two words: Green Zone. The groundwork has been laid, i.e. it's Iranian rockets being used to attack Green Zone. Of course, who knows who is shooting them. If the Green Zone gets lit up big time one of these nights, unfortunately resulting in serious US casualties, Bush will have the provocation he seeks.
Posted by T2 at April 24, 2008 12:39 PMStarting a war with Iran would be insane (not that this has ever stopped the cheney/bush regime). Here's why: no arab would even need to shoot back. All that would be necessary is for OPEC to say "we will sell no more oil to the US" and our economy would collapse. That is the National Security price for depending on other countries (not particularly friendly ones) for a significant fraction of a vital ewsource.
Posted by jwrjr at April 24, 2008 12:52 PMI'm guessing Cheney is planning massive airstrikes but no ground invasion.
D-day will be late October - just in time to boost McCain.
Posted by myiq2xu at April 24, 2008 12:52 PMSorry, that should read "resource".
Posted by jwrjr at April 24, 2008 12:53 PMjwrjr: We control the Iraqi and Kuwait oil spigots and our good friends the Saudis control another.
Besides, oil shortages are always a windfall blessing for the oil companies.
And drilling in the Arctic will commence immediately, another GOP wetdream come true.
Posted by myiq2xu at April 24, 2008 12:55 PMThe promotion of Bushco creature Petraeus was obvious after Fallon was fired and any ordinary boob could see it coming. Having a compliant lackey stooge at Centcom is essential to Cheney's plans.
Bushco does not care that much about this being an election year, except that it's the last chance for Cheney and the likudnik neocons to "defang" Iran by a massive bombing campaign, which they imagine will somehow advance "democracy" in Iran and make Israel "safer".
That it will be a disaster for our War of Terror is meaningless to them, obviously. Bush has promised that he won't "leave" the Iran "problem" to the next president, whatever that was supposed to mean.
Bushco is breathing quite a bit easier now that the Dems have hopelessly split and McCain is the likely next president. These unexpected domestic politics will likely embolden them to carry out the Iran attack and let president elect Johnny Boy deal with the country and the fallout.
The Bushco militarism game needs a sycophantic general as cover so that they can claim the military "recommended" the attack or came up with the plan. So Petraeus at Centcom is absolutely key here. What will our fine senate Dems do in such unprecedented circumstances, with a criminal adminstration that they know is dying to start a war without Congressional approval?
Putting forward their creature to head Centcom in these circumstances shows the level of utter contempt and disgust that Cheney/Bush have for the Dem Congress. Frankly, it's ridiculous on its face. Does the Congress understand that? Are they willing to say "No fucking way, Cheney"?
Posted by euzoius at April 24, 2008 01:06 PMLets see, Petraeus's first two stars came during the Clinton admin and he's a "Bushco creature". Obviously Democrats saw something in him to grant him those two stars.
Someone's had too much coffee, law off the Starbucks.
Posted by peter at April 24, 2008 01:20 PMno arab would even need to shoot back.
Iranians are Persian, not Arab, fwiw.
Posted by CG at April 24, 2008 01:20 PMclassic CG. The sad part is that most Americans, Bush and McOld notably, don't have any idea of the religio/cultural breakdown of the so-called "Arab" Middle East. This ignorance is one of the key root problems the West has in dealing with this region.
Posted by T2 at April 24, 2008 01:34 PMFive years ago (during the Iraq invasion) GenPet was a young major general, having been promoted to that rank in 2001.
Now he's a four star. And you don't think such rapid promotion it has anything to do with GenPet being the Bushco stooge? He's the King's Fav'rite---a military phenomenon that our country didn't used to have.
As usual, great thinking.
Posted by euzoius at April 24, 2008 01:42 PMThe question of will-they-bomb-Iran-and-if-so-when is certainly pertinent.
