Can somebody just take him out already?!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7023684.ece

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is IMO the biggest threat to the U.S., Israel, the UK, etc. Maybe I'm going overboard here, but I think he needs to be taken out. Now he's declaring Iran as a nuclear state and going beyond the previous enrichment levels with uranium and further brutalizing the opposition movement with violence. Once again he's severed media coverage, cell phone usage, etc. to make it almost impossible for people outside of Iran to know what he's doing to the protesters.

Yeah, the CIA messed up big time with Iraq. I admit that. This time though, it doesn't even matter what the CIA has on him. He's gone public about his nefarious intentions both verbally and through his actions.

I'm so mad that I almost want to volunteer myself. Give me a Springfield XDm full size in 9mm with a threaded barrel, a Gemtech Tundra suppressor, a Barrett model 98B in .338 Lapua Magnum with the 20" barrel and an Advanced Armament Titan-QD suppressor for it, a few extra magazines, and some good ammo and I'll give it a try.

No, I'm not serious about me trying to take him out myself (I'm not a crazy idiot afterall), but I was only half joking, because I think that a military unit SHOULD and I don't care what country deploys them

If Iran wants another dictator after that, whatever, I'm not advocating we impose democracy on them. I'm just saying that this one guy is pure evil and if something isn't done, before we know it, something horrible is going to happen.

Sorry. My temper flared there for a moment. I had a moment to calm down after reading the article again. I'll leave what I posted nonetheless. I could have made my point in a less heated and more intelligent manner. I apologize for that.

All I'm saying is that I'm extremely disturbed by the current events in Iran, what its "leader" (I know that he's in some ways he's a puppet and not really the head guy) has said, and I am concerned about what the future holds.

I think one of the things that makes my blood boil when it comes to him is his statements about the Holocaust.

My aunt's father (not related to me by blood) and her mother (also not related to me by blood) both are/were survivoris of the Holocaust. I say "were" because her mother passed away recently. Her father, survived Auschwitz. He was a kid at the time, not even a teenager, and he watched his parents killed execution style by a single bullet shot to the head at point blank range. They were killed because they were not physically fit enough to perform the tasks the Nazis were demanding, using them as slave laborers. He still has the tattoo from Auschwitz with his number. It's faded over the years obviously, but it's still there. He shows it to me whenever I see him at Passover or Rosh Hashanah and reminds me to never forget. I won't, but I feel that many Jews have, particularly in my generation (obviously I don't mean "forget" in the traditional sense as though I'm talking of a memory b/c we're obviously too young to have been in the Holocaust, I mean it in the sense of being knowledgable about what happened, and keeping in mind that it wasn't that long ago.

Anyways, his comments regarding Jews and the Holocaust upset me tremendously. I also see some parallels between him and his group of supporters such as the Revolutionary Guards and others who only seem to know, and admire - violence - and the early beginnings of Nazism both in Germany, and in the United States with the American Nazi Party (which still exists and maintains their own website).

I tend to agree with the comments above that the US and UK don't have the stones to do what needs to be done. Israel on the other hand, has stones made of hardened carbon steel. I can see Israel taking this into their hands.

Iran will never destroy Israel? I'm not sure how you mean that. Do you mean that should Iran attempt to destroy Israel... they will lose? Or are you saying that Iran is all bark and no bite? I tend to think that Iran absolutely intends to attack Israel at some point, but that Israel will prevail, hopefully with the help of its allies, but at this point I have questions as to whether the US is still one of them.

Oh geez. I've really messed up. Here I am essentially accusing Iran's theocratic goverment, and more specifically Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of working towards building a nuclear weapon for the purposes of trying to destroy Israel and/or the US or others, and violently oppressing those rebelling against the road that their country is going down, and then the truth comes out.

Ahmadinejad stated today that as he has said multiple times before, their uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes such as nuclear power plants. I guess I just assumed his intent was malicious because Iran has the 3rd largest oil reserve in the world. You know the old expression about assumptions.... well, it turns out he's going green. It's part of an environmental movement to battle global warming. Here I was thinking that he was evil, but it turns out that he's just your average tye-die shirt, worn-down jeans, and birkenstocks wearing environmentalist.

