In contrast, some conservatives are arguing that America’s position in Iraq would improve if Iran chose to retaliate there, according to a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon’s civilian leaders, because Iranian interference would divide the Shiites into pro- and anti-Iranian camps, and unify the Kurds and the Sunnis. The Iran hawks in the White House and the State Department, including Elliott Abrams and Michael Doran, both of whom are National Security Council advisers on the Middle East, also have an answer for those who believe that the bombing of Iran would put American soldiers in Iraq at risk, the consultant said. He described the counterargument this way: “Yes, there will be Americans under attack, but they are under attack now.”
Dumbassery? you're soaking in it. Are they kidding? Gee, what would happen if Iran sent hundreds if not thousands of Revolutionary guardsmen into Iraq to create havoc? Err...more dead American troops and Iraqi civilians. And what about the already miserable Iraqi civilians already caught in the crossfire between American troops, insurgents, militias and criminal gangs in Iraq. Screw them, right Elliot? They can wash the horror down with a tall frosty glass of freedom. As long you people get in the history books, right?
It gets worse:
In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace, achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. The huge complex includes large underground facilities built into seventy-five-foot-deep holes in the ground and designed to hold as many as fifty thousand centrifuges. “Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “And Pace stood up to them. Then the world came back: ‘O.K., the nuclear option is politically unacceptable.’ ” At the time, a number of retired officers, including two Army major generals who served in Iraq, Paul Eaton and Charles Swannack, Jr., had begun speaking out against the Administration’s handling of the Iraq war. This period is known to many in the Pentagon as “the April Revolution.”
“An event like this doesn’t get papered over very quickly,” the former official added. “The bad feelings over the nuclear option are still felt. The civilian hierarchy feels extraordinarily betrayed by the brass, and the brass feel they were tricked into it”—the nuclear planning—“by being asked to provide all options in the planning papers.”
We pointed out this scheme to use nukes in Iran on the radio show. These people are bats**t crazy. There is just no other way to describe this. And I wonder how long General Pace had to hold his breath before the White House and the SecDef relented on this issue? The cruel humor of this story is that besides Hersh and the liberal blogs, no one seemed remotely concerned that the whackjobs in the White House wanted to drop a nuke on Iran, based almost soley on their suspicians and their own personal judgement on what is militarily feasible. Aren't these the same jokers who screwed up in Iraq? I didn't dream that right? Hellooo? Beltway media..? Are you out there? The President wants to nuke somebody? Oh, and by the way he hates you and everything you purportedly stand for. Just sayin...
We have said this on the radio show and here ad nauseum. This White House desperately wants to take on Iran. All of this supposed diplomatic manuevering is to exhaust diplomatic options without actually trying to resolve the problem. It's just a fig leaf to cover their real intentions to go after Iran. It doesn't take a whole lot of insight to come to this conclusion. Their failure is Iraq has not made them question their views on any issue. It's been completely rationalized to blame everyone else and to justify doing the same thing on a larger scale.
Hersh noted something very important in this article that is not being talked about near enough:
Qatar is a leading exporter of gas and currently operates several major offshore oil platforms, all of which would be extremely vulnerable. (Nasser bin Hamad M. al-Khalifa, Qatar’s ambassador to Washington, denied that any threats were issued during the Emir’s meetings in Tehran. He told me that it was “a very nice visit.”)
A retired American diplomat, who has experience in the Gulf, confirmed that the Qatari government is “very scared of what America will do” in Iran, and “scared to death” about what Iran would do in response. Iran’s message to the oil-producing Gulf states, the retired diplomat said, has been that it will respond, and “you are on the wrong side of history.”
They are right to be scared to death. Now just imagine the effect of an enormmous shock to the oil and gas markets on our precarious financial situation in this country. Not just the economic effect, but the social chaos and the opportunity it will offer to the eliminationists and the Dominionists.
Sleep well!
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