Is Bush planning an attack on Iran in March?

[Guest David Guyatt]

Yes Peter, cancer too.

[Mark Stapleton]

An important and terrifying article on the potential consquences of US-Israeli bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran:

Consider the Consequences of Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Power Plants, and Pray

by Floyd Rudmin

Global Research, April 29, 2008

The US government has recently increased the belligerence of its tone towards Iran.

A string of reports in a variety of newspapers suggest war is on the way: the Mail & Guardian April 1, the Rutland Herald April 4, the Telegraph April 7, the International Herald Tribune April 11, the Washington Post April 12, the Washington Times April 16, the Progressive April 24, the Santa Monica Mirror April 24, Asia Times April 25, the International Herald Tribune April 25, the Toronto Star April 25, the Christian Science Monitor April 25, the Washington Post April 26, the Washington Times April 26, First Post April 26, Los Angeles Times April 26, the Washington Times April 26, and the Telegraph April 26.

Two offensive aircraft carriers fleets are now on station near Iran and another is reportedly en route. In late March, Saudi Arabia practiced how it will cope with nuclear fallout following a US attack on Iran. In early April, Israel practiced how it will cope with retaliatory missiles following a US attack on Iran. Everyone in the region is getting ready for the bombing of Iran’s nuclear power plant and enrichment facilities. Iran, too, is ready for war.

The US is said to have 10,000 targets in Iran. Primary among these are all nuclear facilities, including the nuclear power plant at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast near Kuwait, and the nuclear enrichment facilities in Natanz near Esfahan. Bushehr is an industrial city, with nearly 1 million residents. As many as 70,000 foreign engineers work in the region, which includes a large gas field. Natanz is Iran’s primary enrichment site, north of Esfahan, which also has nuclear research facilities. Esfahan is a world heritage city with a population of 2 million.

Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor has 82 tons of enriched uranium (U235) now loaded into it, according to Israeli and Chinese news reports. The plant is scheduled to become operational this summer, producing electricity. The Natanz enrichment facility is operating a full capacity, enriching uranium for use in reactors according to IAEA reports.

According to the Center for Disease Control, the uranium 235 used in nuclear reactors has a half life of 700 million years. As nuclear reactor fuel is used, it turns into uranium 238, which has a half life of 4.5 billion years. These radioactive isotopes are dangerous to health because they emit alpha particles and because they are chemically toxic. When inhaled, they damage lung tissue. When ingested, they damage kidneys and cause cancer in bones and in liver tissues. According to a recent review of medical research, uranium exposure causes babies to be deformed or born dead.

Never in history has it happened that nuclear power plants and nuclear enrichment facilities have been deliberately bombed. Such facilities, everywhere in the world, operate under severe safety conditions because the release of radioactive materials is deadly, immediately and also long after exposure. If the USA or Israel deliberately bomb a fully fueled nuclear power plant or nuclear fuel enrichment facilities, containment will be breached; radioactive elements will be released into the environment. There will be horrific deaths for families in the surrounding vicinity. The Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated 3 million deaths would result in 3 weeks from bombing the nuclear enrichment facilities near Esfahan, and the contamination would cover Afghanistan, Pakistan, all the way to India.

Reactors and enrichment facilities are built of extra strong concrete, often with multiple layers of containment domes, often built underground. Bombing such facilities will require powerful explosives, earth penetrator war heads, maybe nuclear warheads. The explosions will blow the contamination high into the atmosphere. Where will it go is a question that is difficult to predict.

During the January 1991 Gulf War, many oil wells in Kuwait were set afire. According to the US State Department, “black rains were reported in Turkey, and black snow fell in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains”. The radioactive plumes from bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would reach the same destinations, in the same weather conditions. But the radioactive plume might go north, into Europe. During the March 2003 invasion of Iraq by the USA, UK, Australia, and others, armour piercing shells and bombs tipped with depleted uranium (U238) were used. It took 9 days for uranium particles from these weapons in Iraq to reach England, where air sample filters showed a 300% increase in uranium particles attributable to the war. The weather patterns at the time that carried the particles to England passed over central Turkey, the Ukraine, Austria, Poland, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, to England, then over Norway and Finland to the Arctic. This was reported by The Times, summarizing a study in European Biology and Bioelectromagnetics.

