcakes.
"Gervais’s Golden Globes performance may yet come to be recognised as one of those pivotal events where we all finally realised that the Emperor of Woke is in fact wearing no clothes.
"The man deserves a knighthood, at the very least, for services to Western Civilisation." . . .

Soleimani’s IEDs killed more than 600 American soldiers, wounded many more

News13  "Many people heard the name Qasem Soleimani for the first time last night when the Iranian general was killed by U.S. forces.
"Soldiers who have come through Fort Benning, have known Soleimani’s name for nearly two decades.
"And they have known of his evil deeds in the Middle East.
"Soleimani was the man behind a more deadly Improvised Explosive Devices that ran up the American casualty count beginning in 2003.
"There are 6,989 names on the wall of the Global War on Terror Memorial at the National Infantry Museum. Soleimani’s work is responsible for more than 600 of those deaths, according to a 2018 U.S. Department of Defense study.
"Another 1,600 soldiers who were maimed or injured from the devices.
"Peter L. Jones was there in 2003-04. Back again in 2007-08. And in 2009-10 was a brigade commander in the Third Infantry Division.
"Asked if Soleimani was a bad guy, Jones didn’t pause.
“ 'Well, yes. You can’t say that he did not have American blood on his hands,” Jones said. “And his goal was to keep American influence out of the Middle East and make sure those countries turned toward Tehran versus Washington.”
"The Global War on Terror Memorial is the only place in the nation where the names of all of the men and women who died since 9-11 can be found in one place.
"Soleimani was a high-value target, Jones said.
“ 'When you understand who’s responsible for that threat to your soldiers, you have mixed emotions. But he was a legitimate target,” Jones said. “The head of a terrorist organization, that was going to continue to spread malign influence throughout the region and was going to continue to be a threat.” . . .

Iran state TV: Tehran fires at Iraqi base housing US troops  "Iran state TV says Tehran has launched “tens” of surface-to-surface missiles at Iraq’s Ain Assad air base housing U.S. troops over America’s killing of a top Iranian general.
"State TV described it early Wednesday as Tehran’s revenge operation over the killing of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
"U.S. forces could not be immediately reached for comment." . . .

Protests Take Place Around Massachusetts After Killing Of Iran General Qassem Soleimani

Ignored by Liberal Mainstream Media: Iranian Regime Bribed Funeral Attendees with Free Meals

The Gateway Pundit

"The liberal pro-Iranian mainstream media could not stop talking about the size of the crowds at the “popular” and “loved” Qassem Soleimani funeral today."

Ali Safavi‏Verified account @amsafavi

@dam00r @mohamad43854922 @Sbweb_twiter @Reyhan33861172 @Sohail72182596 @ZahraSa18631314 Proof of free lunch? Here: Official news agency IRNA: "Khalil Najafi, head of reconstruction of holy sites in Central Prov.: 40K plates of warm food for lunch, breakfast & snacks distributed.

Don’t believe Iranian propaganda about the mourning for Soleimani  "Over the next few days, it will be hard to escape footage of huge crowds gathering in Iranian cities to mourn the death of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed by a U.S. drone strike. For anyone watching, I have one piece of advice: Don’t take what you’re seeing at face value.

"This past November, thousands of Iranians took to the streets across the country to protest against the regime, in the biggest challenge to the clerical rule in 40 years. According to Reuters, more than 1,500 people were killed by security forces, including units of Soleimani’s Revolutionary Guard, and at least 7,000 have been arrested. The Internet was shut down for five days. Tehran has yet to release official figures of its own, which suggests the death toll may have been even higher.

"The protesters had harsh words for Soleimani and his foreign adventures, chanting against Iran’s involvement in Syria and its support of Hezbollah. That came as a shock to the regime, which portrays Soleimani as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s adopted son.

"Of course, people across the political divide are concerned about war. Nobody wants President Trump to bomb Iran’s cultural or historical sites as he threatened in a tweet on Saturday. I myself denounced the tweet on Fox News on Sunday.

"But what to make of the crowds of flag-waving mourners streaming across TV screens? Without doubt, Soleimani had support among hard-liners and regime loyalists. The regime is not taking any chances, though. In the city of Ahvaz, where large numbers of people turned out to mourn Soleimani, the government has forced students and officials to attend. It provided free transport and ordered shops to shut down. According to videos sent to me by people inside the country, the authorities are making little kids write essays praising the fallen commander. First-graders who didn’t know how to write were encouraged to cry for Soleimani.

"Some Iranians have compared the funeral services for Soleimani to those held for the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, killed by Allied agents during World War II." . . .

