Major investment bank issues warning on strike against Iran

Major investment bank issues warning on strike against Iran
01/15/2007 @ 2:51 pm
Filed by Michael Roston

http://www.rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=4357


Bank sees February or March timeline if Israel strikes

Warning that investors might be "in for a shock," a major investment
bank has told the financial community that a preemptive strike by
Israel with American backing could hit Iran's nuclear program, RAW
STORY has learned.

The banking division of ING Group released a memo on Jan. 9 entitled
"Attacking Iran: The market impact of a surprise Israeli strike on its
nuclear facilities."

ING is a global financial services company of Dutch origin that
includes banking, insurance, and other divisions. The report was
authored by Charles Robinson, the Chief Economist for Emerging Europe,
Middle East, and Africa. He also authored an update in ING's daily
update Prophet that further underscored the bank's perception of the
risks of an attack.

ING's Robertson admitted that an attack on Iran was "high impact, if
low probability," but explained some of the reasons why a strike might
go forward. The Jan. 9 dispatch, describes Israel as "not prepared to
accept the same doctrine of 'mutually assured destruction' that
kept the peace during the Cold War. Israel is adamant that this is not
an option for such a geographically small country....So if Israel is
convinced Iran is aiming to develop a nuclear weapon, it must
presumably act at some point."

Sketching out the time line for an attack, Robertson says that "we can
be fairly sure that if Israel is going to act, it will be keen to do so
while Bush and Cheney are in the White House."

Robertson suggests a February-March 2007 timeline for several reasons.
First, there is a comparable time line with Israel's strike on Iraq's
nuclear program in 1981, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's
political troubles within Israel. Second, late February will see Iran's
deadline to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1737, and Israel
could use a failure of Iran and the UN to follow through as
justification for a strike. Finally, greater US military presence in
the region at that time could be seen by Israel as the protection from
retaliation that it needs.

In his Jan. 15 update, Robertson points to a political reason that
could make the assault more likely - personnel changes in the Bush
administration may have sidelined opponents of attacking Iran.

Preisdent Bush recently removed General John Abizaid as commander of US
forces in the Middle East and John Negroponte as Director of National
Intelligence, both of whom have said attacking Iran is not a priority
or the right move at this time. The deployment of Patriot missile
batteries, highlighted in President Bush's recent White House speech on
America's Iraq policy, also pointed to a need to defend against Iranian
missiles.

The ING memo was first sent to RAW STORY by an anonymous tip and
confirmed Monday by staff on the bank's emerging markets office, who
passed along the Jan. 15 update. The full PDF documents can be
downloaded at this link for the Jan. 9 report, and this link for the
Jan. 15 update. A screenshot of the first page is provided below.



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





Just received the following from my friend (Dr. Stephen Sniegoski) who
wrote the 'Israeli Origins of Bush II's War' via
http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=33763


From: "Stephen Sniegoski"

Subject: Raimondo--It's All About Iran
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:32:58 -0500



Raimondo says the surge of troops is to provide greater strength for
US forces in Iraq to face the response from Iran after a US attack. "In

this context, at least, the "surge
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...15/wirq115.xml

" begins to make some sense - especially if, as can be expected, it
is a
'long surge
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/1...f-on-the-long-

surge-troop-fantasy/ ' carried out by an administration that likes to
push
the envelope http://public.cq.com/public/20061201_homeland.html (and
meets little resistance in doing so). An attack on Iran will be
centered
around the Persian Gulf, but is bound to have reverberations on the
ground
in Iraq. A "surge" - 20,000 U.S. troops, and possibly more - would
buttress
American redoubts for the inevitable backlash
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_12_18/article.html and reinforce
our
defenses against a flanking counterattack."




However, the whole surge approach also provides greater opportunity
for an incident with Iran to provide a justification for war.



http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10328

January 15, 2007
It's All About Iran
Washington wants war...
by Justin Raimondo
As American troops storm what is, or was, an Iranian consulate - at
least that's what the Iraqi government calls it, in spite of American
denials - and the president accuses Tehran of arming and aiding Iraqi
insurgents, the answer to the question "Why are we in Iraq?" should
begin to dawn on even the dullest. The answer: Iran. We're in Iraq so
we can go after the mullahs in Tehran, and, perhaps, those other
Ba'athists in Syria.