The nuclear fallout from bombing Iran will have a half life of 700 million years. That is a duration difficult to comprehend. Jesus Christ was preaching a mere 2 thousand years ago. In the evolution of humans, our earliest ape-like ancestors were walking upright a mere 5 million years ago. The Bush administration and its Israeli advisors are now planning to contaminate the planet for 700 million years. From the rhetoric of Presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, they, too, think that is a good idea. The US media seem to applaud.

Either Americans do not understand what it is they are preparing to do, or they think themselves immune to the consequences. The planet is not large. What goes around, comes around. Smoke from the Gulf War oil fires went around the world and was detected in South America. Radioactive fallout from bombing a nuclear reactor will also go far, especially considering that it has millions of years to make the trip.

The Persian Gulf nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran have more than half the world’s known oil reserves. The 1981 study by Fetter and Tsipis in Scientific American on “Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity” estimated that bombing a nuclear reactor would cause 8600 square miles around the reactor to be uninhabitable, depending on which way the wind blows. Bombing the Bushehr reactor will mean half of the world’s oil is instantly inaccessible. Bombing Iran means that Americans will not be driving cars any where, any more, for a long, long time. The American Way of Life will be finished. An economic collapse unimagined by Americans will follow. Mechanized farming and food transport will be finished. Famine is a possibility. Food riots are a certainty, in the land of plenty, with the fuel gauge on empty.

The nations of the world cannot rely on the USA and its Israeli advisors to be rational about bombing reactors. It is insane to say, “All options are on the table”, and it is a crime against humanity. The USA and Israel are preparing the public to accept such insanity by announcing that they successfully bombed a Syrian nuclear reactor, with no ill effects. Israel has also recently released video of its 1981 bombing of the Osiraq nuclear reactor in Iraq. See, it’s easy. Nothing bad happens. But those were both construction sites, not loaded reactors full of tons of enriched uranium.

Peoples and governments in the Persian Gulf, in the Middle East, in Europe, and down wind in India and China need to take effective actions now to stop this insanity. Once radiation is released, UN resolutions cannot put it back in containment.

Americans with family and friends serving in the military forces in the Persian Gulf, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan need to wonder how expendable the Bush administration considers them to be.

The planet pleads, “Do not bomb nuclear reactors”.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=8839

Terrifying.

The US/Israel axis is prepared to risk global contamination to destroy Iran's nuclear capability. In other words, habitability of the planet itself has been demoted to collateral status. They've lost their minds.

[Mark Stapleton]

Ffs! Gulf of Tonkin here we come.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/W...n0105_05_01.asp

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Second carrier group deployed to Gulf as U.S. approves plans for Iran counterstrike

LONDON — The U.S. military has drafted and won approval for attack plans ir response to an Iran attack.

Western diplomatic sources said the U.S. military's Central Command has submitted plans for an air and naval strike on Iran. The sources said the plan envisioned escalating tensions that would peak with an Iranian-inspired insurgency strike against U.S. military assets in the Gulf.

Meanwhile, on April 29, a second American aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, steamed into the Gulf in what officials termed a show of force. They said the U.S. Navy plans to withdraw a carrier group, USS Harry S. Truman, from the region.

"There is tremendous tactical benefit to us to operate the two side-by-side in restricted space," Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Wednesday. "We can generate more sorties, some of them strike, some of them reconnaissance, some of them to perform other operations."

"This is not some grand scheme to destroy the Iranian regime and its nuclear program," a source said. "It is a practical plan on how to respond to an Iranian strike or a provocation."

Officials said the Defense Department has sought an update for plans to attack Iran amid what they term its "increasingly hostile role" against the United States. The officials cited the weapons flow to insurgency groups in Iraq as well as confrontations with U.S. ships in the Gulf.

"I have reserve capability, in particular our navy and our air force so it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said.

Under the plan approved by the Defense Department, Central Command would be allowed to retaliate for an Iranian attack with U.S. air strikes. The sources said the plan contained a series of options that range from a limited to full-scale attack.

"We are not taking any military elements off the table," Mullen said.

The most comprehensive retaliation would target all Iranian military assets in the Gulf. The sources said the aim of Central Command was to prevent any Iranian attempt to block the Straits of Hormuz, the passage of 40 percent of global oil.

