The current government is Iran is a bunch of damn rascals and thugs, and there are boatloads of questions about the honesty of their last election.
The regime’s brutal crackdown on protestors reveals its true character. (But the Iranian government is not novel in this sense: the Syrians have been as brutal with their dissidents, and the Israelis have been more oppressive in Gaza).
What is even more shocking is that the Iranian government admits that it is torturing the protestors rounded up in recent weeks.
How can we ever trust a government that won’t lie about its atrocities?
No wonder so many Americans are convinced that the Iranian government is morally inferior to the U.S. government.
Jim, don’t worry. I’m sure that some bright soul in the Iranian government will either begin to study (and copy) the tactics of the true masters in deception (the U.S. Government) or perhaps will enroll in one of our government’s many disinformation-training and opinion-management seminars. After all, isn’t Gov-Co the world’s leader in training for torture, agit-prop, and lying with patriotic music in the background?
When the United States refers to the Geneva Conventions as “antiquated” and embarks upon legal maneuvering contrary to its professed traditions and institutions, it is open season globally on the practice and one can count on it escalating. That said, the State is on a roll across the globe and as tensions mount over energy and other resources and as cultures abrade against one another, one should fully expect to see barbarism institutionalized. The propaganda machinery of the State will be put in high gear, providing a civilizational gloss on the backsliding into barbarism we are now entering apace.