Are We Really Going to Bomb Iran?
By
The Times Online is reporting “The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes†against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,†he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.†It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculusâ€.
President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaustâ€. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too lateâ€.
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Read the rest of the article.
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UPDATE: From Daily Kos
This particular blog post was debunked. Hattip to Paul at Brainshrub
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UPDATE:
Chris Floyd writes “Day after day, almost hour by hour, fresh confirmation comes of the impending American attack on Iran. Yet the same surreal malaise that hung over public affairs before the war of aggression against Iraq has descended again. Everyone knows the war is coming and nothing will stop it, but the strange, ludicrous shadow play of sham “debate” goes on, as if there were some kind of political or diplomatic maneuver out there that could deflect the Bush-Cheney junta from its long-chosen course. But nothing will stop them, just as nothing — not even 10 million people in the streets around the world, the largest protest in human history — stopped them from the rape of Iraq. It’s what they want to do — and they will do it…”
The latest confirmation arrives from Juan Cole’s new spin-off blog, “Global Affairs,” where Barnett Rubin writes:
Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:
They [the source's institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this — they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”
Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran. This anecdote is also inconclusive, but it is consistent with the depth of planning that went into the reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read the rest of the article
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Could the Bush Administration really be this stupid? Wait, don’t answer that.
Almost every decision they have made has been a disaster, and that alone lends credence to articles above.
It just makes me sick.
Happy Labor Day…
21 Comments
September 3rd, 2007 at 11:44 am
Re: the Kos post – I agree with Brainshrub’s take on this Bomb Iran zeitgeist that seems to be exponentially taking over Left Blogistan. It’s merely second-hand anecdotal evidence; the fact that it was posted on a Kos diary doesn’t lend it any additional credence.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Agreed, Arratik, but Seymour Hersh’s repeated assertions of covert ops within Iran coupled with asking for $200bn for a war that’s supposed to be winding down in Iraq certainly makes for a compelling argument that we’re already at war with Iran.
Throw in a ticking clock on Bush’s Presidency, his belief in his divine inspiration, and a general disregard for the horrors of war, and you’ve got a war a’brewin’.
I think he’ll go for it, and we’ll all be paying the price for decades to come.
Maybe Heath Shuler can stop him.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 2:31 pm
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September 3rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
If WE have this information and these suspicions, isn’t it safe to assume that our Congressmen have more suspicions and better information?
If they were to stand by and let an attack happen wouldn’t they be just as accountable?
Where will it all end?
Who’s on the list after Iran?
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September 3rd, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Why
is
everything
formatting
like
this
?
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September 3rd, 2007 at 3:45 pm
rip: If I had to guess, everything was centered about halfway down the post, and you were using Internet Explorer, right?
I think I fixed the problem – does it look okay now?
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September 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
yeah.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Atrios sums up the maddening version of reality we’ll likely see from weak-kneed Democrats upon their return to “debate” the war. I’m stealing the whole post. Sorry, Duncan.
Will Shuler bow down and surrender to George Bush’s propaganda? Probably so. He’ll have plenty of company and then wonder why so few Democrats came out to vote in November, 2008.
Show some character, people. It’s only fear keeping you from standing up to President 30%. Fear of being called names at Beltway Cocktail Parties and on Fox News. It’s pathetic.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 9:20 pm
I have a bad feeling that the Chimp’s visit to Iraq today was a go-ahead for the Iran thing.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 10:38 pm
With all due respect your post did nothing but add to the unproductive: “Ogga Booga – the US is gonna nuke Iran at any time” conversation this weekend.
As I’ve written before, I’m sure the NeoCons want to invade Iran… thankfully, it’s not physically possible right now.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 10:40 pm
With all due respect your post did nothing but add to the unproductive: “Ogga Booga – the US is gonna nuke Iran at any time” conversation this weekend.
, and
As I’ve written before, I’m sure the NeoCons want to invade Iran… thankfully, it’s not physically possible right now.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Hey Paul,
What if you’re wrong?
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September 4th, 2007 at 7:10 am
My post was more about bombing Iran than invading.
I know we don’t have the troops to do the latter.
I also recall a fair amount of Ogga-Booga prior the bombing and invasion of Iraq.
My post point was to show what folks are thinking/saying, rather than sound an blog alarm.
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September 4th, 2007 at 7:14 am
I do understand that one of the articles to which I linked did not stand up to blogger’s scrutiny.
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September 4th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Paul, I don’t think it is oooga-boooga at all.
We have the real possibility of the US State Department calling the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.
This would be the same as, oh, say China, calling the US Marine Corps that.
I have also heard international law people, and not American ones, say that this would be tantamount to a declaration of war. You cannot declare a nation’s armed forces an enemy without backing it up, it seems.
The other countries will get peeved.
This, along with the odd announcement that North Korea is off said list makes for a weird time.
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September 4th, 2007 at 9:03 am
I would never misunderestimate the level of stupid and insanity that bush and his gang of thugs would sink. If they honestly believe that they can topple the Iranian government, and stir-up a popular uprising among the youth to overthrown the religious authority, by a sustained bombing campaign, then they have no understand of not only Iranian history and culture, but no understanding of human nature.
If you haven’t read it already below is a link to Seymour Hersh’s great piece from last April, and I believe he is the one to break this story originally.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417fa_fact
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September 4th, 2007 at 9:35 am
12 Gordon Smith says: Hey Paul, What if you’re wrong?
Well in the end no one but Bush and Co really knows and if they actually do attack Iran then “WTF-GHU” (Translation: What the F..k – G.. help us; take your pick)
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September 4th, 2007 at 10:05 am
– LINK
What has to happen, Kai, is that Democrats have to take seriously their responsibility to check the President’s power to make war. That is, Heath Shuler and the gang need to look Bush in the eye and tell him that they will not authorize any funding without iron clad guarantees that he’ll bring a formal declaration of war against Iran before the Congress.
I’m not betting on any of that happening mind you. It’s less likely that Democrats will stand up to Bush on the war than it is that Bush will invade Iran.
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September 4th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Well, it looks like the Kos diary in question was deleted…
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September 4th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Gordon writes: bring a formal declaration of war against Iran
ahmmm, when have we had the last declaration of war? WWII right? plus a president can wage war for like 90 days before asking congress, and to top it off, most Democrats willingness to stand up to Bush is non-existing.
We like war, it’s what we good at. It makes money. How else are we continue to claim “We are # 1 in the World” ? Health care?, nope, Education?, nope, Infant mortality rate?, nope, worker rights? nope, civil liberties?, nope, ….
I came to this country some 17 years ago and things have been getting progressively worse year by year, but the last 6 years I wake up every morning and the first words out of my mouth are “WTF”, I am still in a night mare, I want to wake up!
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September 4th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
– LINK
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