In the second stage, the U.S. Navy and Air Force would strike missile centers and command and control facilities deep in Iran. Much of the strikes would be conducted from the two U.S. Navy carrier strike groups in the Gulf.

If the second stage of the plan is implemented, the sources said, the U.S. military would also target Iran's nuclear weapons program. The sources said all major facilities, including Arak, Bushehr and Isfahan, would be destroyed.

The sources said the Pentagon has not approved a Centcom option to initiate a U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear program. They said that at this point the Pentagon was concern with protecting the huge U.S. Navy presence in the Gulf.

"I believe recent events, especially the Basra operation, have revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability," Mullen said.

Thanks for that post, Jan.

'Western diplomats' and 'Defence Department Officials' kiss my arse.

It's blatant provocation with a desire for war.

America is not fooling anyone except the gullible.

[Len Colby]

This thread started in late 2006. Imminent war with or an attack on Iran was predicted by several members of this forum citing such luminaries as Scott Ritter among others. Early on I expressed my doubts. The "March" referred to in the title was March 2007. But that month came and went and there was no attack, but the dire predictions that one was imminent continued. Then 2007 came to an end and there was still no attack, but the predictions continued. Now March 2008 has come and gone and there hasn't been an attack but several members of this forum citing such luminaries as Scott Ritter among others continue to predict war with or an attack on Iran is imminent and I still have my doubts.

At this point I think the US (or Israel) going to war with Iran is extremely unlikely. An attack on her nuclear facilities though not quite as hard to conceive seems unlikely as well. Limited attacks on other military assets, hard to say Time will tell.

[Steve Mcdonagh]

Interesting Peter and I sincerely hope you are right Len, but I am personally a little concerned though: Bush met Putin not so long ago, Russian troop build on the Georgian border, second US battle fleet moves into the Gulf - Is it possible that Bush sold a deal to Putin?

[Douglas Caddy]

This thread started in late 2006. Imminent war with or an attack on Iran was predicted by several members of this forum citing such luminaries as Scott Ritter among others. Early on I expressed my doubts. The "March" referred to in the title was March 2007. But that month came and went and there was no attack, but the dire predictions that one was imminent continued. Then 2007 came to an end and there was still no attack, but the predictions continued. Now March 2008 has come and gone and there hasn't been an attack but several members of this forum citing such luminaries as Scott Ritter among others continue to predict war with or an attack on Iran is imminent and I still have my doubts.

At this point I think the US (or Israel) going to war with Iran is extremely unlikely. An attack on her nuclear facilities though not quite as hard to conceive seems unlikely as well. Limited attacks on other military assets, hard to say Time will tell.

'Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term'

JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST May. 20, 2008

US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran in the upcoming months, before the end of his term, Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem as saying Tuesday.

The official claimed that a senior member of the president's entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for.

However, the official continued, "the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic, for the time being.

The report stated that according to assessments in Israel, recent turmoil in Lebanon, where Hizbullah de facto established control of the country, was advancing an American attack.

Bush, the officials said, opined that Hizbullah's show of strength was evidence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's growing influence. They said that according to Bush, "the disease must be treated - not its symptoms."

In an address to the Knesset during his visit here last week, Bush said that "the president of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages."

"America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions," Bush said. "Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668683139&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[Maggie Hansen]

I haven't seen this in the local MSM yet but it is all over the Iranian media. Is this the Gulf of Tonkin we have been expecting?

From the 18th May

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=168823

Iran busts CIA terror network

Tehran Times Political Desk

TEHRAN - The Intelligence Ministry on Saturday released details of the detection and dismantling of a terrorist network affiliated to the United States.

In a coordinated operation on May 7, Iranian intelligence agents arrested the terrorist network’s members, who were identified in Fars, Khuzestan, Gilan, West Azerbaijan, and Tehran provinces, the Intelligence Ministry announcement said.

The group’s plans were devised in the U.S., according to the announcement, which added that they had planned to carry out a number of acts such as bombing scientific, educational, and religious centers, shooting people, and making public places in various cities insecure.

One of the terrorists was killed in the operation, but the rest are in detention, the Intelligence Ministry said, adding that the group’s main objective was to create fear among the people.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency comprehensively supported the terrorist group by arming it, training its members, and sponsoring its inhumane activities in Iran, the Intelligence Ministry stated.

