photo: AP / Hasan Sarbakhshian
"I tore out their tongues and defeated them completely, the others, still alive, I smashed with the very same statutes of protective deities with which they had smashed my own grandfather Sennacherib-who had been assassinated in Babylon-finally a belated burial sacrifice for his soul. I fed their corpses, cut into small pieces, to the dogs, pigs, zibu-birds, vultures, the birds of the sky and to the fish of the ocean."(1)
This account of siege warfare and its aftermath by King Assurbanipal came to mind when Iran recently called U.S.-led sanctions against its nation "pathetic," "confused acts," and an attempt to bully and intimidate its people. For some, it was only yesterday when Iran was a corporate-military outpost of the United States Empire. Even as President Carter was promising "the basic right of every human to be free of poverty, hunger, disease, and political repression,"(2) the Shah's CIA-trained and armed troops were machine-gunning Iranians in Jaleh Square. After hundreds of innocent people were killed and wounded, the Shah thanked the U.S. for "this move towards democracy."(3) (A move which would become a sophisticated siege after Iran's Islamic revolution!)
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/09/19/Are_Sanctions_Against_Iran_Sophisticated_Siege_Warfare/
This account of siege warfare and its aftermath by King Assurbanipal came to mind when Iran recently called U.S.-led sanctions against its nation "pathetic," "confused acts," and an attempt to bully and intimidate its people. For some, it was only yesterday when Iran was a corporate-military outpost of the United States Empire. Even as President Carter was promising "the basic right of every human to be free of poverty, hunger, disease, and political repression,"(2) the Shah's CIA-trained and armed troops were machine-gunning Iranians in Jaleh Square. After hundreds of innocent people were killed and wounded, the Shah thanked the U.S. for "this move towards democracy."(3) (A move which would become a sophisticated siege after Iran's Islamic revolution!)
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/09/19/Are_Sanctions_Against_Iran_Sophisticated_Siege_Warfare/