The Next Imperial Lunacy , Super-bully going to Iran (?)

[G_j]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=6039

The Next Imperial Lunacy
Super-bully going to Iran?

by Aseem Shrivastava

The coming months may eliminate the question mark from the title of this article. And American civilization may well end up where Twain wished in his despair that it should.

History returns to haunt in strange ways.

(some important history here)

<snip>
And that is what the shipment of 100 F16-1s to Israel and the stab at Najaf are about. They are meant to provoke Iran’s ruling Sh’iite theocracy into some form of military retaliation, which would give Bush the ideal pretext to attack Iran. There are already murmurs in the media (BBC, for instance) that there are Iranians fighting in Najaf. Hazim al-Shaalan, defense minister in the Iraqi stooge-government declares, "Iranian intrusion has been vast and unprecedented since the establishment of the Iraqi state."

That is also what the global "realignment" of US troops is all about. London’s Financial Times reports this weekend that 70,000 US troops are being asked to move, mostly from Europe. It is ominous when troops stationed in Germany since 1945 are going to be needed elsewhere. Where?

When one considers the history of faked incidents created by the US to start a new war – the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 and blaming it on Spain and the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 for which the North Vietnamese were held responsible, come to mind, not to speak of Saddam himself being lured into Kuwait in 1990 (as the Senate hearings revealed) – it is far from unlikely that Iran will be inveigled into a war.

..more..

also----------------------------
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=6248
Iran October Surprise
----------------------------

[anchorsaweigh7903]

1. Yeah It's Gonna Happen

Early next year by my predictions...The Feds just have to have time to utilize the draft.

[The Night Owl]

2. Bet money on the US attacking Iran before the presidential election.

Betting money on the US attacking Iran before the presidential election is money well spent.

If the presidential race is more or less tied in October, then Bush will launch some kind of safe yet spectacular military operation against Iran. After that, he will sit back and enjoy the spike in presidential popularity that reliably accompanies US military action. In other words, Kerry needs to beat Bush by a fairly wide margin or it is game over for us.

[mikehiggins]

4. Safe but spectacular--you hit that nail right on the head

Only the Bushoids could think in terms like that.

The lunatics really have taken over the asylum.

[jpgray]

5. Well, the public may reject the patriotism transplant this time

No matter how hard the media whore for it.

[The Night Owl]

7. I hope you are right, but what would history tell us?

I hope you are right about the public not falling for October Surprise in the form of a military strike against Iran, but what would history tell us? History would tell us that the public predictably rallies around the president during the opening phases of a military operations, even when that operation is questionable, as was Operation Iraqi Freedom.

:scared:

[jayfish]

9. Nonsense.

There is no such thing as a safe strike on Iran. Iran will hit back and they will hit back hard. No matter what anyone else tells you, they have the capability to do so and have said they would. The United States is not prepared for wars on three fronts. One of them against a well equipped and well trained national military. It would be catastrophic on both sides.

Jay

[The Night Owl]

10. What are you smoking? I want some.

The US has some of the best standoff weapons in the world. What would the Iranian military do against missiles fired from thousands of miles away?

[Sufi Marmot]

12. The Iranian military response is largely irrelevant...

If we strike Iran, we are likely to provoke a shitstorm of Iranian-sponsored terrorism - both in Iraq and elsewhere throughout the world. If the Iranians wanted to they could promote instability in places like Azerbaijan, where we have gas and oil interests (Turkmenistan too...), not to mention the possibility of recurring Hezbollah terrorist activity in Lebanon, etc. Then there are the warlords in Afghanistan with close ties to Iran who are at odds with the Karzai government. Given the countries that Iran borders, it could project chaos outward in about five different directions, all with negative consequences for global stability.

-SM

[jayfish]

14. Um Lets See...

Invade Iraq? Oh... and talk about smoking. What weapon are we going to fire from "thousands of miles away"?

Jay

[The Night Owl]

15. Cruise missiles

The B-52 carries cruise missiles with a range of roughly 3000 KM.

[jayfish]

17. Well, If Your Referring To The...

AGM-86C/D, it has a range of about 650 miles. The AGM-129 has a much longer range but, I believe, it is nuclear only. The problem is that Iran doesn't need anything with that kind of range to hurt US forces. They are right on their doorstep and Iran has a very large compliment of surface-to-surface and anti-ship missile systems that cannot all be accounted for if the US were to strike first. That means that if Iran were to retaliate (which I believe they would) against a US strike the death-toll would be significant. By now the Iranian military knows where all US forces are holed-up in Iraq. Now, don't get me wrong, eventually Iran would be defeated in a conventional conflict, but the damage done to America would be substantial, which brings me back to my original point... there is no safe strike option against Iran.

Jay

[The Night Owl]

18. US Ships can be moved out of range of whatever Iran has to fire at them.

US Ships can be moved out of range of whatever Iran has to fire at them and any kind of Iranian troop incursion into Iraq can be easily repelled from the air. Iranian ground troops would never even get close to American ground troops. Baghdad is a long way from the Iranian border.

You might be right about the range of B-52 cruise missile ordnance, but I could have swore the range was greater. Perhaps I was confusing B-52 cruise missile ordnance with cruise missiles launched from ships. Regardless, 650 miles is still a safe distance to be firing cruise missiles from. I'm not sure what kind of air force the Iranians have, but I would bet it is not formidable.