Chevy truck hauls Soleimani’s corpse through Iranian crowd

Asaad Hanna‏Verified account @AsaadHannaa Jan 4MoreSo funny
The body of #Soleimani in the funeral carried by a Chevrolet American car, the military guys around the car suited up an American uniform with an American M16 rifle , and the crowds shouting “Death for America”

Why the Left (Hollywood, MSNBC, CNN, Democrat Party) sides with Iranian Terrorists Over America

. . . "I mean, the deep state IC. But this guy, the Revolutionary Guard that general Qassem Soleimani, his body is being flown back to Tehran in a cardboard box with his picture on it across three coach seats on an Iranian airline. The New York Post has the picture. He’s in a cardboard box. Of course there’s not much of him left, just his finger with the ring on it. That’s how he was identified. But still, and they’ve got his picture on the cardboard box. But he was a bad dude, folks." 

. . . 

"But if you let these people run things, there will never be any serious defense of Americans or American interests because they believe to do so is to escalate. I’ll give you an example, I’ll give you an analogy. The first Gulf War with Saddam to liberate Kuwait. George H. W. Bush was the president. I will never forget Sam Donaldson on ABC News warning Americans that the end was near, that we had no business conducting a desert war because we were not qualified, we didn’t know how to win, how to conduct a desert war. Saddam, that’s his lair, that’s his natural habitat. Saddam was gonna wipe us out.

"Sam Donaldson did a feature on the number of body bags that would be needed. The war was over in 18 hours with the vaunted desert rat army of Saddam Hussein surrendering and waving the white flag in a matter of six hours. And so these people haven’t changed. The U.S. is not able to win. All we’re doing is escalating. And the bad guys are far superior. And the bad guys are far smarter. And the bad guys are far more capable. And the bad guys are not gonna take this.

"We have destroyed a fundamental war-making element of the Iranian government by taking this guy out. You’re not gonna see it anywhere in the news, but Iran has been leveled in a sense here strategically with the assuming of room temperature of Qassem Soleimani." 

Or "Salmonella" as Rush often pronounces his name. 

Conservative Firing Line

The Trump Doctrine Humiliates Both Foreign Enemies and Domestic Liberals

Tony Branco

Townhall  "This has been a really difficult time for Ben Rhodes, John Kerry, and the rest of the geniuses who zombie Neville Chamberlain recently hailed as “a flock of insufferable sissies crowded around the behind of America’s enemy, shamelessly smooching their dignity away.” Zapping Qassam Soleimani ruined an Iranian offensive that had started with such promise. When the dirtbag catspaws of the dirtbag Iranian mullahs surrounded the American embassy in Baghdad, American liberals were more excited than the old Weekly Standard’s staff would have been upon discovering that it was sharing one of its cruises with a pool boy and sexy gardener convention. Libs and their Fredocon submissives were practically salivating at the thought of fellow Americans being murdered by scuzzy foreigners and the opportunity such a tragedy would present for blaming Donald Trump. This was Trump’s Benghazi test, they chortled on social media." . . .More

Ever wonder who the Democrats like more, our President or any Ayatollah?

Any way you look at it, we are here because Obama and Europe forgot or preferred to ignore that Iran is an apocalyptic messianic regime bent on exporting terrorism and Shi’itism to intimidate its enemies, and should never be allowed to develop or possess nuclear weapons. Giuliano Maciocci

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

And now it's the War Powers Act! "The clown show over at Nancy's House keeps puttering along." . . .
  . . . "Maybe that's the next article of impeachment?  Another "abuse of power"?  Or even better, another "obstruction of Congress"?
"To be fair, I'm not a fan of presidents getting us into wars without a congressional vote, i.e. Korea, or the skinny Tonkin Gulf Resolution on Vietnam. I prefer what Bush 41 and Bush 43 did by putting the Congress on record.
"Congress should be involved.  However, this is not about the U.S. Constitution, but just another excuse to attack President Trump.

Iran's political advisor

"Nancy's clown show is getting really boring!" . . . More

Iran's miscalculation "It is hard to understand Iran Supreme Leader Khamenei’s blunder in attacking the US Embassy in Baghdad. He either believed Trump was weakened by his impeachment, as western liberal Media breathlessly and continuously reported, or he might have been misled by John Kerry’s (pictured, right) incompetent advice (apparently Kerry met again with Khamenei’s emissaries in Paris just few weeks ago). Whatever the reasons, his goal of triggering a limited war with America to rally his people around the regime has failed miserably." . . .  More

Bernie compares Soleimani to a Russian dissident

Hollywood needs to change its messaging on fatherhood

The same way producers are copying Hallmark-style movies to cash- in on their popularity, there is a gold mine awaiting producers of movies and TV shows that restore fathers to their rightful position.

