Recent reports slithering around the Internets have underscored a third major concern of Bu$hCo: Iran. President Short Attention Span, having made a public relations “success” of Afghanistan, has reduced Iraq into enough chaos to enable American companies to seize the lucrative petroleum and minerals industries, Now he is casting his covetous eyes further afield, because he can feel the cold breath of the 2006 mid-term elections growing closer.
With the ongoing stink from multiple criminal and national security scandals growing stronger each day it’s obviously time to create a new international diversion. After all, there’s just nothing left in the US to occupy our attention, is there?
Recent reports in the German media suggest that the United States may be preparing its allies for an imminent military strike against facilities that are part of Iran's suspected clandestine nuclear weapons program.It's hardly news that US President George Bush refuses to rule out possible military action against Iran if Tehran continues to pursue its controversial nuclear ambitions. But in Germany, speculation is mounting that Washington is preparing to carry out air strikes against suspected Iranian nuclear sites perhaps even as soon as early 2006.
The neocons and Bu$hCo are faced with two attractive strategic targets: Syria and Iran. The underlying philosophy is to subdue the fractious Muslim Middle East in order to ensure peace and safety for Israel under a sub rosa military partnership. The primary economic goal of course is American control of all that oil. And while that goal might be good for the short-term US economic interests, it creates the danger of increased strife both in that region and throughout the rest of the world, as world-wide Muslim populations will react badly to yet another American attack on a co-religionist country.
Today’s English language Der Spiegel has a teaser article about how and why Iran is in the cross-hairs. (Part quoted above.)
[A] German wire service also quotes a high-ranking German military official saying: "I would be very surprised if the Americans, in the mid-term, didn't take advantage of the opportunity delivered by Tehran. The Americans have to attack Iran before the country can develop nuclear weapons. After that would be too late."
While the military official (rumored to be the Chef des Heeresamt- Army Chief of Staff) is speaking behind his hand, he’s bringing out the most important point: Iran’s Air Force can’t hold off the American AF, but they have a standing Army of over 350,000, and it is expected that Army would once again be supported by hundreds of thousands of civilian “volunteer martyrs” as was seen in the protracted Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s.
Recent visits of high American officials to Turkey would seem to support this theory. The new CIA Director, Porter Goss, visited Ankara recently and it was reported that he visited with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and several Turkish military and intelligence leaders. It has also been reported in several papers that Goss gave the Turks several intelligence folders containing verification of Iran’s intent to produce nuclear weaponry in the very near future, willingness to use them.
Well, we’ve been here before. I’ve seen this movie.
Remember, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a religious firebrand, was recently quoted describing the Holocaust as a”myth,” and calling for it to be “wiped off the map.” That’s enough to get Israel’s attention, and to pull the strings of the PNAC crowd, whose unstated motto is that Israel must be defended to the last American.
There’s much more in the “Der Spiegel” article, which contains quite a few familiar clues. It’s worth a careful read.
Comments
Air strikes. Yeah right. All air strikes are going to result in is going to be a declaration of war against the United States and the crossing of the Iranian Army into Iraq to fight U.S. soldiers there. It's as if the Bushevics *WANT* an enlarged war. Maybe this is how they intend to drum up sufficient support to get a draft passed by Congress... or something.
This is Karl Rove or Dick Cheney's doing. Has to be. Those two corpulent bodies of pure evil *want* chaos in the Middle East for their own selfish reasons that have nothing to do with America and Americans.
As for why this is sheer lunacy: any ships we have in the Persian Gulf are basically going to be decorating the bottom because Iran has thousands of Chinese anti-ship missiles and high ground to fire them down onto the Persian Gulf from. Iran has a population of close to 90 million, of whom around 30 million are military-age males, and has an active firearms industry that stamps out AK-47's, RPG's, and ammunition for them like mad, so it has enough guns and ammunition for all of those people, making it basically impossible to conquer Iran except via genocide that would be so horrible that the world would be forced to look up and take action. And Iran has Chinese support, because most of Iran's oil is going to China right now and China *needs* that oil (Iran is their single biggest supplier). See, e.g., http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3970855.stm for ties between Iran and China. And probably 1/4th of the U.S. economy is reliant upon China right now -- far more upon China than the Chinese rely on us (the Chinese take our dollars for Chinese exports, then use those dollars to buy stuff from other countries). Not to mention that Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are all right there, and probably 1/2 of the U.S. economy is reliant upon those three places, as well as over 1/2 of the U.S. deficit being funded from those places. Federal budget deficits are unsustainable if China takes out those three countries or pressures them to cease buying Treasuries.