All indications point to a strike at the Iranians before Bush leaves
office. The appointment of a Navy guy, Adm. William J. "Fox" Fallon, at
present head of the U.S. Pacific Command, to oversee U.S. operations in
the Middle East, is widely seen as a sign that war with Iran is on the
table, if not yet a sure thing. A U.S. attack on Iran would be a naval
and air operation, and Fallon, a former deputy director for operations
with Joint Task Force Southwest Asia in Riyadh, is surely qualified for
the job. As Pat Buchanan put it, "What Fallon does not know about
securing streets, he does know about taking out targets from the air
and keeping sea lanes open in a time of war."

Seymour Hersh reported on the gatheringstorm over Iran last year, and
now we may have more concrete evidence that something big is afoot.
Laura Rozen, writing in The American Prospect, says that a presidential
"finding," or perhaps a secret White House directive may have been
issued:

"There is evidence that, while Bush probably has not signed such a
finding regarding Iran, he has recently done so regarding
Iranian-supported Hezbollah in Lebanon; further, there is evidence that
he may have signed an executive order or national security presidential
directive regarding a new, more aggressive policy on Iran. Such
directives are not required to be reported to Congress - they are
more in the realm of the president communicating to authorized people
inside the administration his expectations for a policy."

And the noiselevel coming from the pro-warpeanut gallery is getting
louder: Israel's lobby in the U.S. has long pushed for aggressive
American action against the supposedly nuke-seeking mullahs, and an
Israeli general, Oded Tira, recently came out explicitly with the
thrust of the Israeli campaign:

"President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an
American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help
him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting
itself foolishly) and U.S. newspaper editors. We need to do this in
order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to
the Iraq failure.

"We must turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential
candidates in the Democratic Party so that they publicly support
immediate action by Bush against Iran. We should also approach European
countries so that they support American actions in Iran, so that Bush
will not be isolated in the international arena again."

The Lobby won't have to lean too hard on the Democratic Party, as
Chairman Howard Dean made all too clear on Hardballthe other night:

"Chris Matthews: Will your party stand up against a war with Iran? It
looks like the president is sort of edging towards military action
against Iran?


"Howard Dean: You know the great shame, among many shames, of going
into Iraq, was we picked the wrong enemy. Iran is a danger. We've got
our troops pinned down in the wrong place. Saddam Hussein was a
terrible person, but not a danger to the United States. Iran is a
danger. Obviously, I don't think there's much stomach among the
American people for a war with Iran given what's gone on for the last
three and a half years in Iraq, but we are clearly going to have to
stand up to Iran.

"CM: Does that mean attack them? Are we going to commit an act of war
against Iran?

"HD: I think there's absolutely no stomach for that whatsoever either
in the Congress or among the American people after what's been going on
the last three and a half years in Iraq."

So the official Democratic Party spokesman's line on the crisis in the
Middle East goes something like this: Gee, it's too bad we're stuck in
a quagmire in Iraq, when the real imperative is to attack Iran. We're
in the wrong war - and, thanks to George W. Bush, the American people
have "no stomach" for attacking what amounts to a genuine threat.

You'll notice, if you follow the link and read the whole quote, how
Dean wimped out in the end, only agreeing with the Bushies' rush to war
as far as imposing sanctions. However, you can bet Dean and his fellow
Democrats, especially presidentialwannabes and the congressional
leadership, are not about to stand up to the War Party when the bombs
begin to fall on Tehran.

For months, Antiwar.com hasbeenreporting growing indications of a U.S.
strike on Iran, and certainly such a move, contra Dean, is politically
doable. After all, Dean and his fellow Democrats won't say boo about
it, except, perhaps, to chide them for not doing it soon enough - and
certainly Gen. Tira won't have to push Hillary all that much, since her
present position is more hawkish than the Bush administration's.
(Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no piker when it comes to Iran, either).

In the end, events on the ground in Iraq and environs won't determine
if and when we go to war with Tehran: domestic politics is the
determining factor, and, as Chairman Dean has shown, the conditions
couldn't be better as far as the War Party is concerned.

In this context, at least, the "surge" begins to make some sense -
especially if, as can be expected, it is a "long surge" carried out by
an administration that likes to push the envelope (and meets little
resistance in doing so). An attack on Iran will be centered around the
Persian Gulf, but is bound to have reverberations on the ground in
Iraq. A "surge" - 20,000 U.S. troops, and possibly more - would
buttress American redoubts for the inevitable backlash and reinforce
our defenses against a flanking counterattack.

The "antiwar" Democrats are way behind the times: they are still
screaming about Iraq, when Iran is the real issue - and it's one they
are just as bad on, if not worse, than the Republicans. Which means
that the long-suffering American people are not about to find relief
from this endless war anytime soon - unless, of course, it is in the
form of some as yet undiscovered political maverick who will rise out
of the miasma of American politics and save us from both wings of the
War Party.



Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10328

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

Surge begins as troops prepare for Iraq

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...15/wirq115.xml


By Alex Massie at Fort Benning
Last Updated: 12:38am GMT 15/01/2007



The soldiers of Fort Benning received the news last week they had been
expecting and their families had feared: their deployment to Iraq would
be moved forward from May to March.

It came as little surprise. Many of these troops have already served
two year-long tours in Iraq and it seemed natural to them that the men
and women of the 3rd Brigade of 3rd Infantry Division, which was at the
vanguard of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, should be part of the "surge" of
21,500 extra troops President George W Bush is deploying to the country
for one final effort to pacify Baghdad and the western Sunni badlands.


As the brigade prepares to leave Fort Benning for Iraq one soldier
gives his wife a farewell hug


"If we go again, we go again," said Specialist Steven Buttram. "We all
volunteered for this."

The 3rd Brigade was packing up to leave Fort Benning for a month of
training in California.

Outside the recreation centre of their barracks at the base 120 miles
south of Atlanta, in Georgia, they killed time smoking, joking,
checking their kit, and waiting for the buses to roll out.

The soldiers gave farewell hugs to their wives, girlfriends, husbands
and boyfriends.

Their military family takes precedence now.

"Yeah, there's sadness," said Hannah Carroll, as she waved goodbye to
her husband Jimmy. "But he's so proud of his job and his unit".

Mrs Carroll first met her husband when they were teenagers growing up
in Akron, Ohio. Their three months apart while he completed basic
training last year were tough; now they will be separated for a year.

"He says 'the sooner I leave the sooner I can come back' so that's how
I have to see it too," said Mrs Carroll, 25.

For many of the departing troops, duty to unit, flag and country is
mingled with a guilty awareness of the impact the war has had on family
life. "I haven't visited my mom in Connecticut since 2005," said
Private Chandra Walton. "I don't know when I will see her."

advertisementPte Walton was a military wife for five years before she
joined the army in November 2005, knowing she was likely to be posted
to Iraq.

Her husband served in Iraq for 15 months with the 1st Armoured
Division. Now it is his turn to stay behind and care for their two
young children. "I just hope I come back the way my husband came back,"
said Pte Walton.

Pte Jason Nelson is just 12 months into a four-year commitment to the
army. "My wife don't like it. It's causing some problems," he said. "I
know there are a lot of guys fed up over there."

But he felt that the surge of US forces would finally get the job done.
How would that be achieved?

"Stop all the crap that's going on - round 'em up and get rid of
'em."

Another soldier joked: "If we do what you say, we'll be back in a
week."

The bravado failed to hide the awareness that this is not going to be
like any other deployment. The old hands have spent recent days
ensuring the rookies have written their wills.

The 3rd Brigade's officers appreciate their mission will have as much
impact in Washington as Baghdad. "We know the 2008 election rests on
this," said one major.

Mr Bush visited Fort Benning last week to rally the troops."I don't
know if people were convinced," said Sgt Robbie Stricklin.



Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph
Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without
licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright


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


http://public.cq.com/public/20061201_homeland.html

CQ HOMELAND SECURITY - SpyTalk
Dec. 1, 2006 - 8:25 p.m.
Fine Print in Defense Bill Opens Door to Martial Law
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor
It's amazing what you can find if you turn over a few rocks in the
anti-terrorism legislation Congress approved during the election
season.

Take, for example, the John W. Warner Defense Authorization Act of
2006, named for the longtime Armed Services Committee chairman from
Virginia.

Signed by President Bush on Oct. 17, the law (PL 109-364) has a
provocative provision called "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public
Emergencies."

The thrust of it seems to be about giving the federal government a far
stronger hand in coordinating responses to Katrina-like disasters.

But on closer inspection, its language also alters the
two-centuries-old Insurrection Act, which Congress passed in 1807 to
limit the president's power to deploy troops within the United
States.

That law has long allowed the president to mobilize troops only "to
suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful
combination, or conspiracy."

But the amended law takes the cuffs off.

Specifically, the new language adds "natural disaster, epidemic, or
other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident"
to the list of conditions permitting the President to take over local
authority - particularly "if domestic violence has occurred to such
an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession
are incapable of maintaining public order."

Since the administration broadened what constitutes "conspiracy" in
its definition of enemy combatants - anyone who "has purposely and
materially supported hostilities against the United States," in the
language of the Military Commissions Act (PL 109-366) - critics say
it's a formula for executive branch mischief.