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American  "During his heartfelt Golden Globes speech, Tom Hanks said his five children are braver, stronger, and wiser than him.  Please do not think I am beating up on Tom Hanks.  I am simply pointing out that Hanks downplaying his fatherly position is a mindset we see reflected in practically every family movie and sitcom today.
"We have gone from TV shows like Father Knows Best to countless shows in which Father is portrayed as an idiot — the butt of jokes, spoken to with disrespect from his wife and children.
"As a child, my black family loved watching The Andy Griffith Show.  Like Andy's son Opie in the show, my four siblings and I had great fun with our dad.  And yet, we knew our place, never daring to speak to him with disrespect.
"I have turned off movies and TV shows because I could not stomach the disrespectful way children speak to their fathers, lecturing Dad and displaying arrogant disobedience.

Hollywood, Democrats, and fake news media believe that children are wiser than their parents, especially their heterosexual white fathers.  Children are told to steal their parents' guns and turn them over to schoolteachers.  Michelle Obama told students to monitor family discussions for racism.  Leftist school administrators say children should be allowed to have abortions and even pretend to change their sex through bodily mutilation without parental consent.
"California leftist lawmakers believe that due to the backward, outdated thinking of parents, government must make homeschooling illegal.  Leftist demand that children be handed over to government schools for LGBT indoctrination, taught to hate America, instilled with guilt for their white privilege, and taught to hate Christianity." . . . 
Full article.

The woke folk of note

They’ll Hex You J. K. R.: J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books and creator of the Voldemort guy mentioned above, has been a fountain of anti-Trump venom on social media, delighting those who venerate celebrity Trump bashers. The love she earned this way, however, proved insufficient to ward off a woke witch hunt when she dared defend Maya Forstater, a British tax expert who lost her position with the Centre for Global Development for tweeting that “men cannot change into women” and “it is unfair and unsafe for trans women to compete in women’s sport.”

American Spectator

                        "Notions of fair of decency and fair play are receding for good."

"Now that 2019 has ended with the impeachment of President Donald Trump, let’s push aside the memory of an accuser, who, like Harry Potter’s Voldemort, couldn’t be named, and who, in a rejection of justice dating back to Magna Carta, couldn’t be confronted by the accused. Let’s cast aside secret hearings, selective leaks, hearsay and hearsay about hearsay, years of media caterwauling, and high crimes that aren’t even knee-high to an impeached grasshopper. Being “woke” is now more important than fair play, so let’s look at a few of the woke folk of note of 2019.

Rowling

"A Politically Correct Reason to Be Overweight
"America has an obesity problem. Cheap, abundant, tasty food combined with sedentary lifestyles produces millions of citizens who strain the chairs they sit upon. Medical professionals tell us that healthy eating and increased activity can save the chairs, but we find following that advice hard. We make excuses. We don’t have time to prepare healthful meals or exercise. High-calorie foods are impossible to resist. We may claim to be “big boned” or have a “gland problem.” In October, in an episode of Black Women OWN the Conversation, a program on the Oprah Winfrey Network, Brittney Cooper, a professor of gender studies at Rutgers University, declared there was another reason one portion of society is overweight: President Trump.
“ 'We are living in the Trump era,” Cooper, who is African-American, said, “and look, those policies kill our people. You can’t get access to good health care, good insurance.” Not pausing to address the issue of Obamacare increasing health insurance costs, she insisted that stress caused by racism changed black women’s metabolisms, making it more difficult for them to lose weight. “I hate when people talk about black women being obese,” she said. “I hate it because it becomes a way to blame us for a set of conditions that we didn’t create.' ” . . .

Michael Moore Sends Iran Leader a Direct Message: Let Me and Millions of Americans Remove Trump

Breitbart  "Far-left documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has begged the Iranian regime not to respond with violence to the drone strike that killed the country’s terror chief Major General Qasem Soleimani, promising that he and millions of Americans will get rid of President Donald Trump at the ballot box in November.

"Soleimani and at least three other militiamen were killed by an American drone strike last week at Baghdad International Airport in Iraq. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, responded by pledging “harsh vengeance” against the United States, raising fears about a potential war between the two countries.

"In an “Emergency Podcast” to his listeners and the Iranian people, Moore said that although he does not favor theocratic regimes, he sympathizes with Iran because of the way they have been treated by the United States.

“ 'I would like to ask you, as much as you have the right to and as much as you want to, I would like you, the leadership of the country of Iran, to not respond with violence to the United States,” Moore said.

"The 65-year-old filmmaker went on to urge the Iranian leadership to not play into Trump’s hands with violent retaliation, but instead wait for Congress or the American electorate to remove Trump through impeachment or an election.