In short, it's all sheer lunacy, at least for America and Americans. Rove, of course, doesn't care -- he just cares about getting his Busheviks in power. Cheney, of course, doesn't care -- he just cares about getting his greedy little hands on more "reconstruction" contracts and oil fields. But that doesn't make it any less lunacy.
- Badtux the Lunacy-recognizing Penguin
I agree with a lot of what you write. Despite the excellence of our naval electronic and hardware countermeasures, I have a feeling our ships would have a hard time even with a 24 hour air umbrella. There are linmited places where such missles can be located and our Navy can read maps too, and yet, I think some missles might get through.......
The point about China is very realistic. In the long-term, China is the logical antagonist, because of the strength of its economy, and most modern wars (at least) have an economic basis. They will be a strong economic competitor in a short while.
And don't forget China holds about 31% of our current national debt, and these guys have to go back to the well once again in a few months.
I disagree about the draft, though. Starting up a draft system for infantry requires a lead time of about a year. You can field an Army of rifle-bearing bodies much faster than that. Iran proved that during the 8 year war she fought with Iraq in the 1980s. But our Army has a much larger technical component than Iran did then, or even China has now. And our Army's technological edge has been severely blunted in Iraq. Hell, we can't even supply enough armored vehicles for an Army of 130,000. How could we do the same for an Army of 500,000?
It's a problem in regional operational art, with a dash of global strategy and a teaspoon of economic imperitaves thrown in for flavoring.
We have plenty of armored vehicles in the "ready" reserves. Hell, we have over a thousand M1's (the old ones with the 105mm main gun, not even upgraded to M1A1) sitting in ready reserves. Thing is, they're obsolete. Same deal with M-16's. We still have all the M-16's made for Vietnam sitting in ready reserves somewhere, over a million of them. They're obsolete, but they still shoot. As for the high tech component, technology wins battles, but technology doesn't win wars. Boots on the ground do that. All the high tech weaponry we used in Vietnam was, in the end, futile because we never had enough boots on the ground there to actually occupy land. Yeah, there were over 500,000 American soldiers in Vietnam at the peak, but only around 50,000 combat troops -- the rest were support, airheads, waterheads, whatever. So sure, we could beat the NVA or VC anytime we met them in battle, but all they had to do was slither off and come back again another day, and there wasn't anything we could do about it because we simply did not have the boots on the ground. (As an aside, we have about as many combat troops in Iraq now as we did in Vietnam at its peak, roughly half the combat troops in the entire U.S. Army and usable National Guard are in Iraq at any given time, and they're no more enough in Iraq than they were in Vietnam).
Remember, we had a 18-division Army only 25 years ago. All that equipment didn't vanish. President Cheney's oil is in jeopardy due to insufficient boots on the ground, and expanding to an 18 division Army again via a volunteer army isn't going to happen because we can't afford it -- it's *hard* to get people to volunteer to get shot at for the benefit of President Cheney's pocketbook. Maneuvering things so that we're in an actual shooting war with an actual regional power is probably the only way President Cheney is ever going to get a draft and enough boots on the ground to secure his oil. And the fact that it'd take a year to fully train eight new divisions is irrelevant, because the goal would not be to defeat Iran, but, rather, to secure Iraq's oil.
- Badtux the Cynical Penguin
Any air attack upon Iranian nuclear facilities would have to be preceeded by suppressing their coastal defences. Plans have already been drawn up for this situation. Small A teams have been in Iran for years and have pinpointed assets and targets. One massive strike against shore missle sites followed by stealth and cruise missle atacks upon these nuke making facilities would render Iran impotent.
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