Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?

Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?



http://www.opednews.com/articles/gen...he_century.htm

by Dave Lindorff






Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-
Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for
an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier
strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a
month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS
Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors
based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it
is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after
all, but wrong about the timing.

As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran
started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of
the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They
knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic
proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group,
headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush
Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on
what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report.
Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public
with the group's conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that
the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that
country.

That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney's war
plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.

It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving
forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk
cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on
station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved
into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS
Stennis, is steaming toward the Gulf, too. Already in position are
three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all
suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the
New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain
and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region "in a
display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United
Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country."
(We've all seen what "displays of force" by the Bush administration
actually turn out to be.)

The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker,
where the only consideration is not what's good for the country, but
what's good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you're losing your war
in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush's
ppublic support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon's were
just before his resignation, and Cheney's numbers have been in the
teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it
all--and maybe for your heads, too--expanding the conflict and
putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive
even if desperate gambit.

From the nation's point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would
be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S.
could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find
another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq
quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that--an attack.

Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf,
together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia
in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region,
are capable of destroying most of Iran's nuclear facilities, as well
as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory,
the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a
beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to
the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.

There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.

Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic
leaders--the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers
promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling
now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far
from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush
the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week's local
elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country's hardliners.
Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of
years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around
their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on
to fight to the death to defend their country.

Moreover, while its military may be no match for America's, Iran has
many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq,
with close links to Iraq's Shia factions, Iran's military has trained
and armed the Badr Brigades--the largest and best-armed faction in
Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US
forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and
could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If
this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even
surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.

Additionally, Iraq's intelligence services have connections with Shia
groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be
expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US
military targets there.

More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of
oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily
control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran's hundreds of stockpiled anti-
ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian
Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker
could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one
quarter of the world's oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced
in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be
trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring
oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities
would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.

Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a
barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how
panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently,
there's no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil
would do to the U.S. economy--or to the global economy.

Of course, the biggest issue is that attacking Iran would be yet
another war crime by this craven administration. No one can argue
that Iran poses an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the
U.S.--the only legitimate grounds under the U.N. Charter and the
Nuremburg Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, for initiating a
war. Attacking a country that poses no such threat is defined as the
most heinous of war crimes: a Crime Against Peace.

If Bush and Cheney perpetrate this crime, the Congress should
initiate immediate impeachment proceedings and should simultaneously
pass legislation terminating funding for the war. The important thing
now is for the American people to register their opposition to this
war before it happens. Call your senators and your representative and
let them know you don't want it to happen, and you want impeachment
if it does. And add your name to the petition against war. Also mark
down January 27 in your calendar, for the big march and rally against
war and for impeachment in Washington, D.C. (to be followed by two
days of lobbying Congress on Jan. 28-29.

Finally, send this story to everyone you know, and urge them to do
the same. At this point, with Democrats still cowering in their
offices, only the American people can stop this madness.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.democracynow.org/article....6/12/21/143259

Thursday, December 21st, 2006
Target Iran: Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Investigative
Journalist Seymour Hersh on White House Plans for Regime Change



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------








http://www.hnn.us/articles/31051.html

Moves toward War with Iran: Part 2
By William R. Polk
Mr. Polk was the member of the U.S. Policy Planning Council responsible

for the Middle East from 1961 to 1965. Subsequently, he was professor
of
history and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the
University of Chicago and later president of the Adlai Stevenson
Institute of International Affairs. Author of many books on
international affairs, world and Middle Eastern history, he recently
wrote Understanding Iraq (HarperCollins, New York and London 2005 and
2006) and, together with former Senator George McGovern, Out of Iraq: A

Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006).


In my first article, http://hnn.us/articles/30797.html
I set out why I think an American attack on Iran is
likely. Now I will show what steps are being taken to prepare for that
event.

The first step toward war is to prepare the public. That step was
partly taken in the 2005 "National Defense Strategy" which
proclaimed
that "America is a nation at war" and warned that "At the
direction of
the President, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in
the
manner of our choosing ...."

The second step is to show that alternative methods to cope with the
proclaimed threat to the security of the United States have not worked.

To this end, the United States has approached the UN Security Council
as
a whole and its members individually to discuss what they are willing
to
do. The response was lukewarm.

The Europeans have talked of sanctions, but they will be opposed by
China and Russia which stand to lose crucial revenue and access to oil
as Turkey and Jordan did in the 1990s. In any event, even draconian
sanctions would be unlikely to deter the Iranian government from
actions
it believes necessary for its survival. So the Neoconservative
advisers advocate military attack.

In recent days, world leaders have come out flatly against the idea of
military action: German Prime Minister Merkel told the Bundestag on
September 6 that "The military option isn't an option." While she
was
speaking, the Chinese foreign minister said, "China advocates that
this
issue be resolved through negotiation and dialog in a peaceful way and
this position remains unchanged." The French foreign minister
proclaimed on September 5 that France does not support a military
action
and the Italian and Russian foreign ministers echoed the same
sentiment. According to press reports, the British government has told
the Bush administration that it will not take part in any armed action
against Iran. Probably the sole advocate of military action is Israel.

Military action has been in planning since before the wars with
Afghanistan and Iraq. This could come in any one of three forms or some

combination of them: A US attack by air power alone, a ground invasion
as in the 1991 and 2003 attacks on Iraq, or the encouragement of an
Israeli attack.

The National Security Doctrine form of "Preventive Action" now
under the
most intense study is aerial bombardment. This is attractive because
America does not have sufficient combat troops for a land invasion.
Moreover, allegedly the U.S. Air Force generals have said that even
alone air power could "take out" (destroy) all suspected Iranian
nuclear
installations and so devastate Iran that the regime would collapse.