“ 'I am asking you to try what Martin Luther King and Gandhi said requires the most amount of courage which is to respond with non-violence,” he continued. “I am asking you to leave this up to me, give me all of 10 months and I and millions of Americans will remove Trump from the White House." . . .

Golden Globe Awards host Ricky Gervais tears into Hollywood elite, Disney, Amazon, Apple

"You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything," he declared. "You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg."

Fox News  "The biggest stars in TV and film gathered in Beverly Hills in the hopes of kicking off the 2020 awards season with a highly coveted Golden Globe award, and notoriously controversial host Ricky Gervais wasted no time laying into the Hollywood elite vying for a big win.
"Stars from films like “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” “Rocketman” and “The Irishman” as well as shows like "Big Little Lies," "The Crown" and "Barry" were in attendance but the comedian and host was undeterred by the many famous faces staring back at him.
"He called out the many stars in the room for their relationship to large corporations like Apple, Amazon and Disney.
. . . 
"Gervais concluded his scathing monologue by warning the celebrities not to make any political or "woke" statements when accepting their awards.
" 'You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything," he declared. "You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg." . . .

Los Angeles Times television critic Lorraine Ali was not pleased.  . . . "Ali penned a disapproving opinion-editorial slamming Golden Globe host Ricky Gervais for roasting Hollywood elites on Sunday evening.

"According to Ali, Gervais’s roasting of A-list celebrities felt unoriginal because his searing jokes pointed at the award show’s attendees were expected, which immediately canceled any possibility that he would be the evening’s “funniest guy in the room.” She also lashed at the comic for calling on award-winners to avoid politics while Congress weighs impeachment and Iran is threatening retaliation for the death of top general Qasem Soleimani."

Thanks to Trump, the Forty-Year Appeasement of Iran Is Over

. . . Trump's assassination of Soleimani is taking us out of this diplomatic quagmire. He is signaling that the years of appeasement of Iran are over. Hiding behind terrorist proxy groups has worked for Iran since the ayatollahs took over in the 1970s. This strike against the head of the Revolutionary Guards may cause the cowardly leaders of Iran to reconsider their modus operandi on the world stage, or it may lead to a lashing out. Whichever path they take, our resolve to stop participating in the cycle of terror attacks and subsequent appeasement of a rogue state is now affirmed. . . .

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

American Thinker   "The assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani is an unusual, possibly aberrant, event.  The killing of this individual leader of a sovereign state may lead to all-out war between Iran and the U.S. — or, on the other hand, the assassination may bring an end to the cycle of Iranian violence countered by U.S. and world diplomatic flatulence and appeasement.

"Assassinating the leaders of terrorist organizations — i.e., non-state actors, such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — did not lead to a greater war footing against the USA because, as terrorist organization leaders, not heads of state, they are automatically considered rogue, even by sovereign state leaders sympathetic to their goals.  Al-Qaeda and ISIS, despite any claims to territorial governance, are non-state actors.  Thus, despite ISIS's former control of land areas, ISIS was despised for its aggressions but was not considered a serious threat to the power of leaders of other Muslim-dominant states within the region.  The Middle Eastern Muslim states that may, to a certain degree, be sympathetic to ISIS's dreams of a re-established caliphate such as existed for hundreds of years nevertheless did not intend to defer to the leader of ISIS as that caliph.  Despite Islam's socio-political backwardness in today's world, the glories of Islam's earlier history loom large in the consciousness of most Islamics.  ISIS did not appear to Islamics as the proper heir of that presumed glorious history.

"Iran's listing as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department puts it into a special category.  Iran is a behind-the-scenes puppeteer of Hamas operating in Gaza, Hezb'allah operating in Lebanon, and the Houthis operating in Yemen as well as a variety of groups in Iraq.  Not only did Iran held 52 Americans hostage for over a year after the ayatollahs overthrew the Shah in the  1970s, but the Iranians were crucial in the bombing of the U.S. military barracks in Lebanon (1983), the bombing of the Khobar Towers and American troops in Saudi Arabia (1996), the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), the bombing of the USS Cole (2000), and the attack on the World Trade Center (2001).  With this nefarious history, acting through proxies to undermine the security of the West and the U.S. in particular, Iran's designation as a terrorist state — living in the gray area between sovereign legitimacy and terrorist aggression — is warranted and necessary." . . .

. . . We can see, then, that appeasement of the Iranian fanatics did not begin with the sell-out Iran deal completed by President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry.  Rather Obama's deal with Iran was full blown appeasement and bribery of Iran the likes of which have taken place since the administration of Pres. Jimmy Carter."

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