View from the Loft

[UPDATE] There's still time to nuke Iran!

[See below for additional information supplied in Comments by freelearner.]

Yes, one can imagine all too well Dick Cheney urging this line of thought around town with only nine months left until the next presidential inauguration.

I've been planning to write a blog post about all the predictions I've made that have turned out to be wrong, and no one could be happier than I to be wrong about the reinstatement of the draft, avian flu, immigration as a winning issue for the GOP, and most of all, a U.S. attack on Iran. Unfortunately, it's too soon to tell about some of these things, and particularly in the case of Iran, recent events have made a lot of people wonder whether military aggression against that nation in the near future is still very much a possibility:

• Joint Chiefs Chairmans Says U.S. Preparing Military Options Against Iran
• Israeli attack on Syria a prelude to Arak, Iran?
• Petraeus has been named to replace Admiral Fallon as CENTCOM head; Fallon repeatedly had said there would be no attack on Iran on his watch, while as we all know, Petraeus is nothing if not George Bush's lackey--or should I say Cheney's?--who never voices a dissenting word.

The ostensible reason for "preparing military options against Iran" is that Iran is meddling in Iraq and endangering our forces there. But the real reason is Iran's heavy-water nuclear reactor in Arak, Iran. There is some speculation that Israel may be planning a strike on that reactor. If that were to happen, there would certainly be retaliation by iran followed by counterattacks backed up by U.S. military power. Or, perhaps the U.S. would have to "soften up" Iran to make an Israeli strike possible. Iran does have some sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry.

The reactor's start-up date is scheduled for 2009, so time is of the essence. Israel has not been shy about voicing its outrage over Iran's reactor, fearing that it will be used to make nuclear weapons. And in March, we discovered that

The Pentagon is looking into the possibility of Israel launching a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. In the past months there were several working-level discussions trying to map out the possible scenarios for such an attack, according to administration sources who were briefed on these meetings.

Moreover (from the same source):

Israeli and US sources have said in the past weeks that the US did not convey any message to Israel in which it asked to refrain from an attack and has not raised the issue in bilateral discussions with the Israelis. Both countries share intelligence on the situation in Iran and the advance of the nuclear program, but do not discuss - according to sources who took part in bilateral talks - the possibility of using military force to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Of course the U.S. didn't tell the Israelis to "refrain from an attack." There's nothing dearer to the heart of Cheney (what's left of it) than the thought of more carnage, blood, and destruction, and if nuclear fallout could be a part of all that, so much the better!

One of my fears is that some sort of terrorist or other act will be manufactured ( a la the Gulf of Tonkin) by the U.S. and blamed on Iran to justify an attack. Then would it be post-9/11 all over again, with the country deciding it needed a Bush clone and electing McCain by a landslide?

Do you really think they haven't thought about this? These are people for whom power and power alone gives life meaning. Nothing they could do would surprise me.

UPDATE from freelearner (moved here from Comments):

In an April 18th article (http://tinyurl.com/3qsvtr), Paul Craig Roberts cited other information suggesting a coming attack on Iran, from two sources:

-----
On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited "a high-ranking security source: "The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran." 1 According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future."

The chief of Russia's general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans." 2.
-----

And you've probably heard the gist of the second source:

-----
On March 29, OpEdNews cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney's visit with the kingdom's rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors." 3.
-----

I think they will have to engineer a false-flag terrorist or insurgent attack on a fairly massive scale against US troops in Iraq or against a Navy ship in the Gulf. Or, if anything happens to the Strait of Hormuz (like we bomb the shipping channel and blame the Iranians), we might attack to try and keep the oil lines open.

Don't let your gas tank get below half, I guess-- and a 5-gallon jug of gas in the garage isn't a bad idea either.

US moves closer to war with Iran (UPDATED)

The recent Senate vote embracing Joe Lieberman's resolution declaring that Iran has committed acts of war against the United States, as Chris Floyd observes, "puts a gun in Bush's hand and screams for him to pull the trigger."

