You know whenever conservs talk about Jimmy Carter it always a mention of a wimp or worse and it always comes back to the Iranian hostages and the failed rescue attempt……it always the fault of him being a ….wait for it…..a liberal.
Speaking of the hostages….I read a report during the Christmas break about these people……
Survivors of the Iranian hostage crisis will be awarded up to $4.4 million each, more than three decades after their 444 days in captivity. The terms are laid out in a spending bill President Obama signed into law last week, which also includes reparation for victims of other terrorist attacks, including the 1998 US Embassy bombings in East Africa, reports the New York Times. The 1981 agreement that secured the release of those taken hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, barred them from seeking amends. Legal appeals were later blocked, though renewed pleas for compensation followed the release of 2012’s Argo. Finally, when bank BNP Paribas was forced to pay $9 billion for violating sanctions against Iran, Sudan, and Cuba, this year, Congress moved to set aside $1 billion for terrorism victims.
The 37 surviving hostages will receive up to $10,000 per day of captivity, while spouses and children can receive a lump sum of up to $600,000, per the Times. The money should be awarded within a year. “The money can’t bring back family members, or the 444 days of their lives. But it would bring some closure and some justice,” Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson tells the Telegraph. “I had to pull over to the side of the road, and I basically cried,” a former embassy security guard says of hearing the news, noting it took “36 years, one month, 14 days” for Iran to be held accountable. “I don’t believe that they will ever, ever apologize,” he adds. “They don’t believe that they did anything wrong.” Officials note many of the hostages were tortured and continue to suffer, including from PTSD. The law signed Friday also designates $2.8 billion for victims of the 9/11 attacks and their families.
After I read this I had a thought…..what can we expect from a country that treats its veterans so shabbily or the treatment that the 9/11 first respondents have had to endure…..why would the Iranian hostages get some sort of expedient justice?
Nothing says love or thank you like being screwed for 35 years. But hey…that is just what we do when people out use their usefulness.
I am sick and tired of our politicians trying to appear to care…they do NOT and NEVER have! And I am beginning to think badly of the American people as well……
Carter had quite a high IQ and helped develop nuclear submarines, an excellent Navy man, but people just think of him as a peanut farmer.
I agree….he has gotten a bad rep because he is a “liberal”….
Uncle “Sugar” believes in money, so, for them, giving money is love….
Pathetic track record for taking care of its citizens, servicemen, victims, or, anyone else….
The ONLY reason it passed at all is to make the legislators SEEM like they care. What will anyone wager the money never gets TO the victims? I’ll take almost any wager named….
gigoid, the dubious….
P.S. Carter, INLTHO, was the ONLY President ever elected who was truly ethical….
Which is why his presidency was considered ineffective; every ‘ethical’ reform he attempted was blocked in Congress, by those who feared his policies would actually work….
g, t d
IMLTO
Bozoid here..
🙁
I agree completely….
This is just so far beyond pathetic….chuq
VERY Bozoid…. HONK!
IMLTHO….
😳
So as your disenchantment with The American People progresses — (Re: ” . . .And I am beginning to think badly of the American people as well……”) what ideological overview will you adopt?
Foer one I wioll not defend a group of people that care so little for the people that they send off to fight while they sit home and whine about their little lives….second I have NO need to adopt anything for my ideology is the same today as it was 40 years ago….
o.k…..God Bless America then …..
John exactly what I was bitch about….35 yr wait for American citizens and all that is seen is my bitching about American people….sorry you cannot see what I mean….chuq
I am probably just getting a little dense due to advancing age or something.
Ah a mental pause…..they seem to come more and more with age….LOL
No offence to the decent Americans left (all 12 of them) but this story has made me feel even worse about America. I didn’t think that was even possible.
As they say “Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse…”
Carter was within days of negotiating an early release of the hostages, but with 1980 election in full swing in the back ground Reagan’s close staff did a deal with Iran. The deal was hold onto the hostages for x number of weeks and they would supply them American arms. So a presidential candidate, makes a deal with a hostile country who held American citizens captive. Carters’ deal, suddenly fell through. It was almost there, but at the last minute Iran went cold on him. Soon as Ronnie got his feet under the Resolute Desk in the oval office the deal was done with Iran.