Yet despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent,
or even attention, on the Hill.

One of the few to complain, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., warned that
the measure virtually invites the White House to declare federal
martial law.

It "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit
the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it
easier for the President to declare martial law," he said in remarks
submitted to the Congressional Record on Sept. 29.

"The changes to the Insurrection Act will allow the President to use
the military, including the National Guard, to carry out law
enforcement activities without the consent of a governor," he said.

Moreover, he said, it breaks a long, fundamental tradition of federal
restraint.

"Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the
founding tenets of our democracy."

And he criticized the way it was rammed through Congress.

It "was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little
study," he fumed. "Other congressional committees with jurisdiction
over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings
on, these proposals."

No matter: Safely tucked into the $526 billion defense bill, it easily
crossed the goal line on the last day of September.

Silence
The language doesn't just brush aside a liberal Democrat slated to
take over the Judiciary Committee come January. It also runs over the
backs of the governors, 22 of whom are Republicans.

The governors had waved red flags about the measure on Aug. 1, sending
letters of protest from their Washington office to the Republican
chairs and ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services
committees.

No response. So they petitioned the party heads on the Hill - Sens.
Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., Speaker of the House J.
Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and his Democratic opposite, Nancy Pelosi of
California.

"This provision was drafted without consultation or input from
governors," said the Aug. 6 letter signed by every member of the
National Governors Association, "and represents an unprecedented
shift in authority from governors . . .to the federal government."

"We urge you," they said, "to drop provisions that would usurp
governors' authority over the National Guard during emergencies from
the conference agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act."

Again, no response from the leadership, said David Quam, the National
Governors Association's director of federal relations.

On Aug. 31, the governors sent another letter to the congressional
party leaders, as well as to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who
had met quietly with an NGA delegation back in February.

The bill "could encroach on our constitutional authority to protect
the citizens of our states," they protested, complaining again about
how the provision had been dumped on a midnight express.

"Any issue that affects the mission of the Guard in the states must
be addressed in consultation and coordination with governors," they
demanded.

"The role of the Guard in the states and to the nation as a whole is
too important to have major policy decisions made without full debate
and input from governors throughout the policy process."

More silence.

"We did not know until the bill was printed where we stood," Quam
said.

That's partly the governors' own fault, said a Republican Senate
aide.

"My understanding is that they sent form letters to offices," she
said. "If they really want a piece of legislation considered they
should have called offices and pushed the matter. No office can handle
the amount of form letters that come in each day."

Quam disputed that.

"The letter was only the beginning of the conversation," he said.
"The NGA and the governors' offices reached out across the Hill."


Blogosphere
Looking back at the government's chaotic response to Katrina, it's
not altogether surprising that the provision drew so little opposition
in Congress and attention from the mainstream media.

And of course, it was wrapped in a monster defense bill related to the
emergency in Iraq.

But the blogosphere, of course, was all over it.

A close analysis of the bill by Frank Morales, a 58-year-old Episcopal
priest in New York who occasionally writes for left-wing publications,
spurred a score of liberal and conservative libertarian Web sites to
take a look at it.

But a search of The Washington Post and New York Times archives, using
the terms "Insurrection Act," "martial law" and "Congress,"
came up empty.

That's not to say the papers don't ca There's just too much
going on in the global war on terror to keep up with, much less write
about such a seemingly insignificant provision. The martial law section
of the Defense Appropriation Act, for example, takes up just a few
paragraphs in the 591-page document.

What else is in there? More intriguing stuff, it looks like - and
I'm working my way through it.

BACKCHANNEL CHATTER
Putin on the Risk: Don't be too quick to finger Russian president
Vladimir Putin in the radiation rub-out of disaffected former KGB agent
Alexander Litvinenko in London Nov. 23, says a retired CIA operative
who spent a career trying to outwit his Soviet opposites. "I see it
all as a little too pat," says Milt Bearden, a 30-year CIA veteran
and chief of its Soviet/East European Division when the Kremlin
crumbled in 1990.

"Is Putin insane or stupid? I think not," Bearden e-mailed me last
week.

"I tilt toward a setup," Bearden said. The villain? "Someone with
the [scientific] resources of a state," a large research laboratory,
perhaps, with connections to the criminal underworld.

"This story has legs," Bearden went on, "just what Putin would
not want if he was behind it."

Stay tuned...

