Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: AZRedhawk44 on October 27, 2009, 06:34:33 PM
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAN_US_HIKERS?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
???
Families of US hikers held in Iran release video
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- The families of three Americans being held in Iran plan to release video footage that they say proves the three were simply on vacation and had no underhand intentions when they strayed across the border.
Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, have been detained since July 31. They apparently crossed into Iran by accident while hiking in a scenic area in northern Iraq. They have been visited by Swiss diplomats, who oversee U.S. interests in Iran, but have had no contact with their families.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said last week that investigators are still questioning the three and that their fate rests with judicial authorities.
Mottaki gave no other details on the case. But his comments suggested that formal charges could still be possible against the Americans, although Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview with The Associated Press last month that he could ask the judiciary to "take a look at the case with maximum leniency."
One of the videos, set for release on YouTube Tuesday, shows Fattal performing an impromptu rap song - "Yo, it's hot/It's 'cos I'm in Iraq." - against a backdrop of the city of Irbil in Iraq. A second video shows Fattal, Bauer and Shourd dancing in an unfinished cinder block building.
"These kids were on vacation. They were just traveling; they were having a good time," Nora Shourd, Shourd's mother, said in a phone interview Monday.
"It's obvious they're on vacation. This makes it real clear that they were there having fun," said Bauer's mother, Cindy Hickey, who lives in eastern Minnesota. "This is a carefree attitude and not an attitude of someone that was meaning to do harm."
Laura Fattal said the videos showed her son looking well and fit - "on top of his game."
But it was hearing his voice that really affected her.
"It took me aback," Fattal said. "I said, 'That's really Josh. And I really haven't heard from him.' When you hear a voice, that pulls at your heart strings."
As for his rapping ability, Fattal said, "Of course I think he's adorable."
More importantly, she said, the two videos show "the harmless nature of all three of them."
Fattal, who lives in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park, said she and the other two mothers traveled to the United Nations Iranian mission in New York on Oct. 15 to deliver a petition signed by more than 2,500 people asking that the hikers be released.
Iranian authorities have had nearly three months to question the hikers, Fattal said, and "I can't imagine what else they're expecting to hear."
The videos were made two days before the hikers were detained. They were shot by Shon Meckfessel, a fourth American on the trip who did not go hiking with the others because he was feeling ill.
Shourd, Bauer and Fattal are friends who all graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. Bauer had been living in Damascus, Syria, with Shourd, his girlfriend. Fattal went to visit them after traveling overseas on a teaching fellowship with the International Honors Program.
Watching the videos has been bittersweet, Hickey said. "It was kind of fun to see that they were having fun and they were being kids. "But it also made me really wonder why they're still being held. It made me miss Shane even more."
Nora Shourd, who lives in Oakland, said she's watched the videos "50 times already."
"It's wonderful to see them. It's wonderful to see Sarah dancing and they're really having a good time," she said. "But then I feel the opposite, which is - Why in the world are they sitting in a jail in Iran?"
Mike: I've got a great idea! A great one, I say! Let's go backpacking!
Jill: OK, but it's kinda cold here in Minnesota.
Sam: Yeah, it is kinda cold. And backpacking isn't all that great around here anyways.
Mike: No, not here. Let's go backpacking, in, perhaps, Iraq!
Jill: Yeah, what a great idea!
Sam: Totally!
Jill: I'll take pictures of myself in western skimpy outdoors clothing amongst the indigenous people! We'll make lots of friends and have worldly experiences!
Sam: Totally!
Mike: And I've never been there, but I'm sure we won't get lost or anything or stray into a potential war zone or tribal conflict area.
Chorus: Iraq, Iraq, it's perfect to backpack!
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So: young, stupid "state department" volunteers perhaps? Or the video was recorded as deliberate cover in case they got caught while messing around in Iran?
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Shourd, Bauer and Fattal are friends who all graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.
I kept asking myself, "What the...?" Then I read that sentence and it all made sense.
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graduated from berkley what a shock
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They were just going to "smell the air," like Sean Penn.