The terrorists had maps, films, pictures, and sketches of important and sensitive sites in various cities in their possession when they were arrested.

They also had a large number of weapons and ammunition and a great deal of highly explosive chemicals and cyanide.

The blast at a religious center in Shiraz last month was carried out by this group, and it also had plans to carry out similar attacks on the Tehran International Book Fair, the Russian Consulate in Gilan Province, oil pipelines in southern Iran, and other targets, the communiqué stated.

Thirteen people were killed and over 190 others wounded in a bombing carried out on April 12 at the Rahpuyan-e Vessal religious center, which is part of the Seyyed-ul-Shohada Mosque complex, located in a residential area of Shiraz.

Edited May 22, 2008 by Maggie Hansen

[William Kelly]

This just in.

From the University of Cario comes a report that Rep. John Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a threatening letter to President Bush notifying him that if he invades Iran he will initiate Impeach proceedings.

Conyers, whose Judiciary Committee is sitting on Rep. Kuchnick's Articles of Impeachment (Some of them written by COPA director John Judge), has previously publicly threatened to initiate impeachment proceedings, but now, with Kuchnick's hammer, he has the power to do so.

Writing in the Al Ahram Weekly, Political Science Professor Hassan Naffa writes from the Arab perspective.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/903/op2.htm

which includes the following, at the very end:

For the foregoing reasons we can not rule out the possibility that current attempts to calm down tensions along the arc of Middle Eastern crises is, in fact, only prelude to a blanket offensive that has been on the drawing boards for some time. This conclusion is supported by several serious political analyses that I have come across recently and that concur on two essential points. The first is that Israel no longer trusts in the ability of diplomatic means to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and, therefore, insists that other means -- principally military -- be brought to bear before the end of Bush's term in office.

Bush, of course, is totally sympathetic and ready to be of service, as Chris Hedges warns in his article "The Iran Trap" appearing on Truthdig.org 8 June. Among other evidence pointing in that direction, Hedges cites the letter by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers to President Bush threatening to open impeachment proceedings if Bush attacked Iran.

Conyers, in that letter, points to the resignation of Admiral William J Fallon -- reportedly the only person who could have forestalled a US "pre- emptive" strike -- from the head of US Central Command as an indication that the Bush administration was unilaterally planning for military action against that country.

The second point of agreement is that Iran possesses many powerful deterrents that would make a military attack against it a stroke of madness. But then, who is to say Bush is not mad? I personally fear that Bush could be driven by his megalomania and his fundamentalist creed to bring on Armageddon.

* The writer is a professor of political science at Cairo University.

Here's a link to the original column by Hedges:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080608_the_iran_trap/

And the part referenced:

....House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, in a letter to President Bush on May 8, threatened to open impeachment proceedings if Bush attacked Iran. The letter is a signal that planning for strikes on Iran is under way and pronounced.

“Our concerns in this area have been heightened by more recent events,” Conyers wrote. “The resignation in mid-March of Admiral William J. ‘Fox’ Fallon from the head of U.S. Central Command, which was reportedly linked to a magazine article that portrayed him as the only person who might stop your Administration from waging preemptive war against Iran, has renewed widespread concerns that your Administration is unilaterally planning for military action against that country. This is despite the fact that the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, a stark reversal of previous Administration assessments.”

Edited June 27, 2008 by William Kelly

[Guest David Guyatt]

Bill, as a serious threat, how does Conyers letter to Bush rate? Would there be sufficient momentum in the House to support the proceedings or is it a threat that could not be backed up effectively. In other words is it something Bush can safely ignore, or must take most seriously?

David

[William Kelly]

Bill, as a serious threat, how does Conyers letter to Bush rate? Would there be sufficient momentum in the House to support the proceedings or is it a threat that could not be backed up effectively. In other words is it something Bush can safely ignore, or must take most seriously?

David

Well, there are those, like Kuchnick and John Judge, who would like Conyers to bring the Impeachment Articles out of Committee and onto the floor of the House immediately.

If Conyers is going to wait until Bush invades Iran, then it might not ever happen.

If Bush wants to invade Iran during the last hours of his watch, he won't care about being impeached.