More on Torture Law: Most legal analysts, as reported here last week,
believe that the new law setting up Military Commissions will exempt
U.S. officials from prosecution for abusing prisoners, by narrowing the
definitions of torture in the 1997 War Crimes Act. But at least one
eminent jurist begs to differ.

"Even as retroactively amended and narrowed, a person whose actions
caused 'serious' or 'severe' mental or physical suffering at
any time after 1997 committed a felony violation of the War Crimes Act
and can be prosecuted," maintains Stephen Rickard, a former top State
Department official, foreign policy adviser to the late Sen. Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., and prominent Washington lawyer with a
speciality in human rights.

"I don't like the definitions of 'torture' and 'cruel and
inhuman' conduct," Rickard e-mailed me last week, "but even with
all of their flaws, I don't see how they exempt interrogators from
potential punishment, especially for the harshest, most controversial
techniques."

These days Rickard is the director of the Washington Office of the
liberal Open Society Institute.

Jeff Stein can be reached at .

Source: CQ Homeland Security

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


http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_12_18/article.html


How to Lose an Army

Plow deep into Iraq and dare Iran to strike.

by William S. Lind

Lose a war, lose an election. What else did the Republicans expect?
That is especially true for a "war of choice," which is to say a
war we should not have fought. It is difficult to imagine that, had
Spain defeated the U.S. in 1898, the Republicans would have won the
election in 1900.

What does the Democrats' victory mean for the war in Iraq?
Regrettably, not what it should, namely an immediate American
withdrawal from a hopelessly lost enterprise. Neither the Democrats nor
the Republicans, both of whom now want to get out, desire to go into
the 2008 election as the party that "lost Iraq," which is how
taking the lead for withdrawal could be painted. Instead, both parties
in Congress and the White House are likely to agree only on a series of
half-measures, none of which will work. We will stay bogged down in the
Iraqi quagmire for another two years, as the troops caught in Operation
Provide Targets continue to die.

A more critical if less obvious question is what do the results of the
election mean for a prospective attack on Iran? On the surface, the
Democrats' seizure of both houses of Congress would seem to be good
news. Having won their majorities because the American people want out
of a war, they ought to be reluctant to jump into a second one.

Regrettably, that logic may be too simple. Because an attack on Iran
will be launched with no warning, the Bush administration will not have
to consult Congress beforehand. Congress could take the initiative and
forbid such an attack preemptively ("no funds may be expended...").
But in an imperial capital where court politics count far more than the
nation's interests, Democrats may prefer to risk a second war, and a
second debacle, rather than open themselves up to a charge of being
weak on terrorism. The Democrats' approach to national-security
issues through the fall campaign was to hide under the bed and ignore
them as much as possible. That worked politically, so they are likely
to stick with it.

The Bush administration, for its part, will be tempted to do what small
men have done throughout history when in trouble: try to escalate their
way out of it. The White House has already half-convinced itself that
the majority of its troubles in Iraq stem from Iran and Syria, a line
the neocons push assiduously.

The departure of Donald Rumsfeld, which was greeted in the Pentagon
with joyful choruses of "Ding-dong, the witch is dead," may help to
avert an invasion. His successor, Robert Gates, has no background in
defense and is therefore likely to defer to the generals, for good or
for ill. In this case for good, as the generals emphatically do not
want a war with Iran. But for Gates to block White House demands for an
attack on Iran, he would have to threaten to resign. Is he the sort of
man to do that? That's not how bureaucrats build their careers, an
observation that holds for the generals as well.

The elephant in the parlor is, of course, the fact that Israel wants an
attack on Iran, and for Republicans and Democrats alike, Israel is She
Who Must Be Obeyed. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ran to
Washington as soon as the election was over, and the subject of his
discussions with President Bush is easy to imagine. Who will do the
dirty deed and when? Iran has already announced that it will consider
an attack by Israel an attack by the U.S. as well and respond
accordingly, so the difference may not much matter.

That response should concern us, to put it mildly, for that is where a
war with Iran and the war in Iraq intersect. The Iranians have said
that this time they have 140,000 American hostages, in the form of U.S.
troops in Iraq. If either Israel or the U.S. attacks Iran, we could
lose an army.

How could such a thing happen? The danger springs from the fact that
almost all the supplies our forces in Iraq use, including vital fuel
for their vehicles, comes over one supply line, which runs toward the
south and the port in Kuwait. If that line were cut, our forces might
not have enough fuel to get out of Iraq. American armies are enormously
fuel-thirsty.