One issue to be aware of, though, is that bombing Iran may not go as well as most Americans -- and the Bush administration -- expect. Iran 2008 is not Iraq 2003. Iran had not been effectively disarmed by a 12-year weapons embargo like Iraq had. Yes, Iran only has a $6Billion defense budget, less than 1/100th of the U.S. But unlike the U.S., Iran's military expenditures have been truly focused on defense (no expenditures on super-expensive weapons systems or "information management" like in the Pentagon). Furthermore, Iran has known since 1980 that their likely attacker would be the U.S. and has been preparing for that. Finally, the former USSR and China have been developing anti-US defensive weapons during the past 20 years, and they would love to see them tested by Iran against the U.S.
These relatively inexpensive weapons are designed to sink aircraft carriers and to take out American warjets.
Persian Gulf war games conducted in the early 2000s prior to the Iraq occupation found that Iran could stave off an attack while taking out a large chunk of the US Naval forces in the Gulf.
Now, in a sane world, the Bush administration would have learned from these results and addressed the issues. Unfortunately, this is the same administration that ignored all the advanced warnings about the Iraq occupation. Their response to the lost war game was to dismiss the former US General acting as the leader of the pretend Iranian forces and to change the rules to have the US win.
Any idea how the US population will react if the US bombs Iran and two carriers, with 5000 soldiers each, are sunk?
Posted by Anonny at April 24, 2008 02:09 PMAnd it appears that von Rumsfeld announced GenPet's nomination to MG, which was made by Bush in June 2001. That's what the wiki GenPet biography has up.
Do you just simply make shit up, peter? Or do you intentionally lie?
Posted by euzoius at April 24, 2008 02:13 PMMilitarist USA would demand that any country that did not tamely submit to our bombing the shit out of them be nuked, Anonny.
That would be certain if one of the Sacred Carriers were sunk---that our attack was completely unprovoked and baseless would only deepen our outrage.
Posted by euzoius at April 24, 2008 02:18 PMWe're not gonna attack/invade/bomb Iran.
And the OPEC nations, Saudi Arabia particularly, can not afford to "just turn off the spigot" and not sell any oil to the US. If the United States economy collapses the economies of the entire industrialized world will be fucked as well. Oil is worthless to them unless they're selling it. So they don't have much of an incentive to do anything that's gonna cause a massive decrease in demand.
Posted by snark at April 24, 2008 02:23 PM
Do you just simply make shit up, peter? Or do you intentionally lie?
He intentionally lies... he gets his info from the RNC. I've seen identical sentences from my wingnut sister in Tampa.
Posted by Seven of Six at April 24, 2008 02:31 PMMilitarist USA would demand that any country that did not tamely submit to our bombing the shit out of them be nuked, Anonny.
Aye, there would be many who would argue for that, including 90% of the Bush base. Heck, you can go to TownHall.com today and find articles that propose that now. And Bush/Cheney might just be crazy enough to do that.
But don't expect Iran not to fight back just because of the nuclear threat. They have been preparing and are ready.
Frankly, I don't know what would happen if Bush/Cheney bombed Iran and the US sustained major military losses. Traditionally peoples rally around their leader in time of war, regardless of the circumstance. But the exception is when they have experienced war with seemingly no end in sight, no clear purpose, and no benefit.
Posted by Anonny at April 24, 2008 02:36 PMI think the scenario may be this.
It will be all missiles.
Missiles fired by the US, perhaps first.
Missiles fired by Israel in response to Iranian missiles or Syrian missiles, second.
More missiles fired by the US.
The missiles that will do the most damage are those launched from submarines. We now have Trident missiles with conventional warheads, if I am not mistaken.
We also have some tactical nuclear weapons that could be used by the US Navy from other shipping platforms other than subs.
We also could put into the theater aircraft that could provide both conventional gravy munitions, as well as "lay down" weapons--that would be tactical nuclear weapons deposited level with the surface by aircraft flying at near Mach 1 or at Mach 1 speeds at tree-top level.
It used to be FB-111s did training for this all the way up to the fall of the USSR. There is a book called US Nuclear Weapons by the late Chuck Hansen. It had a series of photos of an FB-111 engaging in practicing this.
They have many options. If the decision is to make large swaths of Iran's industrial base uninhabitable, they won't need ground troops to hold it.