By 97-0 the Senate has thus officially bought into the propaganda coming from the Bush-Cheney camp regarding Iran's role in the escalating violence in Iraq. Mind you, solid evidence of the Iran government's direct participation in attacks against US soldiers is nonexistent, while claims that Iran is planning to develop nuclear weapons are dubious at best. But the madmen (and women) in charge want their wider war, bend to Israel's will, believe the propaganda dutifully repeated and magnified by the "reporting" of scum like Michael Gordon, and rush to proclaim their willingness to turn the Middle East--and perhaps the world--into a boiling cauldron of unending war and destruction.

What have we come to? We already destroyed one country that posed no threat to us. And now the great minds of the power elites are slavering to do it again. The whole world is going to hate us (more than they already do, if that's possible) and consider the US a pariah, a rogue state indeed.

Let's not kid ourselves:

In this manner, Congress, nominally controlled by the opposition party, has granted the Bush administration advance approval for the commencement of hostilities against Iran. Since the Senate has announced, with no dissenting votes at all, that Iran is itself responsible for acts of war against the United States, and the House has stated, with only two voices in opposition, that Iran is illegally and clandestinely developing nuclear weapons, no prominent Democrat will be able to offer any principled, significant policy objection when Bush announces that the bombs have already begun to fall.

(Arthur Silber, quoted above, has much more to say on the topic, and much better than I could ever say it. Please, please go and read it.)

Chris Floyd asks, "Having officially affirmed that Iran is waging war on American forces, how, pray tell, can you then deny the president when he asks (if he asks) for the authorization to 'defend our troops'? Answer: you can't."

Speaking of acts of war, the United States has already been engaging in such acts against Iran: covert action, use of Iranian groups on our own terrorist lists in clandestine activities against the Iranian regime, kidnapping of Iranian officials in Iraq. Our own Congress has passed measures calling for an overthrow of the Iranian government. We've got a huge naval presence in the Gulf. And now Congress has passed resolutions laying the groundwork for an all-out military attack on Iran.

Perhaps Arthur Silber is right in saying that a massive outpouring of protest across the nation, on talk radio and blogs, in phone calls and e-mails to our elected representatives, could change the tide. But I'm not so sure. After all, Congress has so far ignored the 70% of Americans who want us out of Iraq. Why would they listen to us on this?

Worse, the American people may, after all, and having learned nothing in the run-up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, swallow the propaganda anyway. Certainly the MSM is doing nothing to question the administration's claims. And the criminals in Washington have hit on what they think will make yet another war crime acceptable to the average citizen: Iran is endangering and even attacking our soldiers! We must take action to protect them!

I'm very afraid that it won't be long now before the bombs rain down on the innocent people of Iran. I'm reduced to hoping against hope that the brutal exercise of naked power will not include nuclear weapons.

UPDATE: No sooner did I post this than I stumbled on this headline from Juan Cole: "Are We Already at War? Have US-enabled Kurds Killed 200 Iranian Troops?" The story suggests that the US is covertly supporting PJAK, a Kurdish group that makes incursions into Iran and trains recruits in guerilla warfare.

I don't need to point out the hypocrisy of our elected officials in accusing Iran of acts of war against us, do I?

Cheney's end-run around Bush on Iran

No sooner do I post an entry on the administration's worrisome saber-rattling on Iran than even more worrisome news comes along.

According to Steve Clemons,

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This would, of course, trigger a response from Iran, probably against US forces in the Gulf, and derail the diplomatic efforts currently being pursued by the State Department, forcing Bush into war.

If this is true, and it sounds completely plausible to me, then Cheney is guilty of insubordination on a large scale. Will Bush do anything to stop, let alone punish, this behavior?

Don't hold your breath.

More saber-rattling toward Iran

A number of recent items bring Iran to the forefront once again.

A ridiculous article in The Guardian, of all places, conveys the anti-Iran propaganda of, as Will Bunch points out,

Two unnamed government officials as sources, and a perfunctory denial from an Iranian officials in the last paragraph -- and that's it?