What would aerial bombardment entail? What it involved in Iraq gives at

least a starting point: in some 37,000 sorties the US Air Force dropped

13,000 "cluster munitions" that exploded into 2 million bombs,
wiping
out whole areas, and fired 23,000 missiles. Naval ships launched 750
Cruise missiles with another 1.5 million pounds of explosives. More
powerful weapons are now available. Air Force General Thomas McInerney
gave the Neoconservative Weekly Standard in April an inventory of
"improved" weapons. They include vastly larger "bunker buster"
bombs
and greater targeting ability. McInerney pointed out that a B-2 bomber
can drop 80 500 pound bombs independently targeted on 80 different aim
points. In effect, this aerial bombardment would eclipse the "shock
and
awe" of 2003 and be far more destructive than the 1991 campaign or
the
devastating air war on Vietnam. But would it work?

The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has been regarded as a test. Seymour

Hersh reported in The New Yorker talks he had with current and retired
American military and intelligence experts who told him that it was
regarded as "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to
destroy Iran's nuclear installations." They did terrible damage and

killed many people, but they failed to accomplish their mission. As
Bush's former Deputy of State Richard Armitage said, "If the most
dominant military force in the region - the Israel Defense Forces -

can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four
million,
you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with
strategic depth and a population of seventy million...The only thing
that
the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the [Lebanese] population
against the Israelis."

The Air Force plans have been resisted by the senior generals of the
Army, Navy and Marine corps. In rare public statements and frequently
in private, they have said that the plans are fatally flawed and that
even if an invasion begins with aerial attack it will soon require
ground troops. Despite the misgivings of the military professionals,
Joseph Cirincione wrote in the March issue of Foreign Policy that
conversations with senior officials in the Pentagon and the White House

had convinced him that the decision for war had already been made.

The Washington Post has reported that at least since March, large teams

have been working on invasion plans in the Pentagon and the
intelligence
agencies, while the Iran "desk" at the State Department has been
augmented to task force size. It reports to Elizabeth Cheney, daughter
of the vice president, who is assistant secretary of state for the Near

East. In the Pentagon, a similar organization has been established
under Neoconservative Abram Shulsky. In addition a new outpost has
been set up in Dubai to coordinate plans. On October 2, a powerful
naval
battle group around the giant aircraft carrier Eisenhower sailed for
the
Persian Gulf and is due to arrive a week before the November
Congressional elections to join a similar battle group led by the
aircraft carrier Enterprise. Meanwhile aircraft of the U.S. Air Force
are being readied in bases surrounding Iran and in distant locations.
These forces could deliver destructive power that would dwarf the
aerial
assaults on Iraq.

The Iranian leadership, I have been authoritatively told, believes all
this is a bluff. In my next article, I will examine what will happen if

they are wrong.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



US or Israel Will Attack Iran by March:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=64862





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Military Draft System to be Tested (when Iran is attacked for Israel
next?):
Associated Press | December 22, 2006
WASHINGTON - The Selective Service System is planning a comprehensive
test of the military draft machinery, which hasn't been run since 1998.



The agency is not gearing up for a draft, an agency official said
Thursday. The test itself would not likely occur until 2009.

Meanwhile, the secretary for Veterans Affairs said that "society would
benefit" if the U.S. were to bring back the draft and that it shouldn't
have any loopholes for anyone who is called to serve. VA Secretary Jim
Nicholson later issued a statement saying he does not support
reinstituting a draft.

The Selective Service "readiness exercise" would test the system that
randomly chooses draftees by birth date and the network of appeals
boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others
who want to delay reporting for duty, said Scott Campbell, Selective
Service director for operations and chief information officer.

"We're kind of like a fire extinguisher. We sit on a shelf" until
needed, Campbell said. "Everyone fears our machine for some reason. Our
machine, unless the president and Congress get together and say, 'Turn
the machine on' ... we're still on the shelf."

The administration has for years forcefully opposed bringing back the
draft, and the White House said Thursday that its position had not
changed.

A day earlier, President Bush said he is considering sending more
troops to Iraq and has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to look
into adding more troops to the nearly 1.4 million uniformed personnel
on active duty.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, increasing
the Army by 40,000 troops would cost as much as $2.6 billion the first
year and $4 billion after that. Service officials have said the Army
wants to increase its force by 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers and the Marine
Corps would like 5,000 more troops.

The unpopular war in Iraq, where more than 2,950 American troops have
already died, complicates the task of finding more recruits and
retaining current troops - to meet its recruitment goals in recent
years, the Army has accepted recruits with lower aptitude test scores.

In remarks to reporters in New York, Nicholson recalled his own
experience as a company commander in an infantry unit that brought
together soldiers of different backgrounds and education levels. He
said the draft "does bring people from all quarters of our society
together in the common purpose of serving."

Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat who has said minorities and
the poor share an unfair burden of the war, plans to introduce a bill
next year to reinstate the draft.

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has said that reinstating the draft
would not be high on the Democratic-led Congress' priority list, and
the White House said Thursday that no draft proposal is being
considered.

Planning for the Selective Service exercise, called the Area Office
Mobilization Prototype Exercise, is slated to begin in June or July of
next year for a 2009 test. Campbell said budget cuts could force the
agency to cancel the test, which he said should take place every three
years but hasn't because of funding constraints.

Hearst Newspapers first reported the planned test for a story sent to
its subscribers for weekend use.

The military drafted people during the Civil War and both world wars
and between 1948 and 1973. An agency independent of the Defense
Department, the Selective Service System was reincorporated in 1980 to
maintain a registry of 18-year-old men, but call-ups have not occurred
since the Vietnam War.

Forwarded:

What was not mentioned in the articles is that the US Congress has once
again cuckolded itself -- Bush holds all the cards:

http://www.peacenow.org/hot.asp?cid=2682

June 23, 2006

(Iran) H. Amdt. 1072 to HR 5631: On June 20th Rep. Maurice Hinchey
(D-NY) offered an amendment to HR 5631, the FY07 Defense Appropriations
Bill, to "prohibit any of the funds made available by the Act from
being used to initiate military operations against Iran except in
accordance with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United
States." The amendment was defeated by a vote of 158-262.


wrote:
Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?



http://www.opednews.com/articles/gen...he_century.htm

by Dave Lindorff






Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-
Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for
an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier
strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a
month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS
Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors
based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it
is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after
all, but wrong about the timing.