Posted by Troubled American at April 24, 2008 03:21 PMSorry...
"gravy" was meant to be spelled "gravity"
Posted by Troubled American at April 24, 2008 03:22 PMGreat minds think alike....Seven.
So it's one star from Clinton...does that make a big deal? The premise is that A Democrat saw something in him to promote him and Democrats voted to approve the star. And Democrats voted to approve the other three stars too. Sorry Euz, I just figured the path backwards it would have been two.
Posted by peter at April 24, 2008 03:26 PMgravy...ha! real expert. We might as well drop gravy on them. One sunken ship in Hormuz and gas prices will go berserk. Iran has weapons, dummy. All of which can be trained on our forces in Iraq and the Gulf.
Posted by T2 at April 24, 2008 06:27 PMScattered responses lumped together because it takes too long to post separate comments on this glacial dialup connection in a small village on the north coast of Syria:
1. "it's Iranian rockets being used to attack Green Zone."
Who says it's Iranian rockets? The same folks who insisted Saddam had WMD and was having an affair with bin Laden? The same folks who insisted Iran is an emerging nuclear threat?
2. Petraeus is no mere sycophant. He is a very ambitious person whose only real talent is self-promotion - and a big talent it is given his consistent record of failure in Iraq. He reportedly has presidential ambitions, and is working his way toward that goal, perhaps for 2012.
3. "most Americans, Bush and McOld notably, don't have any idea of the religio/cultural breakdown of the so-called "Arab" Middle East. This ignorance is one of the key root problems the West has in dealing with this region."
Most Americans, government officials (not just Bush and McCain, but the entire Bush administration, and most of the State Department, Congress, and Pentagon) have no clue about the religio/cultural or any other breakdown of the Middle East. However, that is not the real problem. The real problem is that most Americans, including most of the anti-war left, and even progressives, have the racist/colonialist "white man's burden" mentality that people in the Middle East are some kind of exotic, primitive, completely incomprehensibly different "other" type of human being whose "way of life" we will never understand. What the overwhelming majority of Americans fail to even imagine is that people in the Middle East are human beings who share the same core values, needs, wants, and emotions as all other human beings, including - yep! - Americans. Imagine how YOU would react in a particular type of situation, and you have a pretty good idea how the majority of Middle Eastern people would react.
4. "Iran had not been effectively disarmed by a 12-year weapons embargo like Iraq had."
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what Iraq was subjected to by the United States (using the U.N. as its pretext) for 12.5 years was not a weapons embargo. It was simply the worst program of economic sanctions and import embargoes in modern history. It was, in effect, a 12.5 year siege on the Iraqi people, and was described by two U.N. Humanitarian Coordinators and the head of WHO in Iraq as genocidal. Weapons embargoes do not result in the deaths in a span of five years of more than half a million children under 5 year from starvation and preventable, treatable diseases. In particular a weapons embargo does not have such an effect in a country in which no one needed to go hungry, and which rightfully claimed to have the finest medical system in the entire region.
Oh, yes, and this "weapons embargo" also included 12.5 years of regular bombings of varied scope and force.
Posted by Shirin at April 25, 2008 12:18 AMNot to put too fine a point on it, but what Iraq was subjected to by the United States (using the U.N. as its pretext) for 12.5 years was not a weapons embargo.
Totally agree -- it was much more than just a weapons embargo. Everything you say is correct.
However, in the context of my post I was simply pointing out that by 2003 Iraq was a nation that was disarmed except for small weapons. We shouldn't expect that Iran would be the same sort of walkover that Iraq was.
Ironically, we used the UN sanctions to disarm the country, then used false claims that Iraq had not disarmed as an excuse to attack and occupy Iraq. As a result you can be sure that no thinking country will voluntarily disarm again -- at least as long as that country has something the US wants.
Posted by Anonny at April 25, 2008 06:55 AMAnonny, I figured you knew that, but had to say something for the benefit of anyone out there who might actually believe it was an arms embargo.
And we agree on everything, including the irony of it all.
Posted by Shirin at April 25, 2008 01:58 PM