Poking the Great Satan

Friday the 4th of November marks the 26th anniversary of the seizure by more than 3000 Iranian Islamic militants of the British and American embassies in Tehran, Iran. 66 Americans were taken hostage that day in protest of President Carter allowing the cancer stricken former ruler of Iran, the Shah, into the country for medical treatment. What followed was 444 days of shame and agony in the United States as the Carter Administration dithered. How inept Carter was was made glaringly obvious amidst the burning fires of a C-130 laying broken in a foreign desert. Eight brave Americans died on 24 April, 1980 in an aborted rescue operation called Eagle Claw at a place called Desert One in the Iranian desert. The survivors hustled aboard the three surviving C-130s amidst the darkness and confusion, their mission a failure. The American hostages were immediately split up as Iran showed the world all the abandoned equipment, proving how impotent America the Great Satan truly was. Secretary of State Vance resigned and the Carter Administration lurched into the election cycle fatally wounded. When January 20th, 1981 rolled around everyone knew the American people had spoken. As Ronald Reagan was sworn in, Khomeni's merry band of hostage takers had also listened and decided to release the American hostages before the newly sworn in President did something drastic to their dictatorship as he had promised to during the campaign.

The irony meter of the Iranians seizing the embassy should not be understated since in the spring of 1979, it was the Carter Administration which convinced the Shah to abdicate and allow a fundamentalist Islamic cleric, living in exile in France, named Khomeni to become the new dictator of Iran. So for 26 years there has been an Islamic state that has funded terrorism, that had survived an arms embargo by the US, ten years of bitter war with Iraq that saw chemical weapons used, and had a hand in the killing of 241 Marines one day in Beirut as President Reagan tried to help stabilize Lebanon with assistance of allies. All because Carter and his friends thought the Shah's secret police, the SAAVIK, was just too brutal in propping up a monarchy. So for 26 years; woman in Iran have been reduced to second class citizens where in the early days of the new dictatorship the wearing of lip-stick would result in its removal via razor-blade and people still vanish into the dungeons to be tortured and/or killed like Canadian photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi. And also remember that this antagonistic state is possibly being lead by one of the embassy hostage takers of 1979 and that this state is busily enriching uranium for the 'peaceful' use of eliminating Israel, the Great Satan, and anyone else which annoys them.

Anytime former President Jimmy Carter is interviewed remember this. Remember also the five brave Air Force crewmembers and the three fine Marines who died that confusing night at a remote spot in Iran called Desert One. Their cause was just in rescuing their fellow Americans, but they were not allowed to succeed due to many factors from post-VietNam funding shortfalls to having too many services doing things they were not trained adequately for while a President sought to appear to be doing something about the situation.

And also remember that H. Ross Perot hired some American mercenaries who went into Iran and rescued the trapped EDS personnel without losing a life in the process.