As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran
started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of
the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They
knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic
proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group,
headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush
Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on
what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report.
Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public
with the group's conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that
the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that
country.

That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney's war
plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.

It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving
forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk
cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on
station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved
into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS
Stennis, is steaming toward the Gulf, too. Already in position are
three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all
suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the
New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain
and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region "in a
display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United
Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country."
(We've all seen what "displays of force" by the Bush administration
actually turn out to be.)

The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker,
where the only consideration is not what's good for the country, but
what's good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you're losing your war
in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush's
ppublic support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon's were
just before his resignation, and Cheney's numbers have been in the
teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it
all--and maybe for your heads, too--expanding the conflict and
putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive
even if desperate gambit.

From the nation's point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would
be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S.
could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find
another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq
quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that--an attack.

Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf,
together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia
in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region,
are capable of destroying most of Iran's nuclear facilities, as well
as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory,
the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a
beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to
the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.

There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.

Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic
leaders--the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers
promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling
now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far
from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush
the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week's local
elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country's hardliners.
Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of
years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around
their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on
to fight to the death to defend their country.

Moreover, while its military may be no match for America's, Iran has
many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq,
with close links to Iraq's Shia factions, Iran's military has trained
and armed the Badr Brigades--the largest and best-armed faction in
Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US
forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and
could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If
this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even
surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.

Additionally, Iraq's intelligence services have connections with Shia
groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be
expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US
military targets there.

More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of
oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily
control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran's hundreds of stockpiled anti-
ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian
Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker
could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one
quarter of the world's oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced
in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be
trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring
oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities
would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.

Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a
barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how
panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently,
there's no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil
would do to the U.S. economy--or to the global economy.

Of course, the biggest issue is that attacking Iran would be yet
another war crime by this craven administration. No one can argue
that Iran poses an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the
U.S.--the only legitimate grounds under the U.N. Charter and the
Nuremburg Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, for initiating a
war. Attacking a country that poses no such threat is defined as the
most heinous of war crimes: a Crime Against Peace.

If Bush and Cheney perpetrate this crime, the Congress should
initiate immediate impeachment proceedings and should simultaneously
pass legislation terminating funding for the war. The important thing
now is for the American people to register their opposition to this
war before it happens. Call your senators and your representative and
let them know you don't want it to happen, and you want impeachment
if it does. And add your name to the petition against war. Also mark
down January 27 in your calendar, for the big march and rally against
war and for impeachment in Washington, D.C. (to be followed by two
days of lobbying Congress on Jan. 28-29.

Finally, send this story to everyone you know, and urge them to do
the same. At this point, with Democrats still cowering in their
offices, only the American people can stop this madness.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.democracynow.org/article....6/12/21/143259

Thursday, December 21st, 2006
Target Iran: Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Investigative
Journalist Seymour Hersh on White House Plans for Regime Change



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------








http://www.hnn.us/articles/31051.html

Moves toward War with Iran: Part 2
By William R. Polk
Mr. Polk was the member of the U.S. Policy Planning Council responsible

for the Middle East from 1961 to 1965. Subsequently, he was professor
of
history and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the
University of Chicago and later president of the Adlai Stevenson
Institute of International Affairs. Author of many books on
international affairs, world and Middle Eastern history, he recently
wrote Understanding Iraq (HarperCollins, New York and London 2005 and
2006) and, together with former Senator George McGovern, Out of Iraq: A

Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006).


In my first article, http://hnn.us/articles/30797.html
I set out why I think an American attack on Iran is
likely. Now I will show what steps are being taken to prepare for that
event.

The first step toward war is to prepare the public. That step was
partly taken in the 2005 "National Defense Strategy" which
proclaimed
that "America is a nation at war" and warned that "At the
direction of
the President, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in
the
manner of our choosing ...."

The second step is to show that alternative methods to cope with the
proclaimed threat to the security of the United States have not worked.

To this end, the United States has approached the UN Security Council
as
a whole and its members individually to discuss what they are willing
to
do. The response was lukewarm.

The Europeans have talked of sanctions, but they will be opposed by
China and Russia which stand to lose crucial revenue and access to oil
as Turkey and Jordan did in the 1990s. In any event, even draconian
sanctions would be unlikely to deter the Iranian government from
actions
it believes necessary for its survival. So the Neoconservative
advisers advocate military attack.

In recent days, world leaders have come out flatly against the idea of
military action: German Prime Minister Merkel told the Bundestag on
September 6 that "The military option isn't an option." While she
was
speaking, the Chinese foreign minister said, "China advocates that
this
issue be resolved through negotiation and dialog in a peaceful way and
this position remains unchanged." The French foreign minister
proclaimed on September 5 that France does not support a military
action
and the Italian and Russian foreign ministers echoed the same
sentiment. According to press reports, the British government has told
the Bush administration that it will not take part in any armed action
against Iran. Probably the sole advocate of military action is Israel.

Military action has been in planning since before the wars with
Afghanistan and Iraq. This could come in any one of three forms or some

combination of them: A US attack by air power alone, a ground invasion
as in the 1991 and 2003 attacks on Iraq, or the encouragement of an
Israeli attack.

The National Security Doctrine form of "Preventive Action" now
under the
most intense study is aerial bombardment. This is attractive because
America does not have sufficient combat troops for a land invasion.
Moreover, allegedly the U.S. Air Force generals have said that even
alone air power could "take out" (destroy) all suspected Iranian
nuclear
installations and so devastate Iran that the regime would collapse.

What would aerial bombardment entail? What it involved in Iraq gives at

least a starting point: in some 37,000 sorties the US Air Force dropped

13,000 "cluster munitions" that exploded into 2 million bombs,
wiping
out whole areas, and fired 23,000 missiles. Naval ships launched 750
Cruise missiles with another 1.5 million pounds of explosives. More
powerful weapons are now available. Air Force General Thomas McInerney
gave the Neoconservative Weekly Standard in April an inventory of
"improved" weapons. They include vastly larger "bunker buster"
bombs
and greater targeting ability. McInerney pointed out that a B-2 bomber
can drop 80 500 pound bombs independently targeted on 80 different aim
points. In effect, this aerial bombardment would eclipse the "shock
and
awe" of 2003 and be far more destructive than the 1991 campaign or
the
devastating air war on Vietnam. But would it work?