The piece by Simon Tisdall should be an embarrassment to him. In it, said unnamed officials make claims that are simply unbelievable on the face of it:

Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.

"Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it's a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces," a senior US official in Baghdad warned. "They [Iran] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine US will and British will, such as the rocket attacks on Basra palace and the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government]."

Juan Cole deftly eviscerates the wild fantasy of Iranian-Al Qaida and Iranian-Sunni cooperation:

At a time when Sunni Arab guerrillas are said to be opposing "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" for its indiscriminate violence against Iraqis, including Shiites, we are now expected to believe that Shiite Iran is allying with it. And, it claims that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are shelling the Green Zone. The parliament building that was hit to day by such shelling is dominated by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its paramilitary, the Badr Organization. Who trained Badr? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And they are trying to hit their own guys . . . why?

This story of Iranian-Sunni cooperation was being bandied about a few months ago. It has no more credibility now than it did then. It is part and parcel of a propaganda effort against Iran, meant to make Americans blame Iran for American soldiers' deaths, to anger them enough to accept whatever action the US eventually takes against Iran.

And that is the public face of it. We now know that Bush has authorized new covert action against Iran, added to a push for new sanctions against Iran:

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

I suppose this is better than an outright military attack on Iran--which is what Darth Vader was pushing for--but for some reason, I'm just not all that comforted. That could have something to do with Eliot Abrams' fingerprints being all over this plan, as the above link states; or it might be that I agree with those who

fear that even a nonlethal covert CIA program carries great risks.

"I think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within Iran," said Vali Nasr, adjunct senior fellow for Mideast studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"And this covert action is now being escalated by the new U.S. directive, and that can very quickly lead to Iranian retaliation and a cycle of escalation can follow," Nasr said.

And just to add a little fuel to the fire, there's this:

Nine U.S. military ships entered the Gulf on Wednesday for a rare daylight assembly off Iran’s coast in what naval officials said was the largest such move since the 2003 Iraq war.

U.S. Navy officials said Iran had not been notified of plans to sail the vessels, which include two aircraft carriers, through the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow channel in international waters off Iran’s coast and a major artery for global oil shipments.

We are governed--if, in fact, you can call it that--by madmen, but I fear the American people will once again swallow propaganda that plays to their fear. Every statement you read by Bush, Cheney, and their enablers is meant to build up and prey upon that fear. If we have another 9-11 ... I just don't want to think about it.

War on Iran: impossible? unthinkable? inevitable?

I haven't written about the possibility of war with Iran for quite a while. While many war-drum beaters on the right were hoping that the capture by Iran of 15 British sailors would be the spark that set off the tinderbox, most media coverage seemed to me restrained, and not much new information or speculation emerged about possible US plans to attack Iran.

The common sentiment, one I find all over the web, is that given that the US military is tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, given that the US is broke, and given that the US public seems to have no stomach for military action, war against Iran is simply off the table. I certainly hope that's true. Indeed, there have been some signs that Bush is backing away from an attack on Iran and moving towards diplomacy, as this article summarizes. And this morning brings an AP interview with Brigadier-General Robert Holmes, deputy director of operations for the US Central Command, in which he says there are no plans for the US to use military force against Iran.

Of course it would make no sense to attack Iran. Of course it made no sense to attack Iraq. But our nation is led by fools and madmen.

Gen. Holmes says there are no plans to attack Iran. And President Bush said there were no plans to invade Iraq, even while he had long since made up his mind to do just that.

Is it any wonder that I'm still very concerned that there's a real possibility of a US war with Iran?

Right now a third aircraft carrier group is headed for the Gulf, ostensibly to relieve the Eisenhower group, and so we hope it does, rather than simply joining the other two groups. Obviously, Bush has decided to maintain a show of force in the Gulf with at least two carrier groups and an array of other military vessels, helicopters, and assorted hardware.

