Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?
Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.
There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after all, but wrong about the timing.
As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report. Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public with the group's conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that country.
That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney's war plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.
It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS Stennis, is steaming toward the Gulf, too. Already in position are three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region "in a display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country." (We've all seen what "displays of force" by the Bush administration actually turn out to be.)
The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker, where the only consideration is not what's good for the country, but what's good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you're losing your war in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush's ppublic support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon's were just before his resignation, and Cheney's numbers have been in the teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it all--and maybe for your heads, too--expanding the conflict and putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive even if desperate gambit.
From the nation's point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S. could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that--an attack.
Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf, together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region, are capable of destroying most of Iran's nuclear facilities, as well as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory, the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.
There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.
Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic leaders--the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week's local elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country's hardliners. Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on to fight to the death to defend their country.
Moreover, while its military may be no match for America's, Iran has many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq, with close links to Iraq's Shia factions, Iran's military has trained and armed the Badr Brigades--the largest and best-armed faction in Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.
Additionally, Iraq's intelligence services have connections with Shia groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US military targets there.
More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran's hundreds of stockpiled anti-ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one quarter of the world's oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.
Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently, there's no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil would do to the U.S. economy--or to the global economy.
Of course, the biggest issue is that attacking Iran would be yet another war crime by this craven administration. No one can argue that Iran poses an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the U.S.--the only legitimate grounds under the U.N. Charter and the Nuremburg Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, for initiating a war. Attacking a country that poses no such threat is defined as the most heinous of war crimes: a Crime Against Peace.
Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006). His writing is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
The "Crime of the Century" has already happened on September 11, 2001. If not for 9/11 there would not be a pending attack on Iran, no attack on Afghanistan or Iraq.
9/11 was the lynch pin. A broad day-light, in-your-face, massive crime committed by elements inside the CIA, NSA, FBI and the White House.
I would have to say that the blatant murder of thousands of American citizens by people within it's own government has to rate as #1 in my book.
by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 1247 comments)
on Saturday, December 23, 2006 at 5:16:22 PM
It is clear, Bush and Fiends do intend to attack Iran.
Iran is merely a cover to get a full blown nuclear war underway and once and for all, destroy the mass of the human race.
Lenin gave as the strategy to his inside followers; get the people to collaborate in their own destruction. That is what our nuclear war fighting criminal elite have succeeded in doing here.
We sit on a 30 minute decision to death by nuclear conflagration, as part of the overall strategy of genocide, more nearly approximating omnicide.
The "ET" want us to exist and thankfully have slowed the march to nuclear destruction and hobbled our nuclear war fighting elite.
When the people awaken to what our nuclear armed primitives have set about doing, that is exterminating us all, it will truly be the end.
Hopefully, the ET will continue to hobble our nuclear war fighting criminal elite.
As this is being written, the "ET" are at Malmstrom nuclear missile launch facility in Montana, and again, "Throwing a mutilated cow."
The "ET" are trying to tell us that our nuclear war fighting criminal elite, are once again attempting to get the extermination of humanity underway.
The question is: "How many of our nuclear war fighting elite have to be retired before the threat that "They," the members of the nuclear war fighting elite, pose to humanity is ended?"
Any help that you can provide to send our nuclear war fighting elite into early retirement is appreciated by all.
.
.
by
Patrick (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 384 comments)
on Saturday, December 23, 2006 at 9:10:13 PM
Nevertheless, here is my 2 cents, for whatever it's worth. When it comes to the Bush administration, I have come to put absolutely nothing past them.
However, I do not expect them to attack without provocation. Unfortunately, that can be all too easily arranged.
The Bushites and their friends in the corporate media have spent much time trying to convince us that Ahmadinejad is a dangerous fruit-cake, as if Bush and Cheney aren't.
According to Scott Ritter, who is head and shoulders above anyone in the Bush administration, when it comes to credibility, has reported that we already have people on the ground in Iran and that the NeoCons will stop at nothing to realize their twisted little PNAC vision of the middle east and central Asia transformed.
I did get some info not long ago, that the Enterprise was about to be de-commissioned. It would be important to know if she is still in the area near Iran.
My worst fear is that one of our carriers will be sunk, either by an over-wrought Iranian authority or by a false flag op.
That one move would paralyze a growing peace movement, which is becoming way too successful for the NeoCons' taste.
Can you imagine? One of our carriers and its crew lying in a watery grave off the shores of Iran? How many Amricans, of any stripe, would even stop to question how such a thing happened?
We have had the "New Pearl Harbor," which was much more horrifying than the last. Are we now going to get the "New Gulf of Tonkin?" If we do, we can all bet that it will be much more horrifying than the last. None of our sailors died as a result of the fabricated Gulf of Tokin incident
Sound paranoid? Who the hell cares, if publishing this suspicion all over the Net can possibly stop them from doing it? It is well worth the ridicule to me. Call me certifiable! I don't give a damn.