The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has been regarded as a test. Seymour

Hersh reported in The New Yorker talks he had with current and retired
American military and intelligence experts who told him that it was
regarded as "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to
destroy Iran's nuclear installations." They did terrible damage and

killed many people, but they failed to accomplish their mission. As
Bush's former Deputy of State Richard Armitage said, "If the most
dominant military force in the region - the Israel Defense Forces -

can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four
million,
you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with
strategic depth and a population of seventy million...The only thing
that
the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the [Lebanese] population
against the Israelis."

The Air Force plans have been resisted by the senior generals of the
Army, Navy and Marine corps. In rare public statements and frequently
in private, they have said that the plans are fatally flawed and that
even if an invasion begins with aerial attack it will soon require
ground troops. Despite the misgivings of the military professionals,
Joseph Cirincione wrote in the March issue of Foreign Policy that
conversations with senior officials in the Pentagon and the White House

had convinced him that the decision for war had already been made.

The Washington Post has reported that at least since March, large teams

have been working on invasion plans in the Pentagon and the
intelligence
agencies, while the Iran "desk" at the State Department has been
augmented to task force size. It reports to Elizabeth Cheney, daughter
of the vice president, who is assistant secretary of state for the Near

East. In the Pentagon, a similar organization has been established
under Neoconservative Abram Shulsky. In addition a new outpost has
been set up in Dubai to coordinate plans. On October 2, a powerful
naval
battle group around the giant aircraft carrier Eisenhower sailed for
the
Persian Gulf and is due to arrive a week before the November
Congressional elections to join a similar battle group led by the
aircraft carrier Enterprise. Meanwhile aircraft of the U.S. Air Force
are being readied in bases surrounding Iran and in distant locations.
These forces could deliver destructive power that would dwarf the
aerial
assaults on Iraq.

The Iranian leadership, I have been authoritatively told, believes all
this is a bluff. In my next article, I will examine what will happen if

they are wrong.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



US or Israel Will Attack Iran by March:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=64862





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Military Draft System to be Tested (when Iran is attacked for Israel
next?):
Associated Press | December 22, 2006
WASHINGTON - The Selective Service System is planning a comprehensive
test of the military draft machinery, which hasn't been run since 1998.



The agency is not gearing up for a draft, an agency official said
Thursday. The test itself would not likely occur until 2009.

Meanwhile, the secretary for Veterans Affairs said that "society would
benefit" if the U.S. were to bring back the draft and that it shouldn't
have any loopholes for anyone who is called to serve. VA Secretary Jim
Nicholson later issued a statement saying he does not support
reinstituting a draft.

The Selective Service "readiness exercise" would test the system that
randomly chooses draftees by birth date and the network of appeals
boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others
who want to delay reporting for duty, said Scott Campbell, Selective
Service director for operations and chief information officer.

"We're kind of like a fire extinguisher. We sit on a shelf" until
needed, Campbell said. "Everyone fears our machine for some reason. Our
machine, unless the president and Congress get together and say, 'Turn
the machine on' ... we're still on the shelf."

The administration has for years forcefully opposed bringing back the
draft, and the White House said Thursday that its position had not
changed.

A day earlier, President Bush said he is considering sending more
troops to Iraq and has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to look
into adding more troops to the nearly 1.4 million uniformed personnel
on active duty.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, increasing
the Army by 40,000 troops would cost as much as $2.6 billion the first
year and $4 billion after that. Service officials have said the Army
wants to increase its force by 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers and the Marine
Corps would like 5,000 more troops.

The unpopular war in Iraq, where more than 2,950 American troops have
already died, complicates the task of finding more recruits and
retaining current troops - to meet its recruitment goals in recent
years, the Army has accepted recruits with lower aptitude test scores.

In remarks to reporters in New York, Nicholson recalled his own
experience as a company commander in an infantry unit that brought
together soldiers of different backgrounds and education levels. He
said the draft "does bring people from all quarters of our society
together in the common purpose of serving."

Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat who has said minorities and
the poor share an unfair burden of the war, plans to introduce a bill
next year to reinstate the draft.

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has said that reinstating the draft
would not be high on the Democratic-led Congress' priority list, and
the White House said Thursday that no draft proposal is being
considered.

Planning for the Selective Service exercise, called the Area Office
Mobilization Prototype Exercise, is slated to begin in June or July of
next year for a 2009 test. Campbell said budget cuts could force the
agency to cancel the test, which he said should take place every three
years but hasn't because of funding constraints.

Hearst Newspapers first reported the planned test for a story sent to
its subscribers for weekend use.

The military drafted people during the Civil War and both world wars
and between 1948 and 1973. An agency independent of the Defense
Department, the Selective Service System was reincorporated in 1980 to
maintain a registry of 18-year-old men, but call-ups have not occurred
since the Vietnam War.

A War for Israel?: Colin Powell Seems to Think So:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0...ic.php?t=61128



Read this UPI article via the following URL as soon as possible as well
as it is the duty of every American patriot to expose these serving
Israel first traitors to America:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0...ic.php?t=49800



Take a look at the Zionist Jew traitor (Elliott Abrams) to America who
is pushing hard for the attack on Iran for Israel via his position at
the National Security Council (NSC) by scrolling down to the article
about his background associated with his picture in the left margin of
the following URL:

http://nowarforisrael.com/Rachel%20Corrie.htm

Read more about this serving Israel first traitor to America via the
following 'Iran: The Next War' article by James Bamford as well:


Iran: The Next War (for Israel):

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...n_the_next_war


wrote:
Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?



http://www.opednews.com/articles/gen...he_century.htm

by Dave Lindorff






Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-
Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for
an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier
strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a
month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS
Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors
based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it
is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after
all, but wrong about the timing.

As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran
started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of
the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They
knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic
proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group,
headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush
Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on
what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report.
Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public
with the group's conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that
the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that
country.

