This is my first post on a site that I am extremely proud of and visit often.
Please read this post about Iran - a country that has been completely distorted by our MSM. If you think this is a post that other Kossacks might be interested in reading, please recommend it.
The following letter was written by my good friend MMM to her senator, Arlen Specter -- it is a response to a form letter she received in response to her original letter to the Senator.
She talks about her recent trip to Iran (her 4th in 5 years) as a private citizen. I am posting this with her permission.
More below the fold...
Dear Senator Specter,
I realize how busy you are and that your very capable staff has answered my original email with a very diplomatic form letter. But my communication is NOT about Iraq. It is over concern about the runaway Whitehouse policies that are now arming to strike in Iran at some close future date. You say if you had known at the time, that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, Congress would have voted differently. Well now is the time to make sure that Congress maintains a lid on any rationale for military strikes to Iranian soil so that true dialogue can take place. WE have to be the ones to make the overtures for diplomatic communication. If I can sit in Laleh Hotel in Tehran and directly dial my mother in Pennsylvannia in less than one minute there is no excuse for our governments not talking to each other.
Originally I sent word that I had just returned from my fourth trip to Iran in five years, that I was there on my own as a private citizen, an interested scholar of Eurasian history and Archaeology. I visit Turkmen villages in Turkmen Sahra, the extreme northeast of the country. There I ride out and camp for days and spend time with magnificent horses along the border of Turkmenistan. I also revisited Abyaneh and Kashan in the center of the country. Over the years I have traveled across the entire north of Iran and over time I've noticed some subtle differences in the lives of the people, due to the new administration, but always I am treated with the utmost warmth and sincere generosity by everyone.
The people of the United States are gravely misled about Iran by the media. I am so tired of hearing, "Isn't it dangerous?" The level of ignorance in this country is alarming: Fed equally by a trust in authority that never questions the media, and by the media's consent in the chain of command to say what is given to them without question. This paints a perception that is detrimental to us all in the long run.
This last time in Iran, when people found out I was from the United States, their eyes lit up and they were so excited and pleased that someone from our country was interested in them. As a private individual I have greater freedom to travel around and talk to people. I have contacted you because I thought you might be interested in a non-government, non-military, non-clandestine perspective. Please just send word that you are not interested but do not send a form letter about Iraq.
Respectfully,
MMM