In recent days, it has been claimed that Iran is training Sunni insurgents. Sunnis, for heaven's sake! Juan Cole's reaction to that statement:

Since the Sunni guerrillas are killing and blowing up Shiites every day, and since Iran is closely allied with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr Corps paramilitary, the leaders of which have repeatedly been targeted by Sunni guerrillas. That Iran is trying to kill its own guys in Iraq is flatly implausible. Caldwell can come out and say it every day, and I will come out here and say it is implausible every day. Anti-Iranian sentiments are a key characteristic of the Sunni Arab guerrillas.

This morning I see that two Iraqi militants claim to have spent time at a secret camp in Iran for advanced guerilla training. I have no trouble believing this, particularly of the Mahdi Army, and in light of the close ties among Shiites. I doubt, however, that the camp is run by the Iranian government.

I believe that the repeated claims that Iran is aiding the Iraq insurgency are intended to soften up the American public for a possible attack on Iran. What better way to justify war than to make Americans believe that Iran is responsible for the deaths of American soldiers? This is not to say that certain factions in Iran are not providing help, but rather to point out how the US seems to have settled on a rationale for war. First we heard about the explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, being made by Iran (later news of a factory found in Iraq was not given nearly the attention), and then that Iran was training EFP-makers; we are told that Iranian diplomats captured in a raid in Irbil were members of the Revolutionary Guard, a claim denied by both Iraq and Iran, who say the still-imprisoned Iranians were there by invitation; we hear vague and unproven reports that various weapons are being supplied to Iraqi insurgents; and now we hear claims that the Iranians are supplying arms to Sunnis and training Shiites in a secret camp.

See a pattern here?

Robert Fisk points out another ominous move:

It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades - comprising about 40,000 men - south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful - and potentially aggressive - American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.

Right now it seems that the so-called realists in the Bush administration have the upper hand in regard to Iran. But the steady drumbeat of blame directed at Iran, the constant repetition of the idea that Iran is killing our soldiers, the traffic congestion in the Gulf thanks to the armada of war ships and equipment there, the positioning of US soldiers not far from Iran's border, the covert war already being carried on within Iran by special ops forces--all these keep me feeling very, very nervous about the course the Bush administration may take.

I wish I had as much optimism as Hans Blix, who seems to think that the American people have something to say about issues like making war:

"I don't personally think the US would attack Iran, mainly because people in the United States are tired of military adventures," he said here, where he presented a report on weapons of mass destruction. Blix recognised there were similarities between the period before the Iraq war and the nuclear showdown with Iran, but pointed out there were also "big differences."

Myself, I'm not terribly convinced that there are "big differences." There's one big similarity: Iran, like Iraq, has oil and natural gas reserves, resources that the US needs as we head toward Peak Oil. Iraq was probably but the first in a series of resource wars. Remember that as you weigh the possibility of war with Iran and think, "It would be madness to attack Iran." Indeed it would, but that seems to me no obstacle to an actual attack, not given the "leadership" we have today.

Hersh on Iran and the "redirection" of Middle East policy

Yes, another dreary--and frightening--Iran post. Before or after reading this, provided you can take more stomach-churning news, you might want to sign this petition or go here to take action against this insane plan.

Seymour Hersh has written yet another article detailing ongoing activities already being undertaken by the US in Iran, particularly clandestine activities directed by the office of the Vice President. The "redirection" of American policy in the US seems designed to foment a Sunni-Shiite Cold War:

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public . . . The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

*    *    *    *    *    *

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney.

And that clandestine activity goes back to Iran-Contra. Hersh points out the similarities between the secrecy of the Reagan administration in the Iran-Contra scandal, when the administration tried to fund the Contras illegally through arms sales to--ironically--Iran. Most troubling of all is this:

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.

Congress is being deliberately kept in the dark about clandestine activities--and their funding. According to a former National Security Council aide,

Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”

The key players in such operations don't learn the lessons that people with moral sensibilities wish they would learn; instead, they learn how to better cloak their criminal activities in secrecy. Here's another such instance, which also has a historical parallel:

American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.