Let's all give him a round of applause for his contribution to preserving the environment.

Give me a break.

The first time I saw the tattoo and he told me the story (there's a lot more - and some of it might be in Spielberg's Holocaust Project documentary b/c he was one of the people interviewed) - I got very emotional. I was torn between feelings of extreme sadness and feeling furious. I too have dealt in person with people who deny that it happened. I've learned to just walk away, because otherwise I worry that I might get so angry that I'd do something that I would regret later, and that would make me no better than them.

I can't agree more with your last comment:

I don't know why this is the case, but I agree that it's true. What's more concerning is how many Jewish individuals seem to be oblivious that there is still a massive amount of anti-semitism out there. They seem to think that it's all over. They haven't been asked, "Where's your horns?" I have. All one needs to do is use Google to find massive numbers of websites and forums dedicated to anti-semitism and promoting "finishing what Hitler started". We even saw it with 9/11. There was a rumor going around that it was a Jewish conspiracy to provoke the US government into attacking Muslims. Plenty of people to this day still believe that. There are websites dedicated to discussions of Jewish conspiracies that essentially blames the Jews for just about every bad thing that has ever happened in the world.

I don't know if it will ever end. When some people found out that I was Jewish and saw my holiday light display (it was huge), they got angry and claimed that I was "stealing their holiday". I just like lights.

I'll end my rant with this. The lady who we originally got our auto-insurance through turned out to be anti-semitic. How did we find out? It wasn't hard. She just wasn't very bright. After a slightly heated discussion about an issue between my father and her, at the end as she was hanging up, she must have accidentally hit the speakerphone button or something, because the last thing my father heard was her say (assuming that the phone was hung up) "Effin Jews" (I've substituted the word Effin for the real word she used.

I've heard that more wars have been fought over religious issues than anything else. I don't know if that's really true, but if so it's so sad.

Your story is interesting. I have met some Muslims who were anti-semitic, but I wouldn't say that all are, especially here in the U.S. I've known a fair number who were in complete agreement that what is going on in the middle-east is nothing short of insane. Here in the U.S., while I'm concerned about the radical muslims who are waiting or plotting to attack like the young men responsible for the UK underground bombing, I'm more concerned about the regrowth we're seeing of neo-nazi white supremacists. Again, I refer you to the internet to find some of the white-supremacist forums I've found. They make members show their family tree to become a member to make sure there is not a drop of any "impure" blood in them! Insanity. The KKK has their own website with their own TV channel webcast. These things concern me deeply. Between the radical Muslims within the US and elsewhere, and this resurgence in the white-supremacist movement, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better IMO.

Or a Jew or a Muslim etc, but otherwise well said.

Well, with all due respect, without going into whether or not I believe that Jesus was the son of G-d or not, I'd just like to say that going down the road of attempting to convert me (if that's what you were thinking of doing) probably isn't going to end well. We both believe in the same G-d, I think on the forum we should be content to leave it at that. You are entitled to your personal belief system, and I am entitled to mine and that's part of what makes the U.S.A. great.

Oh, don't misunderstand me - I'm not advocating that we nuke Iran. There are good people there too. All I'm talking about is strategically eliminating certain key individuals who seem to be turning into more and more of a threat to the US, Israel, the UK, etc. every day. I would imagine this would involve small copper-coated lead objects moving at a high rate of speed, deployed by a professional whose job title rhymes with diaper, using a weapon made by a company with a name that rhymes with ferret.

I disagree that Ahmadinejad would care if 20 nukes came back after him firing just one. That's the aspect of this war against extremism that is most difficult. The extremists don't care if they are killed, so long as they take out as many of their "enemies" in the process.

I see. Thank you for the link jcat. In my first post, the vigilante thing wasn't meant to be taken seriously, that's why I said so afterwards and clarified that I'm talking about a military matter here.

We're not talking about doing anything illegal, this is simply a discussion regarding whether the US military or another country's military should take action to elimate certain members of the Iranian government in an effort to reduce the threat that exists and seems to be growing.

Does that still fall under what you linked to? I was under the impression that it was intended to prevent discussions of personally committing acts of violence against individuals. I felt that while my initial post was written while I was angry after reading the most recent news about Iran, that it still was relatively benign and civil.