Politics is all about back stabbing cowards….
Soooo many angles to this story, it’s hard to pick just 4
1) Over 35 years to compensate the victims of the most publicized hostage taking in human history! Even by modern American standards, this delay is beyond embarrassing. Considering how much political hay the Raygun Administration made from this, you’d think they’d have been compensated during Raygun’s swearing-in speech. You know, the one where he announced their “unexpected” release. Perhaps the compensation money was being held over their heads to guarantee 35 years of silence to avoid drawing more attention to….
2) The October Surprise conspiracy with the Iranians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_theory
Making a deal with hostage takers to delay the release of American hostages was a despicable beginning to a despicable era in American history (an era that still hasn’t ended and is getting worse). This act helped usher in the Iran Contra Affair, one of the more despicable moments in American government history. NEVER AGAIN would I think of America the same way I did before! (Note to NSA agent reading this: from a positive opinion to a negative opinion. Connect the dots, spy-boy!)
3) “The Canadian Caper”. While totally downplayed in the movie Argo, this was likely the finest moment in Canadian diplomatic history. During 3+ months of sheer revolutionary chaos, Ken Taylor (and other paper-pushing, diplomatic-weenies in the Canadian embassy) hid 6 “enemies” of the new radical Iranian Government, got them Canadian papers and snuck them out of the country.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ken-taylor-canadian-ambassador-iran-dies-1.3273215
It was so impressive, Americans actually paid attention to Canada and did the unthinkable…they said “thank you”!!! This was perhaps the last (non-hockey related) time Canadians felt united & proud about something. Looking back, Canuckistan has been in slow & steady decline ever since.
4) The delay and the compensation itself One billion is a lot of money to give to “victims of terrorism”. Until you think about:
a) how long it took. The most recent act was 2001? First responders have just been allowed to drop dead until now. Others have waited even longer.
b) where the money actually came. It’s not US government money! It came from a fine to a corrupt, criminal, bank that <b<knowingly broke US laws & laundered money for terrorists. Yet somehow, that bank is still is allowed to exist! NOBODY is jailed and the fine represents only a little over 1 year’s profits. Not only that, only a small amount of the fine goes to compensating victims.
c) the ghastly amount of money the US government has squandered on The War On Terra. The billion is less than drop of water in an ocean.
I agree without the help of Canada these people would have been toast……it was a movie and entertainment….sad that it could be more accurate….chuq
Lucky for you, Sedate Me to the rescue. I’ve got an alternative to this Hollywood hostage taking of reality!
Because Canadian TV/Film isn’t held hostage to such unimportant things as “ratings” or “making money”, it’s occasionally allowed to do things like “provoke thought” or be “historically accurate”. (Imagine dat!) In this case, I’ve snagged you a (decent) copy of the 1981 Canuckistan classic Escape from
New YorkTehran: The Canadian Caper It was a Canadian TV movie that also wound up airing in America, if I recall.Some of the cast turned out to be such good actors, or at least such prolific actors, even most Americans would recognize one or two(but have no idea what from.) Hell, one cast member played a Government Minister in the opening scene of the previously mentioned Canuckistan doomsday-classic, Deadly Harvest. This movie has a larger budget, but it probably cost under half the official trailer for Argo did. It occasionally shows, but it’s not their fault. They tried as hard as they could, but you just CAN’T make a cold, wet, winter in Toronto look like Tehran. But there are very convincing crowd scenes (mixed with archival footage). And they even rounded up some donkeys for the outdoor market shots!
The low budget actually helped make this movie work. It meant there would be no big budget, over-the-top, Hollywood bullshit we’ve all grown accustomed to expect. Similar to Deadly Harvest, this story was about ORDINARY people trapped in an extraordinarily dangerous societal breakdown…a situation they had little idea how serious it actually was at the time. And, unlike Hollywood movies, they played it that way. Ken Taylor (played by Canuckistan legend Gordon Pinsent) and the paper-pushing hosers at the Canadian Embassy were in SO far over their heads, it’s a miracle they all didn’t wind up hanging from a bridge. Yet, they somehow rose to the occasion. THAT’S what being a “hero” is all about! Not some bullshit macho posturing & waiving around of guns.