Cambodia, anyone? Those of us old enough to remember the Vietnam War will recall, as Chuck Hagel did during Condi's appearance before the Senate in January, that our government lied to us, saying we did not cross over into Cambodia, when in fact we did. Well, it's deja vu all over again ...

While all this clandestine activity goes on outside of Congressional oversight, there's also the public side of our increasingly confrontational actions in regard to Iran. Hersh reports the arrest of hundreds of Iranians in Iraq. According to a former senior intelligence official,

“They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re working these guys and getting information from them. The White House goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been doing it all along—that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans.” The Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by American forces in recent months. But he told me that that total includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up and released in a short time,” after they have been interrogated.

"Working" these guys. "Interrogated." Given US policy, I think we can assume that we're talking about torture here, at least in some cases.

Propaganda about the dangers Iran poses is taking on an increasingly aggressive tone. Just as in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, alarming reports are being circulated about Iran's weapons capability and its nuclear program. Most intelligence experts have said that Iran is five to ten years away from being able to manufacture a nuclear weapon, yet the administration insists repeatedly that this is an imminent threat. We are also being told that Iran now has

a three-stage solid-fuelled intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small warheads—each with limited accuracy—inside Europe.

This information--which comes from Israeli agents working in Iran--is of debatable validity. Israel is desirous of a strike against Iran, so this rumor is, to my mind, questionable and very much in need of verification if we are to take it seriously.

Hersh also says that

a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.       

In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change. [my bold]

Hersh's article has a wider scope than the possibility of war with Iran, discussing administration policies throughout the Middle East and clandestine operations that seek to undermine Shiite governments and groups such as Hezbollah. It's worth reading in its entirety, although here I am interested mainly in what he has to say about the increasing possibility (or probability) of war with Iran. Policy toward Iran, however, cannot be taken out of the context of the administration's sweeping plans for a completely rearranged Middle East. The arrogance, the sheer hubris, of this decision to arrange the entire region according to the desires of a group of neocons is breath-taking--and frightening. They would like nothing better, apparently, than to see the entire region become a conflagration, and if in the process they ensure that the Muslim world interprets US actions as a war on Islam, so be it.

Let's never forget that this is all about the oil, about securing enough oil in the near future:

On Fox News on January 14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, “of a nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world.” [my bold]

For these people, of course, diplomacy is out of the question as a means to ensuring energy security (again, for the near future; Peak Oil is a reality). Endless war is the only solution the neocons can imagine, for to engage in diplomacy is to show weakness. They envision the United States as the sole superpower of the world forever, a mighty empire that will rule the globe and have its way with countries large or small that impede its exertion of power.

That thousands or perhaps millions will die is of no consequence. These are the madmen who are running the show. Why are we allowing them to stay in power?

Take action on Iran

Wes Clark and VoteVets have a new site, StopIranWar, dedicated to preventing a US attack on Iran. Clark:

Yes, it is time for the White House and Congress to exercise leadership, but it is also up to you and me, as Americans, to engage in this dialogue.

At the site, you can send messages to Bush and Congress and write to your local newspaper. Please take a few moments to do so. As Wes Clark says,

Together, we must create a groundswell of activism. It is time for the American people to be heard.

Whatever happens, we have a responsibility to make our position clear. This is the very least we can do.

Plans complete for attacking Iran

Writing in The New Statesman, Dan Plesch reveals just how much military power is being amassed against Iran. It's frightening.

American military operations for a major conventional war with Iran could be implemented any day. They extend far beyond targeting suspect WMD facilities and will enable President Bush to destroy Iran's military, political and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons.

*    *    *    *    *    *

The US army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerised plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).

The Bush administration has made much of sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf. But it is a tiny part of the preparations. Post 9/11, the US navy can put six carriers into battle at a month's notice. Two carriers in the region, the USS John C Stennis and the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, could quickly be joined by three more now at sea: USS Ronald Reagan, USS Harry S Truman and USS Theodore Roosevelt, as well as by USS Nimitz. Each carrier force includes hundreds of cruise missiles.

Then there are the marines . . .