No matter how crazy I sound, Bush, Cheney and their NeoCon pals are even crazier. When Joe Scarborough starts questioning the sanity of his preznit, my paranoid, certifiable, little gloves are coming off!
They have too much to lose to put anything past them!
by
wintefire6 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 86 comments)
on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 2:39:58 AM
I don't think we should attack or invade Iran. But what scares me is that the Bush Administration is making the case for doing so. I don't know if any of you heard on NPR or read the Associated Press report on the US Court decision that holds Iran partially responsible for funding the attacks on our troops in Saudia Arabia at the Khobar Towers at the US Airforce base. I have posted the AP article below. Anything is possible with these neocon idealogues. Talking about "Wag the dog" "And it's 1,2,3 what are we fightin' for,Don't ask me I don't give a Damn, next stop is Iran"(to the tune of "Fixin to Die Rag" by Country Joe and the Fish)
Dec. 22, 2006 18:38 | Updated Dec. 22, 2006 21:00
Court blames Iran for US deaths in '96
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON
Talkbacks for this article: 14
The Iranian government is partly to blame for a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The ruling by US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth allows the families of the victims of the Khobar Towers bombing to seek $254 million (€192.5 million) in compensation from the conservative Islamic regime in Tehran.
Though intelligence officials have suspected a link between the Tehran government and the Saudi wing of Hizbullah, which the FBI has accused of carrying out the bombing, Friday's ruling is the first time a branch of the US government has officially blamed Iran for the deaths of Americans in the bombings.
"This court takes note of plaintiffs' courage and steadfastness in pursuing this litigation and their efforts to take action to deter more tragic suffering of innocent Americans at the hands of terrorists," Lamberth wrote. "Their efforts are to be commended."
Lamberth relied heavily on testimony by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who investigated the bombings.
Two Iranian government security agencies and senior members of the Iranian government itself provided funding, training and logistical help to terrorists who carried out the attack on a dormitory that housed US Air Force pilots and staff in Saudi Arabia, Freeh testified.
Lamberth had previously ruled that a survivor of the blast could seek compensation from Iran but Friday's ruling is the first time a court has said Iran was to blame for the deaths. The lawsuit was brought by the families of 17 of the 19 people killed in the attack.
Thaddeus C. Fennig, whose son was killed in the explosion, was pleased by the opinion.
"It shows this is not forgotten," Fennig said. "Once in a while, for some reason or another, this comes up with people and many of them don't even remember it anymore."
by
Trainer12 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 48 comments)
on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 6:19:12 AM
Unfortunately, the drumbeat towards war against Iran is getting louder. It is time for the people rise up and stop this before it starts. Here is what today's NYT says:
U.S. Is Holding Iranians Seized in Raids in Iraq
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By JAMES GLANZ and SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: December 25, 2006
BAGHDAD, Dec. 24 - The American military is holding at least four Iranians in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces, according to senior Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad and Washington.
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The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage » The Bush administration made no public announcement of the politically delicate seizure of the Iranians, though in response to specific questions the White House confirmed Sunday that the Iranians were in custody.
Gordon D. Johndroe, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said two Iranian diplomats were among those initially detained in the raids. The two had papers showing that they were accredited to work in Iraq, and he said they were turned over to the Iraqi authorities and released. He confirmed that a group of other Iranians, including the military officials, remained in custody while an investigation continued, and he said, "We continue to work with the government of Iraq on the status of the detainees."
It was unclear what kind of evidence American officials possessed that the Iranians were planning attacks, and the officials would not identify those being held. One official said that "a lot of material" was seized in the raid, but would not say if it included arms or documents that pointed to planning for attacks. Much of the material was still being examined, the official said.
Nonetheless, the two raids, in central Baghdad, have deeply upset Iraqi government officials, who have been making strenuous efforts to engage Iran on matters of security. At least two of the Iranians were in this country on an invitation extended by Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit to Tehran earlier this month. It was particularly awkward for the Iraqis that one of the raids took place in the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite leaders, who traveled to Washington three weeks ago to meet President Bush.
Over the past four days, the Iraqis and Iranians have engaged in intense behind-the-scenes efforts to secure the release of the remaining detainees. One Iraqi government official said, "The Iranian ambassador has been running around from office to office."
Iraqi leaders appealed to the American military, including to Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American ground commander in Iraq, to release the Iranians, according to an Iraqi politician familiar with the efforts. The debate about what to do next has also engaged officials in the White House and the State Department. The national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, has been fully briefed, officials said, though they would not say what Mr. Bush has been told about the seizure or the identity of the detainees.
A senior Western official in Baghdad said the raids were conducted after American officials received information that the people detained had been involved in attacks on official security forces in Iraq. "We conduct operations against those who threaten Iraqi and coalition forces," the official said. "This was based on information."
A spokesman for Mr. Hakim, who heads a Shiite political party called Sciri, which began as an exile group in Iran that opposed Saddam Hussein, declined to comment. In Tehran, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, had no comment about the case on Sunday other than to say it was under examination.
