or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
March 24, 2009
Robert Parry's #1 Fan
Who reads Robert Parry's groundbreaking website Consortium News, which has uncovered startling stories like the "green light" that Jimmy Carter apparently gave to Saddam Hussein to invade Iran? (You can read the classified government documents that Parry discovered here.)
Apparently one person who does is Iranian leader Ali Khamenei. Here's something Khamenei said in his recent response to Obama:
They showed Saddam [late Iraqi president] a green light. This was another measure by the American government to attack Iran. If Saddam did not have the green light from the Americans, he would have not attacked our borders. They imposed eight years of war on our country. About 300,000 of our young people, our people were martyred in this eight-year war.
Funky. I strongly encourage you to donate to Consortium News' fundraiser.
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at March 24, 2009 10:57 PMDarn--I wish you'd posted this a day or two earlier, because a couple of people were arguing about whether Carter had given a green light to Iraq over at TPM Cafe in one of the comments sections. I couldn't find evidence online about this. The person who denied Carter had done this used as evidence a NYT timeline which didn't mention any such event, which was almost enough to convince me it must have happened.
Posted by: Donald Johnson at March 25, 2009 12:04 PMJesus, just, Jesus.
Carter, the human rights president?
Posted by: catherine at March 25, 2009 02:33 PMThe large number of people martyred were due to Iran's use of "human wave" attacks against the invading Iraqi forces, sending people to clear minefields by stepping on them and blowing up, etc.
Of course, since there was an arms embargo against them and the Iraqis were well-armed by, ahem, the US (among others), it's not really quite fair to blame them. Arguably Khamenei is going easy on Carter: Iraq wasn't just green-lighted, it was our client/proxy in the war to destroy the Iranian Revolution.
Posted by: saurabh at March 25, 2009 11:07 PMAnd, per Haig/Fahd in that same cable, Israel was supplying Iran (replacement parts for U.S. equipment).
What was that about? Pre-Iran-Contra hostage negotiating?
Posted by: Nell at March 27, 2009 05:22 PM