*    *    *    *    *    *

Today, marines have the USS Boxer and USS Bataan carrier forces in the Gulf and probably also the USS Kearsarge and USS Bonhomme Richard. Three others, the USS Peleliu, USS Wasp and USS Iwo Jima, are ready to join them. Earlier this year, HQ staff to manage these forces were moved from Virginia to Bahrain.

There is in place a "Global Strike" plan that means that "any US general planning to attack Iran can now assume that at least 10,000 targets can be hit in a single raid, with warplanes flying from the US or Diego Garcia."

There is no point in Iran more than an hour's flying time from an American base or carrier. Three bases have been built in Azerbaijan; there are also rumors that bases in Bulgaria and Romania could be used in an attack. There may also be in Bulgaria new facilities for refuelling Stealth bombers, which would spearhead any attack on Iran.

Let's not forget that Seymour Hersh's claim last year that special forces were already in Iran conducting secret missions there. Further,

The regime in Tehran has already complained of US- and UK-inspired terror attacks in several Iranian regions where the population opposes the ayatollahs' fanatical policies. Such reports corroborate the American journalist Seymour Hersh's claim that the US military is already engaged in a low-level war with Iran. The fighting is most intense in the Kurdish north where Iran has been firing artillery into Iraq. The US and Iran are already engaged in a low-level proxy war across the Iran-Iraq border.

And that the USAF has been flying an increasing number of aggressive patrols along that border.

All of this indicates that there are those in the Bush administration--including Bush and Cheney themselves--who are setting up situations that make confrontation much more likely.

Is anyone in charge thinking about the carnage? Of the fact that real people will die in such an attack? Does anyone care that the entire infrastructure of Iran will be destroyed? More children orphaned, more human beings killed and maimed?

No, because as Tom Englehardt has written,

The belief in air power's ability to fell regimes and change the political essentials, to bring whole peoples to their knees, is long-lasting and deep-seated. Since well before World War II, we've been living with a belief system in which bombing others, including civilian populations, is a "strategic" thing to do; in which air power can, in relatively swift measure, break the "will" not just of the enemy, but of that enemy's society; and in which air power is the royal path to victory.

Too bad about that collateral damage, eh?

You might want a little refresher on signs of an impending attack on Iran.

Harper's: "War with Iran?"

Check out this series in Harper's by Ken Silverstein, who asks independent analysts, former CIA officers, and members of think tanks whether the US will strike Iran: Part I, Part II, Part III.

What I took away from it is that, to quote Steven Simon,

The danger lies in inadvertent escalation, where a saber-rattling United States and a rattled Iran stumble into a war that neither really wants. An American raid on an Iranian office in Iraq could lead to deaths on both sides and a serious confrontation, or a U.S. cruiser in the Gulf could shoot down an Iranian airliner (as happened in the late 1980s).

My own thoughts are that this nation is now run by morons and sociopaths, people who have no empathy or compassion, who view human beings not as living, breathing creatures but as abstractions on a game board, and who are nakedly ambitious and power-hungry; people who are deluded, mendacious, avaricious, cruel, and utterly without redemption. And moreover, they show a proud ignorance about the world and our place in it.

So I'm thinking a "bring it on" mentality is going to prevail. War it will be.

As always, I end by saying that I sincerely hope I am wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. That would be a good thing.

Watch for signs of impending attack on Iran

Col. Sam Gardiner says that all the pieces for an attack on Iran will be in place by the end of February.

He lists some further steps to watch for that, if taken, will signal that such an attack is in the works:

• government-created propaganda meant to create outrage against Iran
• deployment of European-based missile defense systems to Israel
• additional USAF fighters sent to bases in Iraq and possibly Afghanistan
• some "surge" troops deployed to the Iran border
• USAF tankers moved to unusual places, such as Bulgaria. These will be used to refuel US-based B-2 bombers on their strike mission into Iran.

I'll end this post the way I end most of my posts on Iran: with the fervent hope that such an attack will never come. With the hope that I'm dead wrong on this.