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Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27
These kids were on vacation.
Kids?
(By the time we were Sarah's age, we had 3 kids.)
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Kids?
(By the time we were Sarah's age, we had 3 kids.)
Yeah, these "students" are my and (almost) my wife's age.
I wish I could say that I can't believe anyone could be this stupid and it must be a cover story as suggested...
Except I know how stupid people (ESPECIALLY American liberals) can be.
I'm reminded of the Russian negotiator who said his hardest job was convincing his Soviet superiors it wasn't a trick when the US did something against its best interest...
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I guessing its a cover story. I bet the whole Berkley angle is faked too.
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Kids?
(By the time we were Sarah's age, we had 3 kids.)
The kids quote was from the mom. I think a mom calls her kids kids until at least forty or so.
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I think a mom calls her kids kids until at least forty or so.
My mother is 91 and still calls her sons "kids."
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=|
Of all the mountains in all the countries in all the world, you had to walk into Iran's?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to pack. I'm headed to Somalia for a week on the beach.
I guessing its a cover story. I bet the whole Berkley angle is faked too.
I would hope so - but some people are just that stupid.
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I never have bought this story. It would not surprise me in the least to find out one or more of them was on CIA or State Dept payroll.
Then again, the whole thing is so monstrously stupid...a true puzzle is when you can't figure whether to attribute something to gov't or liberal stupidity.
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I'm leaning towards liberal stupidity.
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When reading about these "kids" who decide to go hiking in Iraq (!) right next to Iran (!) . . . why am I reminded of Timothy Treadwell?
From Wikipedia:
Timothy Treadwell spent 13 summers in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Over time, he believed he was trusted by the bears, who would allow him to approach them, and sometimes even touch them . . . . In 2003, at the end of his 13th visit, he and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were attacked, killed, and partially eaten by a bear.
I guess stupid is as stupid does . . .
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when given the option it is usually correct to attribute something to stupidity rather than malice.
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I'd put my money on it being a cover story.
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I notice that the story has NO mention of employers or co-workers missing them.
One of them supposedly won some sort of travel-study program with the International Honors Program... no school somewhere waiting breathlessly to hear from that particular person, itching to comment in the nooz?
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Damn some people are stupid, who chooses a war zone to go backpacking??? WTF?! If their CIA, State Dept. agents, (which I highly doubt) well they must be the absolute worst three in the agency, and they failed their mission stupendously.
Do these idiots not read the news? North Korea capturing journalists ringing any bells? Great now Iran has some bargaining chips it can bring to the nuclear power table. Can we just leave em there? How else are you going to learn not to travel to war zones and play on the borders of counties that hate us.
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Damn some people are stupid, who chooses a war zone to go backpacking??? WTF?! If their CIA, State Dept. agents, (which I highly doubt) well they must be the absolute worst three in the agency, and they failed their mission stupendously.
Do these idiots not read the news? North Korea capturing journalists ringing any bells? Great now Iran has some bargaining chips it can bring to the nuclear power table. Can we just leave em there? How else are you going to learn not to travel to war zones and play on the borders of counties that hate us.
If the Administration had any balls, or the CIA, they'd concoct a story that they've been executed in Iran.
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a true puzzle is when you can't figure whether to attribute something to gov't or liberal stupidity
There's a difference ???
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I notice that the story has NO mention of employers or co-workers missing them.
Do you think my clients would miss me if I went away? I doubt it. Few of them had ever met me.
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under cover operatives for the church of xenu
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I have a sudden urge to watch the movie Spies Like US. :lol:
jim
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How would civilians even get into Iraq? Are commercial flights going into there with anyone able to mosey out into the streets? ???
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When we had to get photographers and writers in there they drove across from Syria
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How would civilians even get into Iraq? Are commercial flights going into there with anyone able to mosey out into the streets? ???
Getting into Iraq? Seems simple enough. IIRC, they fly regular flights from Stockholm to the Kurdish areas of the country...
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...a true puzzle is when you can't figure whether to attribute something to gov't or liberal stupidity.
No reason it can't be both at the same time.