That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney's war
plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.

It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving
forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk
cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on
station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved
into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS
Stennis, is steaming toward the Gulf, too. Already in position are
three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all
suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the
New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain
and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region "in a
display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United
Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country."
(We've all seen what "displays of force" by the Bush administration
actually turn out to be.)

The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker,
where the only consideration is not what's good for the country, but
what's good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you're losing your war
in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush's
ppublic support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon's were
just before his resignation, and Cheney's numbers have been in the
teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it
all--and maybe for your heads, too--expanding the conflict and
putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive
even if desperate gambit.

From the nation's point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would
be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S.
could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find
another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq
quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that--an attack.

Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf,
together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia
in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region,
are capable of destroying most of Iran's nuclear facilities, as well
as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory,
the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a
beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to
the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.

There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.

Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic
leaders--the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers
promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling
now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far
from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush
the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week's local
elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country's hardliners.
Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of
years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around
their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on
to fight to the death to defend their country.

Moreover, while its military may be no match for America's, Iran has
many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq,
with close links to Iraq's Shia factions, Iran's military has trained
and armed the Badr Brigades--the largest and best-armed faction in
Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US
forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and
could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If
this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even
surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.

Additionally, Iraq's intelligence services have connections with Shia
groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be
expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US
military targets there.

More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of
oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily
control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran's hundreds of stockpiled anti-
ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian
Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker
could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one
quarter of the world's oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced
in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be
trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring
oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities
would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.

Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a
barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how
panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently,
there's no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil
would do to the U.S. economy--or to the global economy.

Of course, the biggest issue is that attacking Iran would be yet
another war crime by this craven administration. No one can argue
that Iran poses an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the
U.S.--the only legitimate grounds under the U.N. Charter and the
Nuremburg Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, for initiating a
war. Attacking a country that poses no such threat is defined as the
most heinous of war crimes: a Crime Against Peace.

If Bush and Cheney perpetrate this crime, the Congress should
initiate immediate impeachment proceedings and should simultaneously
pass legislation terminating funding for the war. The important thing
now is for the American people to register their opposition to this
war before it happens. Call your senators and your representative and
let them know you don't want it to happen, and you want impeachment
if it does. And add your name to the petition against war. Also mark
down January 27 in your calendar, for the big march and rally against
war and for impeachment in Washington, D.C. (to be followed by two
days of lobbying Congress on Jan. 28-29.

Finally, send this story to everyone you know, and urge them to do
the same. At this point, with Democrats still cowering in their
offices, only the American people can stop this madness.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.democracynow.org/article....6/12/21/143259

Thursday, December 21st, 2006
Target Iran: Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Investigative
Journalist Seymour Hersh on White House Plans for Regime Change



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------








http://www.hnn.us/articles/31051.html

Moves toward War with Iran: Part 2
By William R. Polk
Mr. Polk was the member of the U.S. Policy Planning Council responsible

for the Middle East from 1961 to 1965. Subsequently, he was professor
of
history and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the
University of Chicago and later president of the Adlai Stevenson
Institute of International Affairs. Author of many books on
international affairs, world and Middle Eastern history, he recently
wrote Understanding Iraq (HarperCollins, New York and London 2005 and
2006) and, together with former Senator George McGovern, Out of Iraq: A

Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006).


In my first article, http://hnn.us/articles/30797.html
I set out why I think an American attack on Iran is
likely. Now I will show what steps are being taken to prepare for that
event.

The first step toward war is to prepare the public. That step was
partly taken in the 2005 "National Defense Strategy" which
proclaimed
that "America is a nation at war" and warned that "At the
direction of
the President, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in
the
manner of our choosing ...."

The second step is to show that alternative methods to cope with the
proclaimed threat to the security of the United States have not worked.

To this end, the United States has approached the UN Security Council
as
a whole and its members individually to discuss what they are willing
to
do. The response was lukewarm.

The Europeans have talked of sanctions, but they will be opposed by
China and Russia which stand to lose crucial revenue and access to oil
as Turkey and Jordan did in the 1990s. In any event, even draconian
sanctions would be unlikely to deter the Iranian government from
actions
it believes necessary for its survival. So the Neoconservative
advisers advocate military attack.

In recent days, world leaders have come out flatly against the idea of
military action: German Prime Minister Merkel told the Bundestag on
September 6 that "The military option isn't an option." While she
was
speaking, the Chinese foreign minister said, "China advocates that
this
issue be resolved through negotiation and dialog in a peaceful way and
this position remains unchanged." The French foreign minister
proclaimed on September 5 that France does not support a military
action
and the Italian and Russian foreign ministers echoed the same
sentiment. According to press reports, the British government has told
the Bush administration that it will not take part in any armed action
against Iran. Probably the sole advocate of military action is Israel.

Military action has been in planning since before the wars with
Afghanistan and Iraq. This could come in any one of three forms or some

combination of them: A US attack by air power alone, a ground invasion
as in the 1991 and 2003 attacks on Iraq, or the encouragement of an
Israeli attack.

The National Security Doctrine form of "Preventive Action" now
under the
most intense study is aerial bombardment. This is attractive because
America does not have sufficient combat troops for a land invasion.
Moreover, allegedly the U.S. Air Force generals have said that even
alone air power could "take out" (destroy) all suspected Iranian
nuclear
installations and so devastate Iran that the regime would collapse.

What would aerial bombardment entail? What it involved in Iraq gives at

least a starting point: in some 37,000 sorties the US Air Force dropped

13,000 "cluster munitions" that exploded into 2 million bombs,
wiping
out whole areas, and fired 23,000 missiles. Naval ships launched 750
Cruise missiles with another 1.5 million pounds of explosives. More
powerful weapons are now available. Air Force General Thomas McInerney
gave the Neoconservative Weekly Standard in April an inventory of
"improved" weapons. They include vastly larger "bunker buster"
bombs
and greater targeting ability. McInerney pointed out that a B-2 bomber
can drop 80 500 pound bombs independently targeted on 80 different aim
points. In effect, this aerial bombardment would eclipse the "shock
and
awe" of 2003 and be far more destructive than the 1991 campaign or
the
devastating air war on Vietnam. But would it work?

