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Stuxnet Allegedly Loaded By Iranian Double Agents
First time accepted submitter rainbo writes "According to a report from ISSSource, a saboteur who was likely a member of an Iranian dissident group loaded the Stuxnet virus on to a flash drive and infected machines at the Natanz nuclear facility. Iran's intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, said that an unspecified amount of 'nuclear spies' were arrested on ties to this attack. Some officials believe these spies belonged to Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which is used as the assassination arm of the Israeli Mossad."
Yeah, this is clearly done by some vigilance groups. There is nothing that would show US/Israel interest in this. Nothing at all!
Cheerfully yours from the nothing-happened department.
How about a pass because the Japanese Empire was a vicious and aggressive power that constituted a threat to the rest of the world, and that an invasion would have been easily ten times more costly in loss of life?
The Nazis may have a more identifiable ideology but there was in Japan as well.
Yeah, maybe. But keep in mind that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei aren't beloved by even a majority of their own people. Look at the reaction to their latest presidential election. It doesn't take a large leap of faith to believe that there are probably a lot of Iranians who don't want this government to succeed. Or have nukes.
Have gnu, will travel.
You seem to have trouble distinguishing cause from effect.
It seems to me that first: without the threats that it has made against Israel and their nuclear program, that they would have no need to feel threatened by Israel (which is, in fact, not their neighbor). Any fear that they might have of actions by Israel is a result of their actions, not a reasonable cause for their actions.
On the other hand, Israel's fear of Iran is a logical result of Iran's actions, and their actions (assassinations and sabotage) are a logic result of that fear. These actions are a result of what Iran is doing, not a cause for it. And I strongly suspect that absent Iran's rhetoric and actions (including support of Israel's sworn enemies who are neighbors of Israel), that Israel would have no reason to have any ill feelings towards Iran.
MEK is an organization of militant Islamic, Iranian leftists guerrillas. There are certainly a reasonable number of conspiracy nuts taking a break from their '9/11 was a Zionist Conspiracy using planted charges supplied by aliens' tirades who claim an association between them and Israel. But describing them as the assassination arm of Mossad seems to be a stretch based on the current available facts. If there's a clear tie - is there somewhere we can read about it? The conspiracy bloggers make my head hurt.
They are within striking distance of regional weapons. When Israel has nuclear weapons, missiles, and planes to deliver them, they can be considered neighbors.
Also, Israel seems to think they have a right or responsibility to stop Iran from developing any nuclear technology, peaceful or otherwise. If they were developing nuclear weapons that might even make them justified in certain cases, but so far we have no proof of that. They have absolutely no right to sabotage peaceful nuclear power production, and so far that's all Iran has been doing.
Israel will have ill-feelings toward Iran regardless of what Iran does because Israel is run by a group with the biggest persecution complex in the world--largely justified. Anything but fawning obsequiousness is taken as hostility. Look at the incredibly small movement away from Israel that the US has made in its foreign policy. The hardliners compare Obama to the appeasers of Hitler for having the audacity not to be completely in lockstep with Israel.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
sqrt(2)'s brought up production of nuclear weapons.
You (JoshuaZ) had a good point about the NPT in response to that.
AC had a good point as well that there's no evidence of weapons production, though the charge of trying to confuse the situation falls flat given what you were responding to.
If the roles were reversed, I think the U.S. would be trying to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Imagine Iran having the huge stockpile of nuclear weapons and being the only country having used them. Imagine Iran having overthrown the U.S. democratically elected government decades earlier. Imagine that over the last decade or so, they've invaded and set up new governments in Canada and Mexico. And finally, over the last few years, the drumbeats of war have been getting louder, with prominent voices calling for bombing the U.S.
As a geek myself, there are times I can't help but feel disgusted at the way they treat my fellow geeks
Who were the ones doing all the new inventions?
The Geeks
Who were the ones reaping the benefits of the new inventions?
The Investors
On the other hand, whenever things go wrong, who do they blame?
The investors?
Don't be silly, nobody will blame those poor investors who have lost their life-savings
They will of course blame the GEEKS for the failings
Like in this Iranian case
Who invented the nuclear thingy? Geeks
Who use this nuclear thing to blackmail the world? The Politicians
Who invented the Stuxnet virus?
The Geeks
But who order the Geeks to invent the Stuxnet virus?
The Politicians
Now, about those "Nuclear Spies" the Iranians rounded up - and we can assume very brutal torture, killing, etc included - because of the Stuxnet virus?
The Politicians? No, nobody would touch the politicians
They rounded up and torture the Geeks
It's the Geeks who are being blamed for everything and anything when things gone south, but yet, never get to reap any benefit when things go north, way up north !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Maybe.
The Iwo Jima and Okinawa invasions were planned as part of the same campaign. The goal was the airfields within 500 miles of the mainland. Our capture of Guam, Saipan, the Marianas and Tinian gave us long-range heavy bomber capability to carpet bomb Japanese factories, but the B-24s and B-29s had a rough time of it. It was a long flight: 3000 miles round trip, about 16 hours. Tokyo was right at the edge of the B-29s range, so a lot of planes made it back on fumes, or, if they took shrapnel through a fuel line, ditched in the middle of nowhere*. Plus, when they got over Japan, they had to contend with the Japanese air force all by themselves. They had no fighter escorts - the longest range U.S. fighter, the P47-N, only had a range of about 1800 miles (that's with drop tanks). The bomber wings were taking pretty high casualties, losing about 5% of all bombers sent out on each sortie, plus lots of dead gunners. We needed to have airfields much closer so we could have emergency landing places for the B-29s, SAR aircraft for downed crews, and those lovely fighter escorts. Air superiority wins wars, so the U.S. needed to capture islands much closer to the mainland.
Iwo Jima jumped off first (19 February – 26 March 1945). Iwo Jima had three airfields, but it's only 8 square miles, not a lot of room, and no deep anchorage ports for the Navy. Okinawa (1 April – 21 June 1945) had four existing airfields, plus it's 500 sq. mi. Bonus: it's in the Sea of Japan. This allowed us to attack from two directions and also support some of the Allied forces in China.
I don't think we realized how costly it was going to be to take the island. Plus we really REALLY wanted/needed those airfields. We thought we had figured out how to deal with the Japanese tunnel problem: flame tanks (M4A3R3 Zippo). We captured two of the four airbases within hours, and within a couple of days we held half of the island. It was taking the rest that was the problem.
Another aspect to this is the whole world was getting weird while this was going on. We invaded Okinawa Island on April 1. USSR entered the war against Japan on April 6. President Roosevelt died on April 12. Ernie Pyle, the famous and well-loved war correspondent, was killed on April 18th while accompanying a mop-up operation on one of the outlying Okinawan islands. Germany surrendered on May 8, and we hoped Japan might be demoralized and surrender as well. That didn't happen. We needed to end the war, fast. Momentum was on our side, morale was on our side. We had a new, 'unknown' president (Truman). The U.S. was running out of creative ways to raise money. Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt had already met in Yalta to carve up post-war Germany. The world was changing, a new order was arising. We were already looking beyond, and realized that we needed to be done with this whole thing.
* I highly recommend "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. True story about a former U.S. Olympic runner who became a B-24 bombardier. Their plane developed serious mechanical problems on a long-range search mission. They ditched in the middle of the ocean, survived in a life raft for 47 days, then were captured by the Japanese and sent to one of the worst POW camps till the end of the war. Amazing story.