The action comes at a moment of extraordinary tension in the three-way relationship between the United States, Iran and Iraq. On Saturday, even as American officials were trying to determine the identity of some of the Iranians, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution imposing mild sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has rejected pressure to open talks with Iran about its actions in Iraq.
Much about the raids and the identities of the Iranians remained unclear on Sunday. American officials offered few details. They said that an investigation was under way and that they wanted to give the Iraqi government time to figure out its position. A Bush administration official said the Iranian military officials held in custody were suspected of being members of the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. It has been involved in training members of Hezbollah and other groups that the Americans regard as terrorist organizations.
American and Iraqi officials have long accused Iran of interfering in this country's internal affairs, but have rarely produced evidence. The administration presented last week's arrests as a potential confirmation of the link. Mr. Johndroe said, "We suspect this event validates our claims about Iranian meddling, but we want to finish our investigation of the detained Iranians before characterizing their activities."
He added: "We will be better able to explain what this means about the larger picture after we finish our investigation."
In the raids, the Americans also detained a number of Iraqis. Western and Iraqi officials said that following normal protocol, the two Iranian diplomats were turned over to the Iraqi government after being questioned. The Iraqis, in turn, released them to the Iranian Embassy. An Iraqi official said his government had strained to keep the affair out of the public eye to avoid scuttling the talks with Iran that were now under way.
The raids and arrests were confirmed by at least seven officials and politicians in Baghdad and Washington. Still, the development was being viewed skeptically on Sunday by some Iraqis, who said that they suspected that the timing was intended to reinforce arguments by some in the administration that direct talks with Iran would be futile.
An administration official in Washington disputed that, saying, "When the military conducted the raids, they really didn't know who they were going to find."
The United States is now holding, apparently for the first time, Iranians who it suspects of planning attacks. One senior administration official said, "This is going to be a tense but clarifying moment."
"It's our position that the Iraqis have to seize this opportunity to sort out with the Iranians just what kind of behavior they are going to tolerate," the official said, declining to speak on the record because the details of the raid and investigation were not yet public. "They are going to have to confront the evidence that the Iranians are deeply involved in some of the acts of violence."
The events that led to the arrests of the Iranians began on Thursday, although details are sketchy.
In one raid, which took place around 7 p.m. that day, American forces stopped an official Iranian Embassy car carrying the two Iranian diplomats, one or two Iranian guards and an Iraqi driver. Iraqi officials said that the diplomats had been praying at the Buratha mosque and that when it was stopped, the car was in the Allawi neighborhood, a few minutes from the Iranian Embassy to the west of the Tigris River.
All in the car were detained by the Americans. The mosque's imam, Sheik Jalal al-deen al-Sageir, a member of Parliament from Mr. Hakim's party, said the Iranians had come to pray during the last day of mourning for his mother, who recently died. He said that after the Iranians left, the Iranian Embassy phoned to say that they had not arrived as expected. "We were afraid they were kidnapped," Sheik Sageir said.
But he said he was later informed that the diplomats, whom he said that he did not know well, were in the custody of Americans. "I had nothing to do with that," Sheik Sageir said. "I don't know why the Americans took them."
The predawn raid on Mr. Hakim's compound, on the east side of the Tigris, was perhaps the most startling part of the American operation. The arrests were made inside the house of Hadi al-Ameri, the chairman of the Iraqi Parliament's security committee and leader of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of Mr. Hakim's political party.
Many Shiite political groups are now suspected of having ties to Iran, and Sciri is no exception. Senior party leaders lived in exile in Iran for years plotting the overthrow of Mr. Hussein. Some married Iranians and raised their children there.
Mr. Hakim has emerged as the central Iraqi Shiite who is backing a new bloc made up of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds that would isolate more radical politicians. Americans back the new bloc, and Mr. Hakim traveled to Washington earlier this month to discuss its formation with Mr. Bush. It was not clear how the arrests, embarrassing to Mr. Hakim, would affect those political efforts.
Hiwa Osman, a news media adviser to Mr. Talabani, said, "The president is unhappy with the arrests." .
The politician familiar with the efforts said the Iranians in the compound had been in Iraq for four days. He said Iraqi officials expected that two more of the Iranians would be released soon.
The disagreement will further irritate relations between Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq and his American supporters. The Shiite-led government has begun to chafe under the control of the Americans, pressing for more control of its army and for greater independence from what it says is unilateral American decision making.
The Americans are concerned that the Shiite-led government would not respect the rights of the minority Sunni Arab population, and, in the worst case, would use the largely Shiite security forces as a weapon in this country's deepening sectarian war.
Since the borders opened after the invasion, it has not been uncommon for Iranian pilgrims to visit Iraq. Many come to worship in religious places holy to Shiites.
David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Washington, and Nazila Fathi from Tehran.
by
Trainer12 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 48 comments)
on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 7:38:25 AM