The way impeachment works, if I remember correctly, the Judiciary Committee must vote first, then the House of Reps, and if the measures pass both, then it goes to the Senate for the proceedings.

If Conyers isn't going to let it out of Committee, like he sat on the Cheney impeachment, then it won't ever happen.

BK

[Mark Stapleton]

Bill, as a serious threat, how does Conyers letter to Bush rate? Would there be sufficient momentum in the House to support the proceedings or is it a threat that could not be backed up effectively. In other words is it something Bush can safely ignore, or must take most seriously?

David

Well, there are those, like Kuchnick and John Judge, who would like Conyers to bring the Impeachment Articles out of Committee and onto the floor of the House immediately.

If Conyers is going to wait until Bush invades Iran, then it might not ever happen.

If Bush wants to invade Iran during the last hours of his watch, he won't care about being impeached.

The way impeachment works, if I remember correctly, the Judiciary Committee must vote first, then the House of Reps, and if the measures pass both, then it goes to the Senate for the proceedings.

If Conyers isn't going to let it out of Committee, like he sat on the Cheney impeachment, then it won't ever happen.

BK

Bill,

What do the articles say about impeachment if Israel attacks Iran, while America stands watch?

[Len Colby]

Bill, as a serious threat, how does Conyers letter to Bush rate? Would there be sufficient momentum in the House to support the proceedings or is it a threat that could not be backed up effectively. In other words is it something Bush can safely ignore, or must take most seriously?

David

Well, there are those, like Kuchnick and John Judge, who would like Conyers to bring the Impeachment Articles out of Committee and onto the floor of the House immediately.

If Conyers is going to wait until Bush invades Iran, then it might not ever happen.

If Bush wants to invade Iran during the last hours of his watch, he won't care about being impeached.

The way impeachment works, if I remember correctly, the Judiciary Committee must vote first, then the House of Reps, and if the measures pass both, then it goes to the Senate for the proceedings.

If Conyers isn't going to let it out of Committee, like he sat on the Cheney impeachment, then it won't ever happen.

BK

Though I think Bush isn't crazy enough to attack Iran if I'm wrong I agree with Bill that Conyer's threat is unlikely to dissuade him. The process takes awhile and even if he is impeached a 2/3 majority in the Senate would be needed to convict (remove) him. Presuming all senators would vote, even if all 51 Democrats voted in favor they would need 16 Republicans as well.

Clinton showed that being impeached but not convicted is a mild (but livable) embarrassment for a president. People who supported or opposed him before are unlikely to change their views.

[John Simkin]

Seymour Hersh was interviewed on C4 this week. He claimed that if it looked like John McCain was going to get beaten by Barack Obama it is likely that George Bush will order an air attack on Iran. The theory is that this will help McCain beat Obama in November.

Leaders of the Tory Party are arguing that they will support this attack because if the US does not do it, Israel will, and that this will lead to war in the Middle-East.

[William Kelly]

Seymour Hersh was interviewed on C4 this week. He claimed that if it looked like John McCain was going to get beaten by Barack Obama it is likely that George Bush will order an air attack on Iran. The theory is that this will help McCain beat Obama in November.

Leaders of the Tory Party are arguing that they will support this attack because if the US does not do it, Israel will, and that this will lead to war in the Middle-East.

Seymour Hersh also reported that Adml. William Fallon told him it wasn't the threats to Iran that led him to resign, but being told that he wasn't cleared to learn about certain covert operations being conducted in his theater of operations.

Fallon, BTW, has taken on a one year sabatical? at MIT Center for Strategic Studies.

Here's another take on the situation that cuts to the bone.

http://www.swvatoday.com/comments/a_mounta...th/sports/3036/

A MOUNTAIN VIEW: On

cherry trees and truth

By LIZA FIELD/Columnist

Out beyond ideas

of who is right or wrong,

there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

--Rumi

Last year's cherry blossoms got frozen, so the branches were bare of fruit last July.

Maybe that's why this year's heavy, dark thunderstorms of cherries seemed especially jubilant and divine, dangling whole clumps of wildly-sweet, from-Heaven's-kitchen fruits over the road banks.

