* BREAKING - Iran frees four American prisoners in swap !

Bush would have apologized like he did when China took hostages. And Reagan gave Iran weapons in order to free the hostages.

 

no, you need to stop looking at moronic websites.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-assets-usa-idUSBREA0G0LR20140117

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what you are saying is that getting us involved in moronic wars makes bush competent. nope, no way

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time to accept the fact that we have a black president. get over it.

 

And Bush made the Obama victory possible. I expect the GOPe to work hard to make even an HRC victory possible.
It will take all they've got in them, but I suspect they can pull it off.

 

Not tax payer money. These were funds impounded by the Western nations as part of the sanctions against Iran. It is and always has been their money.

 

Its really sad that an American would call any US President a "traitor" because their candidate lost..

 

The Iranians are true humanitarians. Now if they could just stop stoning people ...

 

Remember all the dumb accusations about the line of credit to Brazil that was passed by Bush's export-import bank people. It was to be spent in the US to purchase American goods and services?

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Capital punishment in Iran involves hanging... not stoning.

 

When did China take hostages? And I know about Iran-Contra, but I highly doubt it was in anyway connected to freeing the hostages from the Jimmy Carter debacle.

Try again.

 

i agree, a disgusting comment

 

>>>MOD EDIT Off Topic Removed<<<

"It was a foreign policy crisis: After an equipment failure rendered their vehicle inoperative, a group of American military personnel had fallen into the hands of an adversarial state far away. How would the president get them back? A daring rescue mission? Threats of military action? Diplomacy? Outright groveling? In the end, he felt he had no choice but to submit to the hostage-takers' demands, and the government wrote a letter filled with apologetic language ("We are very sorry" for the incident, and "We appreciate" our adversary's "efforts to see to the well-being of our crew" they held prisoner for 10 days).

You would think that Republicans, who are so committed to the singular importance of "strength" in foreign affairs, would have been outraged and appalled at the weakness shown by the president in this incident. But they weren't. That's because the president was George W. Bush, and this was April 2001, when an American spy plane had to make an emergency landing on a Chinese island after a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet. Here's the letter of apology.


It was hard not to be reminded of that incident 15 years ago when this week two small American naval boats apparently drifted into Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf after engines failed, and the Iranian navy detained them."

...

http://theweek.com/articles/599066/...arrassed-themselves-during-iran-navy-incident

 

I hope you're able to see how that situation differs very DIFFERENTLY from what took place a couple of days ago with Iran. Our plane crashed into theirs, directly in Chinese airspace. It could easily be construed as an act of war. Why was an U.S airliner so close to China? If I were the Chinese brass, that would be my first thought. Diplomacy is always preferred to war, and Bush did the right thing here.

There was no photo-op, no tying up our pilot. Just direct negotiations on how to make things better and to avoid that kind of situation.

The comparison doesn't even exist. The Chinese weren't belligerent, the Iranians are. I love how Liberals always want to point at Bush, but here's the reality: Bush is better than Obama, Bush was always a better President than Obama. The only reason he won in 2008 was riding a populism newcomer wave. The only reason he won in 2012 was a smear job on Mitt Romney. I can't think of a LESSER qualified President than Obama.

 

lol.

Neo cons are the phunniest people.

[h=1]U.s. Fumes As China Holds On To Aircrew[/h]
April 03, 2001|By Michael A. Lev and John Diamond, Tribune staff reporters. Michael Lev reported from Beijing, John Diamond reported from Washington.
BEIJING &#8212; Two days after an American spy plane collided with a Chinese jet fighter over the South China Sea, Chinese officials on Tuesday defied President Bush's demand that they release 24 U.S. crew members and return the damaged plane to American hands.


Chinese military officials did not let U.S. diplomats visit the crew or inspect the downed EP-3 surveillance plane, both kept out of sight at a military base on the Chinese island of Hainan, south of Hong Kong.




What began as an apparent accident in international airspace when the planes collided was slowly turning into a Cold War-style political standoff, with the president forced to address Beijing's government from afar by reading a sober statement requesting that the American plane and its crew promptly be returned.

"The first step should be immediate access by our embassy personnel to [the crew]," Bush said. "I am troubled by the lack of a timely Chinese response to our request for this access."


More directly, Bush said, "I call on the Chinese government to grant this access promptly."


A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, indicated that there would be no access to the crew before Tuesday morning Washington time at the earliest.
U.S. officials expressed growing frustration with China over the lack of cooperation or communication, but they stopped short of accusing the Chinese of holding the crew hostage.
Bush sidestepped a question from reporters at the White House about whether the crew members were viewed as captives, saying, "My reaction is that the Chinese must promptly allow us to have contact with the 24 airmen and women that are there and return our plane to us without any further tampering."


In Beijing, however, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher pointedly said China "does not have a sound legal basis" for detaining the crew or preventing U.S. diplomats from visiting them.


"It is inexplicable and unacceptable and of grave concern to the most senior leaders of the United States government that the aircrew has been held incommunicado," Prueher said.

Without access to the crew, it was impossible to know where they were being held or whether Chinese officials had attempted to board the aircraft."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...chinese-response-crew-members-jeremy-crandall

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The best part is...you adore Bush, but didn't even *know* about this incident.

