http://forums.roadbikereview.com/showthread.php?p=761633&posted=1#post761633

Excellent post, batty... Iran definitely isn't what I would have imagined it to be...

is it just me or did everyone click like 5 links to get to the actual pics?

This one needs a photoshop:

http://tinypic.com/b6djqv.jpg

that's the satanic snowman

So the point of that is to show that Iran is a nice country full of peaceful families? Then why do they have a government that promotes religious and cultural persecution?

http://www.nationalreview.com/voices/timmerman200512150838.asp

Looks like a lot of fucking targets to bomb. Hey, and why is santa clause in a store front window?

one of those chicks looks like a model.

So the point of that is to show that Iran is a nice country full of peaceful families? Then why do they have a government that promotes religious and cultural persecution?

http://www.nationalreview.com/voices/timmerman200512150838.asp

Because a country full of peaceful families wouldn't want to stand up to an oppressive regime. Even if all those people wanted democracy, freedom, and diversity they could do jack and shit about it in the face of overwhelming military force.

Don't knock the people for their leadership in a dictatorship.

To sit back and do nothing, for whatever reason, is an endorsement of the government. Look at any revolution. People died for what they believed and in most cases the revolutionaries win because they are willing to die. We were so willing to bomb the Eastern Bloc communist countries with all of their peaceful families and it finally took people with the strong enough belief to change the system. They weren't even blowing up our buildings or kidnapping and beheading people.

True, but it also took forty or fifty years for the people of the Soviet Union to get up the courage to do any thing. Not to mention that as Soviet leaders went Gorbachev was a kitten. I guarantee that had any of those revolutions taken place unter Stalin or Breshnev or even Kruschev they would have failed miserably.

And we would NEVER have considered bombing the Eastern Bloc, even though they did kidnap, torture, and execute people on a regular basis. Look up the Stasi some time. We couldn't even bring ourselves to go through with the Bay of Pigs invasion. The Cold War was a classic Mexican Standoff.

To get back to the main point: Its only been thirty years or so since Komenhi took power from the Shah, so its going to take a while for people to get tired of his ways. The billions of dollars the United States gave Iran during the Iran/Iraq war isn't going to help things either, we practically paid for them to build the nastiest army in the region. Any revolutionaries in Iran face a steep uphill battle. Give them twenty years or so, they'll finally get tired of it like Afghanistan.

I'll agree with that, and add China in the mix also. Tiananmen Square was over 17 years ago. They still have the same government and now we give them tons of money for their shitty trade goods. They were in the background of 2 wars we were involved in. The people are so used to totalitarian rule from the emperors to the communists that they just don't know any better. With the proliferation of information made available by the internet there is a chance the people will be enboldened quicker and we can have some kind of peace.

China's in it's own class.

They need totalitarium to govern 1.4 billion people so that they can quickly build infrastructure.

Look at where India is with their democracy in comparison. China is pulling away from India in development at hare's pace.

Also China ain't interested in starting direct shit with anyone. They are more interested in doing business with everyone, including folks our administration may not have on the Xmas list.