The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has been regarded as a test. Seymour

Hersh reported in The New Yorker talks he had with current and retired
American military and intelligence experts who told him that it was
regarded as "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to
destroy Iran's nuclear installations." They did terrible damage and

killed many people, but they failed to accomplish their mission. As
Bush's former Deputy of State Richard Armitage said, "If the most
dominant military force in the region - the Israel Defense Forces -

can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four
million,
you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with
strategic depth and a population of seventy million...The only thing
that
the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the [Lebanese] population
against the Israelis."

The Air Force plans have been resisted by the senior generals of the
Army, Navy and Marine corps. In rare public statements and frequently
in private, they have said that the plans are fatally flawed and that
even if an invasion begins with aerial attack it will soon require
ground troops. Despite the misgivings of the military professionals,
Joseph Cirincione wrote in the March issue of Foreign Policy that
conversations with senior officials in the Pentagon and the White House

had convinced him that the decision for war had already been made.

The Washington Post has reported that at least since March, large teams

have been working on invasion plans in the Pentagon and the
intelligence
agencies, while the Iran "desk" at the State Department has been
augmented to task force size. It reports to Elizabeth Cheney, daughter
of the vice president, who is assistant secretary of state for the Near

East. In the Pentagon, a similar organization has been established
under Neoconservative Abram Shulsky. In addition a new outpost has
been set up in Dubai to coordinate plans. On October 2, a powerful
naval
battle group around the giant aircraft carrier Eisenhower sailed for
the
Persian Gulf and is due to arrive a week before the November
Congressional elections to join a similar battle group led by the
aircraft carrier Enterprise. Meanwhile aircraft of the U.S. Air Force
are being readied in bases surrounding Iran and in distant locations.
These forces could deliver destructive power that would dwarf the
aerial
assaults on Iraq.

The Iranian leadership, I have been authoritatively told, believes all
this is a bluff. In my next article, I will examine what will happen if

they are wrong.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



US or Israel Will Attack Iran by March:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=64862





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Military Draft System to be Tested (when Iran is attacked for Israel
next?):
Associated Press | December 22, 2006
WASHINGTON - The Selective Service System is planning a comprehensive
test of the military draft machinery, which hasn't been run since 1998.



The agency is not gearing up for a draft, an agency official said
Thursday. The test itself would not likely occur until 2009.

Meanwhile, the secretary for Veterans Affairs said that "society would
benefit" if the U.S. were to bring back the draft and that it shouldn't
have any loopholes for anyone who is called to serve. VA Secretary Jim
Nicholson later issued a statement saying he does not support
reinstituting a draft.

The Selective Service "readiness exercise" would test the system that
randomly chooses draftees by birth date and the network of appeals
boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others
who want to delay reporting for duty, said Scott Campbell, Selective
Service director for operations and chief information officer.

"We're kind of like a fire extinguisher. We sit on a shelf" until
needed, Campbell said. "Everyone fears our machine for some reason. Our
machine, unless the president and Congress get together and say, 'Turn
the machine on' ... we're still on the shelf."

The administration has for years forcefully opposed bringing back the
draft, and the White House said Thursday that its position had not
changed.

A day earlier, President Bush said he is considering sending more
troops to Iraq and has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to look
into adding more troops to the nearly 1.4 million uniformed personnel
on active duty.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, increasing
the Army by 40,000 troops would cost as much as $2.6 billion the first
year and $4 billion after that. Service officials have said the Army
wants to increase its force by 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers and the Marine
Corps would like 5,000 more troops.

The unpopular war in Iraq, where more than 2,950 American troops have
already died, complicates the task of finding more recruits and
retaining current troops - to meet its recruitment goals in recent
years, the Army has accepted recruits with lower aptitude test scores.

In remarks to reporters in New York, Nicholson recalled his own
experience as a company commander in an infantry unit that brought
together soldiers of different backgrounds and education levels. He
said the draft "does bring people from all quarters of our society
together in the common purpose of serving."

Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat who has said minorities and
the poor share an unfair burden of the war, plans to introduce a bill
next year to reinstate the draft.

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has said that reinstating the draft
would not be high on the Democratic-led Congress' priority list, and
the White House said Thursday that no draft proposal is being
considered.

Planning for the Selective Service exercise, called the Area Office
Mobilization Prototype Exercise, is slated to begin in June or July of
next year for a 2009 test. Campbell said budget cuts could force the
agency to cancel the test, which he said should take place every three
years but hasn't because of funding constraints.

Hearst Newspapers first reported the planned test for a story sent to
its subscribers for weekend use.

The military drafted people during the Civil War and both world wars
and between 1948 and 1973. An agency independent of the Defense
Department, the Selective Service System was reincorporated in 1980 to
maintain a registry of 18-year-old men, but call-ups have not occurred
since the Vietnam War.

Iran is NO THREAT to America.. Only to the rogue state of Israel, and
NOT ONE MORE AMERICAN should have to die/get horribly maimed for Israel
in the Middle East like they arleady are in the Iraq quagmire...

Listen to the following interview with Scott Ritter:

http://www.democracynow.org/article....6/12/21/143259

Iran: The Next War (for Israel):

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=56761

Why Condemning Israel and the Zionist Lobby is so Important:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0...ic.php?t=65120

Read via the following 'Life of an American Jew in Racist/Marxist
Israel' article by American Jew Jack Bernstein how he warned that
Zionists in the US would trick US into fighting wars in the Middle East
for Israel with many Americans to die/get horribly wounded like what
has already happenhttp://www.jewishtribalreview.org/blitzer2.htmed in
the Iraq quagmire with Iran soon to come for Israel as well:

http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/israel.htm


CNN's Wolf Blitzer versus David Duke - video on YouTube.Com:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v2f-WC4cjo

Blitzer is nothing but an AIPAC propagandist media gate keeper for
Israel:

http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/blitzer2.htm


wrote:
Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?



http://www.opednews.com/articles/gen...he_century.htm

by Dave Lindorff






Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-
Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for
an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier
strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a
month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS
Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors
based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it
is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after
all, but wrong about the timing.