 

1) I don't "adore" Bush, I hated him.(In my political evolution since, I've come to understand the difficult job he was tasked with and how he is ALWAYS better than the clown we have masquerading as a President.). That doesn't make him a great or even a good President. It just means he's better than Obama. Not a very high bar to clear.

2)Let me make this clear: I was 9 years old in 2001, and the very last thing I was concerned with was some remote incident in which the Chinese held American air personnel in captivity. Now that you can't use this as some flimsy justification of your diatribe, let's get down to a real analysis of the issues(and what we know the US Government agreed to, FROM your own link nevertheless.)

The Chinese didn't hand over the air crew after two days. Why? Because the Chinese wanted something in return, perfectly understandable considering that again, our aircraft literally rammed into theirs. The article you posted even highlights the cold-war like tensions. It needed to be resolved in a diplomatic manner, and credit to the Bush Administration for doing so after initially having robust demands.

Unlike with the Iranians though, it wasn't just the apology(though the apology was important.). "discussions of the causes of the incident, possible recommendations whereby such collisions could be avoided in the future, development of a plan for prompt return of the EP-3 aircraft and other related issues. We acknowledge your government's intention to raise U.S. reconnaissance missions near China in the meeting." These factors were weighed much more greatly by the Chinese than whether or not we apologized.

Only someone looking to 'blame Bush' would compare these two isolated incidents, involving a totally different set of circumstances. China isn't a belligerent factor like the Iranians. China was not looking to antagonize the US. China was looking for due response from a country whose airliner crashed into theirs, in Chinese territory.

Now, in the case of the Iranians, our ship sailed too far into Iranian waters. But there was no damage whatsoever to Iran, and I don't think you can give me a report of a "standoff". No, it was an ambush. They ambushed and captured our men, and then used the opportunity to get a photo-op and an apology. For what? A mechanical break down? For them tying up our soldiers and treating them in such a disparging manner?

I get it, you're a fan of Barack Obama. The same way in which Harding had fans. But just like Warren G. Harding was a failed president, Barack Obama's also a failed president. And you can't escape that. No matter how much you want to blame Bush.

 

They have been talking about these prisoners on Fox news for years and virtually nothing until now has been reported by left wing media yet all of the sudden the left pretends its their big accomplishment.

 

OK, sonny.

 

LOL! Horrible deal. obama is an idiot.

 

Did you read the post? we released X and gave a pass to another Y. The total being 21. But don't let honest addition get in YOUR way.

 

it was 7/14

 

I wasn't referring to the main Iranian hostage crisis, but to the one that took place during Reagan's second term. From Wikipedia

The Chinese event took place at the beginning of the GW Bush admin, when an American spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter over China and was forced to land on Hainan Island.

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And our boats were clearly in Iranian waters when they were boarded. The claim is that one of the boats had mechanical problems, and drifted into those waters... well maybe, but these boats crews are trained to take a disabled boat under tow and not attempt mechanical repairs at sea.. Did both boats lose their GPS units, they had to know where they were. So why didn't they follow doctrine? There have been suspicions raised that they really were on some sort of covert operation and got caught. If that's the case, there is no real difference in the cases. Also, when smugglers, etc. are caught in our coastal waters, we treat them about the same as our troops were treated when first captured, and made to kneel with their hands on their head. Iran is a sovereign nation, and we have no more right to be militarily present in their waters than they would in ours.

 

He aint the boss of China, so... they don't care.

Their spy plane flew in the economic zone that is in control of China. It therefor has to comply to the domestic Chinese laws. A person died, and the US military spy plane landed without permission in China and so also illegally entered their airspace. They than refused to leave the plane when commanded, because they were destroying their it with the evidence of what went on.

I aint no law expert... but it seems REAL obvious you detain people over that kind of thing.
Illegally entering the airspace with your military equipment,.... they blow you out of the sky over that normally.
Quiet serious.


While the diplomats had a visit with the crew 3 days after the incident.

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Takes a monkey probably less than a day to figure out how to toss a rope, in order to have one boat drag an other. So it makes sense a bunch of marines can't figure it out how this works with years of intense training when they're entering Iranian waters.

 

And in this case we had our people and property back in about 18 hours.

 

looking at the events of the past couple of days i think we can pierce it together. Iran must not look weak in the ME so we send a bunch of sailors for a POW photoshoot with Iran and they can then agree to this deal without their imams saying they are weak.

 

What is interesting to me is that all the "prisoners" involved in this so called swap are Iranian-American nationals holding dual citizenship. The media calls the prisoners held in U.S. as Iranians, while it seems most if not all are U.S. citizens as well, and the prisoners aka hostages held in Iran as Americans, while it seems they are also Iranian citizens!! Interestingly, Jason Rezaian has been living in Iran for the past 5 years as Washington Post's correspondent and as an Iranian national, which has not left Iran yet! Moreover, the Iranian-Americans given clemency by the President seem to be staying in U.S. as that's where they have been living for long time.
Somehow this prisoner exchange seems far different from Colonel Able and Francis Gary Powers on a bridge!!

 

Well, seeing as you held over 700 innocent people in Guantanamo bay for years for no reason whatsoever, I'm not sure what your argument is.