One might think that fuel would be abundant in Iraq, which is (or was)
a major oil exporter. In fact, because of the ongoing chaos, Iraq is
short of refined oil products. Our forces, if cut off from their own
logistics, could not simply fuel up at local gas stations as German
Gen. Heinz Guderian's Panzer Corps did on its way to the English
Channel in the 1940 campaign against France.

There are two ways, not mutually exclusive, that Iran could attempt to
cut our supply line in Iraq in response to an attack on Iranian nuclear
facilities. The first would be by encouraging Shi'ite militias to
which it is allied, including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, to
rise up against us throughout southern Iraq, which is Shi'ite
country. The militias would be supported by widespread infiltration of
Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who have shown themselves to be good at
this kind of thing. They are the people who trained and equipped
Hezbollah for its successful defense of southern Lebanon against the
vaunted Israeli army this past summer.

The Shi'ite militias already lie across our single supply line, and
we should expect them to cut it in response to Iranian requests. We are
already at war with the Mahdi Army, against which our forces in Iraq
have been launching a series of recent raids and air strikes. A British
journalist I know, one with long experience in Iraq, told me he asked
the head of SCIRI, which controls the Badr Brigades, how he would
respond if the U.S. attacked Iran. "Then," he replied, "we would
do our duty."

Iran has a second, bolder option it could combine with a Shi'ite
insurrection at our rear. It could cross the Iran-Iraq border with
several armored and mechanized divisions of the regular Iranian Army,
sever our supply lines, then move to roll us up from the south with the
aim of encircling us, perhaps in and around Baghdad. This would be a
classic operational maneuver, the sort of thing for which armored
forces are designed.

At present, U.S. forces in Iraq could be vulnerable to such an action
by the Iranian army. We have no field army in Iraq; necessarily, our
forces are penny-packeted all over the place, dealing with insurgents.
They would be hard-pressed to assemble quickly to meet a regular force,
especially if fuel was running short.

The U.S. military's answer, as is too often the case, will be air
power. It is true that American air power could destroy any Iranian
armored formations it caught in the open. But there is a tried-and-true
defense against air power, one the Iranians could employ: bad weather.
Like the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, they could wait to launch
their offensive until the weather promised a few days of protection.
After that, they would be so close to our own forces that air power
could not attack them without danger of hitting friendlies. (This is
sometimes know as "hugging tactics.") Reportedly, the Turkish
General Staff thinks the Iranians can and will employ this second
option, no doubt in combination with the first.

Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the fact that, just as the French
high command refused to consider the possibility of a German attack
through the Ardennes in 1940, Washington will not consider the
possibility that an attack on Iran could cost us our army in Iraq. We
have made one of the most common military mistakes-believing our own
propaganda. Over and over, the U.S. military tells the world and
itself, "No one can defeat us. No one can even fight us. We are the
greatest military the world has ever seen!"

Unfortunately, like most propaganda, it's bunk. The U.S. Armed Forces
are technically well-trained, lavishly resourced Second-Generation
militaries. They are today being fought and beaten by Fourth-Generation
opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also be defeated by
Third-Generation opponents who can react faster than America's
process-ridden, PowerPoint-enslaved military headquarters. They can be
defeated by superior strategy, by trick, by surprise, and by
preemption. Unbeatable militaries are like unsinkable ships: they are
unsinkable until something sinks them.

If the U.S. were to lose the army it has in Iraq to Iraqi militias,
Iranian regular forces, or a combination of both, cutting our one line
of supply and then encircling us, the world would change. It would be
our Adrianople, our Rocroi, our Stalingrad. American power and prestige
would never recover. Nothing, not even Israel's demands, should lead
us to run this risk, which is inherent in any attack on Iran.

There is one action, a possibility opened by the Democrats' electoral
victory, that would stop the Bush administration from launching such an
attack or allowing Israel to do so. If our senior military leaders,
especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would go public with their
opposition to such an adventure, the new Democratic majority in
Congress would have to react. The public that put it in office on an
antiwar platform would compel it to answer or lose all credibility.
While the Joint Chiefs would infuriate the White House, they would
receive the necessary political cover from the new Democratic Congress.
The potential is there, for the generals and the Democrats alike.

For it to be realized, and the disaster of war with Iran to be averted,
all the generals must do is show some courage. If the Joint Chiefs keep
silent now and allow the folly of an attack on Iran to go forward, they
will share in full the moral responsibility for the results, which may
include the loss of an army. Perhaps we should call it "Operation
Cornwallis."
____________________________________________


William S. Lind is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at
the Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C.

December 18, 2006 Issue