So I wrote the notes for this column on foot one evening, with sticky finger-webs, feeling the steep contrast between the beautiful, holy world God created and the rubble to which—it appeared from the breaking news—one bellicose leader seemed willing to risk reducing our globe.

I also remembered that earliest American urban legend, about our first President George fessing up, as a child, to chopping down his father's cherry tree, because he preferred honesty to self-preservation, transparency to deceit.

What a contrast that legend posed to the day's breaking news, July 1, and the hour-long radio interview I was listening to, with investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.

Hersh, who has probably done the most to expose Dick Cheney's various attempts to provoke war with Iran, has now uncovered a Cheney strategy that all Americans need to notice, even back here in the poky, far-from-the-Beltway mountains. As one Libertarian blogger commented, if we don't use our freedom to notice our Administration's plans for America's future, we'll be forced to notice them when we've lost any freedom to object.

Not that we've had much freedom to object, I realized when I read Hersh's extensive article in the New Yorker and Bush's official, backpedaling response to the spilled beans.

Hersh reports that Bush asked Congress for $400 million, in late 2007, for a major escalation of covert operations in Iran. Both Republican and Democratic House leaders in the "Gang of Eight" reluctantly conceded to the President, Hersh learned, because in the upcoming election year, nobody wanted to look "soft on terror."

What does that mean?

A) You didn't have any say in it, and the congressional members who did acted on political self-preservation, not truth. But then, not even they knew what "covert operations" we'd be paying the tab for.

Now we all do. Our tax dollars are being handed to subversives in Iran, by covert operatives largely unfamiliar with the culture, who've been sent in to fund terrorist activities.

These organizations include Buluchis—Sunni fundamentalists whom "you can describe as Al Qaeda," Robert Baer, a former CIA clandestine officer, told Hersh. "These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers."

Then there are the Jundallah, who claimed responsibility for bombing a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in early 2007. Vali Nasr, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, describes the group as "a vicious Salafi organization suspected of links to Al Qaeda. They are also thought to be tied to the drug culture."

Why did Cheney devise a way (and a Democratic House leadership approve it) to fund terrorism in Iran with your money? Did we really have so few needs among our stretched-thin military, or back here at home, that we had to hand out millions to terrorists?

C) Cheney wants to fund dissident groups because he'd like to anger Iran's leadership enough to provoke any attack that would provide a casus belli (case for war) against Iran. Earlier, Cheney promoted "Iran's nuclear ambitions" as his excuse for war, but the National Intelligence Estimate concluded in December that Iran had abandoned any nuclear weapon ambitions in 2003.

Cheney then hoped the brief standoff in January, between U.S. navy ships and Iranian patrol boats, would provide the excuse. But Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff quickly defused the situation and, in fact, reported that it was not the serious incident Bush had publicly declared it. Cosgriff's remarks angered Cheney, a former intelligence official told Hersh, but what could Cheney do?

So the Vice President needs a new incident—and fast, within the next six months, because he figures John McCain will not have the "courage" to strike Iran, and Obama has called for diplomacy before any military action.

Cheney's covert operations have alarmed military leaders and those in the intelligence community, because he's leaving them (like us) in the dark, ignoring their advice and circumventing the chain of command.

Retired Marine General Jack Sheehan told Hersh, "The coherence of military strategy is being eroded. If you have small groups conducting military operations outside the knowledge of the combatant commander, you can't have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq."

Admiral William Fallon was pressured to resign from his position as head of U.S. Central Command, because he openly disagreed with Cheney's ambitions in Iran.

A Pentagon consultant told Hersh, "Fallon went down because he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that."

An unnamed senator recalled a lunch meeting with Secretary of Defense Gates, where Gates himself warned of consequences from any preemptive strike on Iran, predicting that we'd "create generations of jihadists," while "our grandchildren would be battling our enemies here in America."

Reason enough for us to pay attention—and in the last six months of this Administration, to remember that life is frail as a cherry blossom, sweet as the fruit God gave us, and originally defended in this country by leaders who chose courage and truth, not self-preservation and deceit.

A writer, educator and community activist, Liza Field lives in Wytheville. Contact her lizafield@wiredog.com.

Edited July 14, 2008 by William Kelly

[Mark Stapleton]

Scott Ritter's latest piece about an attack on Iran. Compulsive reading as usual:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/14/10337/