On Sun, 02 Sep 2007 12:13:26 -0700, AirRaid wrote:

Pentagon 'three-day blitz' plan for Iran
Sarah Baxter, Washington

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 calculus".

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week,
accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East "under the shadow of a
nuclear holocaust". He warned that the US and its allies would
confront Iran "before it is too late".
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One Washington source said the "temperature was rising" inside the
administration. Bush was "sending a message to a number of audiences",
he said ? to the Iranians and to members of the United Nations
security council who are trying to weaken a tough third resolution on
sanctions against Iran for flouting a UN ban on uranium enrichment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported
"significant" cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and
said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer
most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is
stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it
is merely developing civilian nuclear power.

Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran is
moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one well
placed source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use rapid,
overwhelming force, should military action become necessary.

Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear
weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to
be ready to attack if the Americans back down.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance
of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran's uranium enrichment
plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. "A number of
nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA," he said.
"They're giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to
have practised deception."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush
administration last week by vowing to fill a "power vacuum" in Iraq.
But Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with the
Americans in Iraq.

The Institute for the Study of War last week released a report by
Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses the term "proxy war" and claims
that with the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda in Iraq "increasingly
under control", Iranian intervention is the "next major problem the
coalition must tackle".

Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by
Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months despite
pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq".

It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the
Iranians. But Debat believes the Pentagon's plans for military action
involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and
would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2369001.ece

The Pentagon probably has attack plans for just about every country on the
planet buried in a file cabinet somewhere. That's what planners do. Plan
stuff. Nothing new here.

Dave
--
You can talk about us, but you can't talk without us!
US Army Signal Corps!!
http://www.geocities.com/davidcasey98