Maybe I'm wrong and I violated the rules. If so, I apologize. I did not mean to offend anybody.

Let me start this thread by warning that it will describe some graphic historical events. If you are squeemish, stop reading now.

Actually, my original intent was more along the lines of "I think the government should very seriously consider doing this."

As for the rest of your post, I understand what you're saying, and typically I would agree, however there are (in my mind) some exceptions. To illustrate them, and I hate to unfortunately make this thread a victim of Godwin's law, I propose the following hypothetical.

Let's say, back in 1919 a relatively young 30 year old foreign intelligence officer and spy infiltrates a small political group. It only consists of a few members, but the officer is so taken with the group that instead of reporting back to military intelligence commanders, he joins the group, becoming their seventh member. They were so impressed with his speaking ability that they put him in charge of creating propaganda. The party changed its name the next year, and a year after that, the young man became head of this young political party. Unfortunately, his government felt that this political group was somewhat of a risk due to their attempting to stage a revolution and imprisoned this fellow for some time the year after he became the group's leader. During his time in prison, he decided to write a book, partially to express his views, but also to hopefully sell copies to raise money for his legal defense. Fortunately for him, he was released after only a year in prison and resumed his position with this group. The group soon found itself the center of attention and had attracted a significant number of supporters. Not long afterwards, he took control of the country and expressed his views on how the country should be run, and elaborated on some of the same topics that had been discussed in his book.

Now, should the US government, or another government have intervened? Based on the information I provided, it seems the answer is no.

Now let me fill in the details I left out. The country was Germany. The 30 year old man was none other than Adolf Hitler, the party that he originally joined was called DAP, which later changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (the party that was responsible for Nazism). While in prison, the book he wrote was none other than Mein Kampf. Lastly the views that he expressed once he took power via dictatorship was to persecute the Jews and any other individuals that were considered non-German or inferior (mainly by him). To make things worse, his supporters murdered all of the significant critics of his movement leaving very little opposition within the country.

Should a government step in and do something? Well, let's look at what governments actually did. Despite Germany's breach of the Treaty of Versailles by rearming itself, Britain and France took a stance of appeasement. The West wasn't ready to take action despite the crimes against humanity that were taking place starting in 1933 with concentration camps. It wasn't until Germany aligned itself with Japan and Italy giving birth to WWII that the West got off its butt and did something.

From 1933-1945 somewhere between 11-17 million people were murdered in cold blood. People such as my aunt's father who was a child at the time, watched his parents get murdered execution style with a pistol. Those who weren't murdered directly, were murdered indirectly by being forced into slave labor in unsanitary conditions and being expected to work for an impossible amount of time without rest. Of course, they had plenty of motivation, as there were trigger-happy soldiers nearby at all times to create job openings when they found a worker that wasn't working to their expectations as far as productivity. Some victims were subjected to the insanity of Dr. Josef Mengele, who was fascinated with medical research and performed experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various unnecessary amputations, performing unnecessary sterilization and shock treatments on female concentration camp prisoners often resulting in the "patient's" death. One night Mengele got 14 twins, as his true passion was in studying twins, placed them on his polished marble dissection table and anesthetized them. He then checmically stopped their hearts. Mengele dissected every piece of the twins' bodies to indulge his curiosity.

Now that we know that we're talking about more or less the most evil people to ever exist, would you still maintain that we should simply respect Adolf Hitler as a legitimate leader of a sovereign nation, no matter what we think, (as you say) and allow his henchmen to indulge their sick fantasies? I say no. While hindsight is 20/20, the world had plenty of evidence of what was going on and that it was only going to get worse. Had some military unit stepped in and ended things early, before they got out of control and WWII started, not only could WWII possibly have been averted, but millions upon millions of lives would have been saved.

I feel that in some ways, this example is analogous to what is going on right now with various members of the Iranian government. All you have to do is take a look at what some have said when expressing their views. We already have violence towards the opposition and critics. If we just ignore what is going on and take the stance of respecting his leadership, then we haven't learned from history. How long will we just sit and wait? Unfortunately, my guess, is too long and in some ways history will repeat itself.

No disrespect meant to you Ut0pia. This is just an intellectual discussion afterall.