Because it was shot decades before the vastly overblown CIA involvement was declassified, there was no heroic, airport shootout climax that I’m told Argo had. Not only would that
ArtisticBox Office Licence be completely idiotic, it would’ve ended worse for them than Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB8DFd5uxXE
In addition….there was a recent documentary Our Man In Tehran which I haven’t seen, but is probably pretty good. It has lots of archival footage AND recent interviews with several involved, including the late Ken Taylor. Apparently, it even touched on Taylor giving intel for Operation Eagle Claw, the mission that unfortunately failed to save….Carter’s Presidency! (Screw the hostages! Keeping Raygun from winning would have meant a HELL of a lot more in the long run.)
I agree that Carter could have accomplished lots more….the sad part is the bad PR sank his run….
Well, the whole thing was PR driven on both sides. Elements on both sides needed the other as an enemy and both lived up to their end of the bargain.
After re-watching it myself, the movie does a GREAT job of getting the “paranoia” element just right. They get it so right, it hurts the entertainment value. We see it and say “Why are they playing board games & having Christmas parties? Why aren’t they hiding in the basement, or getting guns & running for the border? Why are they acting like things are normal? The Axis of Evil wants to kill them all!”
It’s really easy to get the context all wrong. Our modern, simplistic, (largely racist) biases are being superimposed on a very nuanced past. Yeah, the government was crumbling and radicals roamed the streets. But as the tennis court scene showed, 2 years of protests turned protests into mere “traffic jams with signs”. Most people thought that, after a transition period, it would be business as usual. Several times, characters say “What would they want with me? I’m nobody.” In one scene, Ken Taylor’s wife, a Doctor, complains her research is getting hard because some Euro-nations pulled their nationals out due to the “instability”. Taylor says “Ah, they (the new government) will carry on (the work). They’ll just change the name to The School of Islamic Medicine.”
But everybody wasn’t out to get them. They just couldn’t tell who was. For the most part, they were perfectly safe. The movie demonstrated that very well. In fact, some locals helped them. Even most protestors were just that, protestors. There’s a scene where Lee Schatz (R.H.Thomson) just walks out of the embassy and right through the mob unharmed. This ballsy cowboy thought hiding was a stupid waste of time. In those scenes, you see the small group of radicals hiding inside the protest. They were the danger. They took over the situation and milked it.
From what little I’ve read, this hostage taking would have been just a short-term thing, had they not found evidence of CIA involvement/activity in the embassy. That, US protecting the Shah (and ambitious, religious-conservative, student leaders ) is what drove this over the edge. Funny how spying & manipulative dirty-tricks gets entire nations to hate you -eh? Yet another lesson not learned.
In this day & age, it’s vital to be reminded that entire nations/religions aren’t monolithic blocks of brain-dead robots. (Only America is 😉 ) Most people just want to live their lives and go with the flow. Only small groups of “players” seek to dictate that flow. They’re the ones responsible for trouble because trouble is how they advance themselves. They usually wind up dead or, like the student militants, in charge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_the_1979_hostage_crisis In this movie, you see a level of reality that is VERY rarely seen anymore, even in movies “based on a true story”. Everything today is simplistic Black Hat vs White Hat bullshit.
I know a busy, caffeine addled, ADD-er like yourself struggles to sit and watch anything longer than 5 minutes 🙂 but I recommend watching it as an antidote/inoculation to the bullshit we’re constantly fed. If it helps, here’s a drinking game…Take a shot every time you can tell you’re really in a Toronto Winter. A couple scenes have visible snow/ice. And in nearly every outdoor scene, you can see a character’s breath in the chilly Canuckistan air.
Too many movies are “based on fact” and then Hollywood has to screw with it and turn it into a piece of crap….I prefer to read actual accounts than movies….I get a better feel for the story if the facts are told….chuq