As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran
started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of
the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They
knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic
proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group,
headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush
Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on
what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report.
Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public
with the group's conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that
the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that
country.

That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney's war
plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.

It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving
forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk
cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on
station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved
into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS
Stennis, is steaming toward the Gulf, too. Already in position are
three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all
suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the
New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain
and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region "in a
display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United
Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country."
(We've all seen what "displays of force" by the Bush administration
actually turn out to be.)

The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker,
where the only consideration is not what's good for the country, but
what's good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you're losing your war
in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush's
ppublic support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon's were
just before his resignation, and Cheney's numbers have been in the
teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it
all--and maybe for your heads, too--expanding the conflict and
putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive
even if desperate gambit.

From the nation's point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would
be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S.
could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find
another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq
quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that--an attack.

Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf,
together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia
in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region,
are capable of destroying most of Iran's nuclear facilities, as well
as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory,
the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a
beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to
the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.

There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.

Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic
leaders--the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers
promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling
now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far
from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush
the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week's local
elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country's hardliners.
Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of
years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around
their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on
to fight to the death to defend their country.

Moreover, while its military may be no match for America's, Iran has
many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq,
with close links to Iraq's Shia factions, Iran's military has trained
and armed the Badr Brigades--the largest and best-armed faction in
Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US
forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and
could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If
this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even
surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.

Additionally, Iraq's intelligence services have connections with Shia
groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be
expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US
military targets there.

More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of
oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily
control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran's hundreds of stockpiled anti-
ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian
Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker
could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one
quarter of the world's oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced
in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be
trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring
oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities
would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.

Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a
barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how
panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently,
there's no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil
would do to the U.S. economy--or to the global economy.

Of course, the biggest issue is that attacking Iran would be yet
another war crime by this craven administration. No one can argue
that Iran poses an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the
U.S.--the only legitimate grounds under the U.N. Charter and the
Nuremburg Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, for initiating a
war. Attacking a country that poses no such threat is defined as the
most heinous of war crimes: a Crime Against Peace.

If Bush and Cheney perpetrate this crime, the Congress should
initiate immediate impeachment proceedings and should simultaneously
pass legislation terminating funding for the war. The important thing
now is for the American people to register their opposition to this
war before it happens. Call your senators and your representative and
let them know you don't want it to happen, and you want impeachment
if it does. And add your name to the petition against war. Also mark
down January 27 in your calendar, for the big march and rally against
war and for impeachment in Washington, D.C. (to be followed by two
days of lobbying Congress on Jan. 28-29.

Finally, send this story to everyone you know, and urge them to do
the same. At this point, with Democrats still cowering in their
offices, only the American people can stop this madness.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.democracynow.org/article....6/12/21/143259

Thursday, December 21st, 2006
Target Iran: Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Investigative
Journalist Seymour Hersh on White House Plans for Regime Change



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------








http://www.hnn.us/articles/31051.html

Moves toward War with Iran: Part 2
By William R. Polk
Mr. Polk was the member of the U.S. Policy Planning Council responsible

for the Middle East from 1961 to 1965. Subsequently, he was professor
of
history and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the
University of Chicago and later president of the Adlai Stevenson
Institute of International Affairs. Author of many books on
international affairs, world and Middle Eastern history, he recently
wrote Understanding Iraq (HarperCollins, New York and London 2005 and
2006) and, together with former Senator George McGovern, Out of Iraq: A

Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006).


In my first article, http://hnn.us/articles/30797.html
I set out why I think an American attack on Iran is
likely. Now I will show what steps are being taken to prepare for that
event.

The first step toward war is to prepare the public. That step was
partly taken in the 2005 "National Defense Strategy" which
proclaimed
that "America is a nation at war" and warned that "At the
direction of
the President, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in
the
manner of our choosing ...."

The second step is to show that alternative methods to cope with the
proclaimed threat to the security of the United States have not worked.

To this end, the United States has approached the UN Security Council
as
a whole and its members individually to discuss what they are willing
to
do. The response was lukewarm.

The Europeans have talked of sanctions, but they will be opposed by
China and Russia which stand to lose crucial revenue and access to oil
as Turkey and Jordan did in the 1990s. In any event, even draconian
sanctions would be unlikely to deter the Iranian government from
actions
it believes necessary for its survival. So the Neoconservative
advisers advocate military attack.

In recent days, world leaders have come out flatly against the idea of
military action: German Prime Minister Merkel told the Bundestag on
September 6 that "The military option isn't an option." While she
was
speaking, the Chinese foreign minister said, "China advocates that
this
issue be resolved through negotiation and dialog in a peaceful way and
this position remains unchanged." The French foreign minister
proclaimed on September 5 that France does not support a military
action
and the Italian and Russian foreign ministers echoed the same
sentiment. According to press reports, the British government has told
the Bush administration that it will not take part in any armed action
against Iran. Probably the sole advocate of military action is Israel.

Military action has been in planning since before the wars with
Afghanistan and Iraq. This could come in any one of three forms or some

combination of them: A US attack by air power alone, a ground invasion
as in the 1991 and 2003 attacks on Iraq, or the encouragement of an
Israeli attack.

The National Security Doctrine form of "Preventive Action" now
under the
most intense study is aerial bombardment. This is attractive because
America does not have sufficient combat troops for a land invasion.
Moreover, allegedly the U.S. Air Force generals have said that even
alone air power could "take out" (destroy) all suspected Iranian
nuclear
installations and so devastate Iran that the regime would collapse.

What would aerial bombardment entail? What it involved in Iraq gives at

least a starting point: in some 37,000 sorties the US Air Force dropped

13,000 "cluster munitions" that exploded into 2 million bombs,
wiping
out whole areas, and fired 23,000 missiles. Naval ships launched 750
Cruise missiles with another 1.5 million pounds of explosives. More
powerful weapons are now available. Air Force General Thomas McInerney
gave the Neoconservative Weekly Standard in April an inventory of
"improved" weapons. They include vastly larger "bunker buster"
bombs
and greater targeting ability. McInerney pointed out that a B-2 bomber
can drop 80 500 pound bombs independently targeted on 80 different aim
points. In effect, this aerial bombardment would eclipse the "shock
and
awe" of 2003 and be far more destructive than the 1991 campaign or
the
devastating air war on Vietnam. But would it work?