[jayfish]

20. Iran Has A 50k...

man air-force of which 15,000 are devoted to air-defense. Their air force is comprised of a blend of indigenously produced fighter bombers, newer and not-so-new Russian and Chinese equipment and old/older US equipment. They also produce their own surface-to-air and surface to surface missiles (including anti-ship), artillery, tanks(w/reactive armor), APC's, IFV's and helicopters. I would bet they have also copied the Russians SHTORA-1 main battle tank air-defense system. Iran has claimed that they are nearly autonomous with regards to defense. On paper they also have a formidable air-defense system (including American HAWK systems) but from what I have read it is geared toward defending an attack from the Persian Gulf. They have had time to realign those systems however. The x-factor in all of this is that since they produce so much of their own stuff now we really don't know how capable they are. I have seen some video of their recent exercises and they looked rather capable. Especially their mobile artillery.

Jay

[The Night Owl]

22. Iraq's military was thrown out of Kuwait in roughly 1 month.

In 1991, Iraq's military was considered formidable and yet the US threw it out of Kuwait in roughly 1 month. That was in 1991. American airpower has only gotten much better since then.

Trust me, American warhawks are spoiling for a conventional confrontation against conventional forces because they know they can win that kind of confrontation without heavy losses.

[jayfish]

23. Not The Same...

type of situation at all but I get your point. IMO The US doesn't have the forces to support an operation like Desert Storm. You also have to look at how awful a strategic and tactical planner that Saddam was. Remember too, that Iran has been able to study our tactics, close-up, for over a decade. If I'm thinking like Iran then they must respond to a US attack with force or face a fate similar to Iraq. I think we agree on the basics of this folly we just disagree on the cost.

Jay

[hadrons]

16. Iranian military can do a lot to the 140,000+ U.S. troops in Iraq ...

and they won't stand there like WW2 and fight convential battles, but they'll go the guerilla route and while the U.S. does have a lot of manpower its spread thin ... it could get very ugly for them (not that Chimpy cares, he usually wipes his ass with them - its the fact that the troops thank him for it that's baffling)

[The Night Owl]

19. How will Iranian troops get to Baghdad?

How will Iranian troops get to Baghdad without the US slaughtering them from the air?

[jayfish]

21. Drive. -NT-

Jay

[bemildred]

24. Walk. nt

[agincourt]

3. And I bet the iraqi gov't

is trying to provoke us into a war with Iran to get revenge for past losses.

[Comadreja]

6. Or Syria

Syria is even safer, but I don't think they have that much oil, do they?

[OneBlueSky]

8. this passage pretty well sums things up, I think . . .

"The Americans – and the world – are in the grip of a totalitarian system, asleep to the suicide-bombers manning the White House and the Pentagon. The media is silent or obedient and the Democrat Opposition is pusillanimous and bankrupt in imagination. John Kerry responded to Bush’s provocation the other day by asserting that he would have cast the same Yes vote in Congress that he did in Oct. 2002, to authorize the president to launch a pre-emptive war against Iraq, even if he had known that Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction and posed no real threat to the world. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," Kerry said, adding that he would just have used that power more "effectively." Just like Clinton did during the Sanctions era in Iraq which accounted for the deaths of a million children.

"And the public is too busy looking for jobs or working overtime or getting entertained by Murdoch’s TV shows to come out in the hundreds of thousands to protest yet another war. In any case, Washington has armed itself with plenty of anti-terrorist legislation to prevent such exercise of civil liberties. If not, the National Guard is at hand. Democracy today is just a slogan copyrighted by the White House.

"So it appears that we are likely to see recent history repeat itself in short order. And if the Neo-conservatives perpetrate the belief that it would be a farcical repetition of Iraq, the American public should prepare itself for catastrophic surprises. History shows that savage follies provoke their own nemesis. Even the bills of Iraq will keep coming for a long time.

"Perhaps America is destined to destroy itself, and with it, maybe large parts of the world. Perhaps it has become too diseased in mind and soul to learn from history. Perhaps it has come to cynically accept, as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times did some years back, the heartlessness of its governments’ calculations that there is really no way to retain economic dominance in the world without ruling the entire globe with an iron fist. (The Chinese and the Japanese could, in a few hours, ruin the dollar forever, given how much of the growing US debt of $7.5 trillion they own, and how much the US is able to buy from them – and spend on new weaponry – with the money lent to it. China certainly will not lend money to the US to go to war against itself!) And even that will not last long unless the galloping military costs of empire can be financed by Republican geniuses while giving tax breaks to the rich. Imperial overstretch? No, not merely. Overkill. And capitalist excess."

sad . . . really, really sad . . .

[Pallas180]

11. And how are "they" going to declare war on Iran when the boys and girls

in the army and in the National Guard refuse to resign up - or refuse to
go - since they're coming home and saying "what are we doing there?" -
bitterly.

[LibertyorDeath]

13. Wow

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=6039§ionID=67

I never thought it would all unravel like this in my life time.

If they go after Iran, anything goes all bets are of.

This is insane. I hope Iran has Nukes many more than suspected it's the only thing that will prevent an attack if the perceived pay back is to great.

[G_j]

25. OK, What Can We Do to Prevent This???

ideas?

Not that there is much hope for it, but can Congress do anything?
The IWR does not give Bush the power to attack other countries besides Iraq, if I remember correctly.
I have the feeling though that he wouldn't care about that. He would just say it is part of the same "war".

[Disturbed]

26. Congress has no power.

The Admin. can launch an attack for 20 days without any permission from Congress.

Maybe if I were in power in Iran I would not wait for Israel and the US to attack. Maybe I would fire missles into the Green Zone and a few military bases in Iraq. Fire a few missles onto the Suadi palaces and fire a lot into Israel, esp. the nuke sites, airbase and missle sites. Send planes to destroy any US ships in the area. In other words, strike every place that does the most damage. Iran has more of a case than the US ever had regarding pre-emptive strike. The US has 30,000 Nukes and has been threatening Iran. Why wait to be attacked?

[G_j]

27. and the next stage of that scenario

may well be nukes, as we all know George's God is God of "murder, revenge and retribution".

My question is: is there any way to stop this?