Asia Times: Pentagon blocked Cheney's attack on Iran

[sabra]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JF10Ak01.html

WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W Bush administration official.

J Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defense Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier "launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran", citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think-tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make "a policy decision about how far the administration would go - what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks".

[OregonBlue]

1. OOPS-guess we posted at same time.

[sabra]

2. literally :-)

[lovuian]

3. There is a war in the Pentagon against Cheney its becoming

very clear...

I admire the Asia Times they are reporting the REAL NEWS
that this jerk is putting America in Nuclear WWIII

[TheDebbieDee]

4. I think this is the real reason the

top AF General and Sec of the AF were forced to resign last week - just my take on things, thoguh.

[OregonBlue]

5. You're probably right. Gates is coming on board with the Cheney plan?

Anything to stay in power. Even risk our troops being destroyed in Iraq.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Good luck, on occupying Iran!

I don't think we would see this leak, if the attack on Iran was going to occur. And I think there are just too many bars to it--China, Russia, the need for it to be a devastating blow (nukes) with potential catastrophe (big catastrophe), the lack of troops to follow up and occupy, 70% of the American people opposed to the Iraq War and wanting it ended--a whopping majority in itself--but 80%-90% opposed to a widened war in the Middle East!

I think the blow is going to come in South America--in the form of U.S. military "support" for secessionist movements (organized, funded, armed by the Bushites) in the oil-rich provinces of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. The 4th Fleet (nukes) has been reconstituted and will be roaming around off the coast of Venezuela by mid-summer. Venezuela and Ecuador control the biggest oil reserves in the western hemisphere; both members of OPEC; both with leftist governments into social justice and using their countries resources to benefit the poor; both recently accused of being "terrorist lovers" (amidst intense, escalated psyops and disinformation); and Bolivia is vulnerable for similar reasons, with a racist white separatist movement in progress in the gas/oil rich eastern provinces. (One province already voted for secession--civil war on the horizon.) The plan is to split off fascist mini-states where the oil is, from these national governments.

Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, recently proposed a South American common defense. Guess why? South America has no enemies--except us, or rather the U.S./Bush Junta.

Donald Rumsfeld is orchestrating this oil war, in my opinion. It has his M.O. (Chaos = opportunity.) And the only interest that he has expressed since "retiring" (that I know of) is this:

"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

Read between the lines - where he urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America. He also demonstrates intimate knowledge of on-going events in Colombia/Venezuela that weekend (and lies about them, of course).