The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has been regarded as a test. Seymour

Hersh reported in The New Yorker talks he had with current and retired
American military and intelligence experts who told him that it was
regarded as "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to
destroy Iran's nuclear installations." They did terrible damage and

killed many people, but they failed to accomplish their mission. As
Bush's former Deputy of State Richard Armitage said, "If the most
dominant military force in the region - the Israel Defense Forces -

can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four
million,
you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with
strategic depth and a population of seventy million...The only thing
that
the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the [Lebanese] population
against the Israelis."

The Air Force plans have been resisted by the senior generals of the
Army, Navy and Marine corps. In rare public statements and frequently
in private, they have said that the plans are fatally flawed and that
even if an invasion begins with aerial attack it will soon require
ground troops. Despite the misgivings of the military professionals,
Joseph Cirincione wrote in the March issue of Foreign Policy that
conversations with senior officials in the Pentagon and the White House

had convinced him that the decision for war had already been made.

The Washington Post has reported that at least since March, large teams

have been working on invasion plans in the Pentagon and the
intelligence
agencies, while the Iran "desk" at the State Department has been
augmented to task force size. It reports to Elizabeth Cheney, daughter
of the vice president, who is assistant secretary of state for the Near

East. In the Pentagon, a similar organization has been established
under Neoconservative Abram Shulsky. In addition a new outpost has
been set up in Dubai to coordinate plans. On October 2, a powerful
naval
battle group around the giant aircraft carrier Eisenhower sailed for
the
Persian Gulf and is due to arrive a week before the November
Congressional elections to join a similar battle group led by the
aircraft carrier Enterprise. Meanwhile aircraft of the U.S. Air Force
are being readied in bases surrounding Iran and in distant locations.
These forces could deliver destructive power that would dwarf the
aerial
assaults on Iraq.

The Iranian leadership, I have been authoritatively told, believes all
this is a bluff. In my next article, I will examine what will happen if

they are wrong.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



US or Israel Will Attack Iran by March:

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=64862





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Military Draft System to be Tested (when Iran is attacked for Israel
next?):
Associated Press | December 22, 2006
WASHINGTON - The Selective Service System is planning a comprehensive
test of the military draft machinery, which hasn't been run since 1998.



The agency is not gearing up for a draft, an agency official said
Thursday. The test itself would not likely occur until 2009.

Meanwhile, the secretary for Veterans Affairs said that "society would
benefit" if the U.S. were to bring back the draft and that it shouldn't
have any loopholes for anyone who is called to serve. VA Secretary Jim
Nicholson later issued a statement saying he does not support
reinstituting a draft.

The Selective Service "readiness exercise" would test the system that
randomly chooses draftees by birth date and the network of appeals
boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others
who want to delay reporting for duty, said Scott Campbell, Selective
Service director for operations and chief information officer.

"We're kind of like a fire extinguisher. We sit on a shelf" until
needed, Campbell said. "Everyone fears our machine for some reason. Our
machine, unless the president and Congress get together and say, 'Turn
the machine on' ... we're still on the shelf."

The administration has for years forcefully opposed bringing back the
draft, and the White House said Thursday that its position had not
changed.

A day earlier, President Bush said he is considering sending more
troops to Iraq and has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to look
into adding more troops to the nearly 1.4 million uniformed personnel
on active duty.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, increasing
the Army by 40,000 troops would cost as much as $2.6 billion the first
year and $4 billion after that. Service officials have said the Army
wants to increase its force by 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers and the Marine
Corps would like 5,000 more troops.

The unpopular war in Iraq, where more than 2,950 American troops have
already died, complicates the task of finding more recruits and
retaining current troops - to meet its recruitment goals in recent
years, the Army has accepted recruits with lower aptitude test scores.

In remarks to reporters in New York, Nicholson recalled his own
experience as a company commander in an infantry unit that brought
together soldiers of different backgrounds and education levels. He
said the draft "does bring people from all quarters of our society
together in the common purpose of serving."

Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat who has said minorities and
the poor share an unfair burden of the war, plans to introduce a bill
next year to reinstate the draft.

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has said that reinstating the draft
would not be high on the Democratic-led Congress' priority list, and
the White House said Thursday that no draft proposal is being
considered.

Planning for the Selective Service exercise, called the Area Office
Mobilization Prototype Exercise, is slated to begin in June or July of
next year for a 2009 test. Campbell said budget cuts could force the
agency to cancel the test, which he said should take place every three
years but hasn't because of funding constraints.

Hearst Newspapers first reported the planned test for a story sent to
its subscribers for weekend use.

The military drafted people during the Civil War and both world wars
and between 1948 and 1973. An agency independent of the Defense
Department, the Selective Service System was reincorporated in 1980 to
maintain a registry of 18-year-old men, but call-ups have not occurred
since the Vietnam War.

If we're powerless to prevent this, can we make money out of it?

Should we buy Exxon Mobile shares or options?

Dave

"Crime of the Century"???

It's only 2006, errr, near 2007, so we still have at least 93 years to
go . . . perhaps it's a little early to make that call. I think I'll
leave that for someone in 2100 to decide; I'm sure something else will
come up. If you're going to spaz out, at least try to be sensible
about it.

NO Dave, Buy sandbags and start digging a bomb shelter.

Jack
"David Santos" wrote in message
...
If we're powerless to prevent this, can we make money out of it?

Should we buy Exxon Mobile shares or options?

Dave

Jack Granade wrote:
NO Dave, Buy sandbags and start digging a bomb shelter.

Jack
"David Santos" wrote in message
...
If we're powerless to prevent this, can we make money out of it?

Should we buy Exxon Mobile shares or options?

Dave


Nope, plant a corn field...