"We Are Going To Hit Iran. Bigtime"
by Maccabee
Sat Sep 01, 2007 at 03:50:24 PM PDT
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?t=13074
I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and
staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing
Signal Officer- she directs carrier aircraft while landing) She told me we
are going to attack Iran. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and
Asset Tasking are finished. That means that all the targets have been
chosen, prioritized, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers,
missile cruisers and so forth.
I asked her why she is telling me this.
Her answer was really amazing.
Maccabee's diary :: ::
She started in the Marines and after 8 years her term was up. She had served
on a smaller Marine carrier, and found out through a friend knew there was
an opening for a junior grade LSO in a training position on a supercarrier.
She used the reference and the information and applied for a transfer to the
United States Navy. Since she had experience landing F-18Cs and Cobra
Gunships, and an unblemished combat record, she was ratcheted into the job,
successfully changing from the Marines to the Navy. Her role is still
aligned with the Marines since she generally is assigned to liason with the
Marine units deploying off her carrier group.
Like most Marines and former Marines, she is largely apolitical. The fact
is, most Marines are trigger pullers and most trigger pullers could care
less who the President is. They simply want to be the tip of the sword when
it comes to defending the country. She voted once in her life and otherwise
was always in some forward post on the water during election season.
Something is wrong with the Navy and the Marines in her view. Always ready
to go in harms way, Marines rarely ever question unless it’s a matter of
tactics or honor. But something seems awry. Junior and senior officers are
starting to grumble, roll their eyes in the hallways. The strain of
deployments is beginning to hit every jot and tittle of the Marines and it’s
beginning to seep into the daily conversation of Marines and Naval officers
in command decision.
"I know this will sound crazy coming from a Naval officer", she said. "But
we’re all just waiting for this administration to end. Things that happen at
the senior officer level seem more and more to happen outside of the purview
of XOs and other officers who typically have a say-so in daily combat and
flight operations. Today, orders just come down from the mountaintop and
there’s no questioning. In fact, there is no discussing it. I have seen more
than one senior commander disappear and then three weeks later we find out
that he has been replaced. That’s really weird. It’s also really weird
because everyone who has disappeared has questioned whether or not we should
be staging a massive attack on Iran."
"We’re not stupid. Most of the members of the fleet read well enough to know
what is going on world-wise. We also realize that anyone who has any doubts
is in danger of having a long military career yanked out from under them.
Keep in mind that most of the people I serve with are happy to be a part of
the global war on terror. It’s just that the touch points are what we see
since we are the ones out here who are supposedly implementing this grand
strategy. But when you liason with administration officials who don’t know
that Iranians don’t speak Arabic and have no idea what Iranians live like,
then you start having second thoughts about whether these Administration
officials are even competent."
I asked her about the attack, how limited and so forth.
"I don’t think it’s limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every
damn Tomahawk we have in inventory. I think this is going to be massive and
sudden, like thousands of targets. I believe that no American will know when
it happens until after it happens. And whatever the consequences, whatever
the consequences, they will have to be lived with. I am sure if my father
knew I was telling someone in a news organization that we were about to
launch a supposedly secret attack that it would be treason. But something
inside me tells me to tell it anyway."
I asked her why she was suddenly so cynical.
"I have become cynical only recently. I also don’t believe anyone will be
able to stop this. Bush has become something of an Emperor. He will give the
command, and cruise missiles will fly and aircraft will fly and people will
die, and yet few of us here are really able to cobble together a great
explanation of why this is a good idea. Of course many of us can give you
the 4H Club lecture on democracy in the Mid East. But if you asked any of
the flight officers whether they have a clear idea of what the goal of this
strike is, your answer would sound like something out of a think tank policy
paper. But it’s not like Kosovo or when we relieved the tsunami victims.
There everyone could tell you in a sentence what we were here doing."
"That’s what’s missing. A real sense of purpose. What’s missing is the
answer to what the hell are we doing out here threatening this country with
all this power? Last night in the galley, an ensign asked what right do we
have to tell a sovereign nation that they can’t build a nuke. I mean the
table got EF Hutton quiet. Not so much because the man was asking a question
that was off culture. But that he was asking a good question. In fact, the
discussion actually followed afterwards topside where someone in our group
had to smoke a cigarette. The discussion was intelligent but also in lowered
voices. It’s like we aren’t allowed to ask the questions that we always ask
before combat. It’s almost as if the average seaman or soldier is doing all
the policy work."
She had to hang up. She left by telling me that she believes the attack is a
done deal. "It’s only a matter of time before their orders come and they
will be sent to station and told to go to Red Alert. She said they were
already practicing traps, FARP and FAST." (Trapping is the act of catching
the tension wires when landing on the carrier, FARP is Fleet Air Combat
Maneuvering Readiness Program- practice dogfighting- and FAST is Fleet Air
Superiority Training).
She seemed lost. The first time in my life I have ever heard her sound off
rhythm, or unsure of why she is doing something. She knows that there is
something rotten in the Naval Command and she, like many of her associates
are just hoping that the election brings in someone new, some new situation,
or something.
"Yes. We're gong to hit Iran, bigtime. Whatever political discussion that
are going in is window dressing and perhaps even a red herring. I see what's
going on below deck here in the hangars and weapons bays. And I have a sick
feeling about how it's all going to turn out."
there will be no real opposition to a Bush Administration attack on Iran.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1225&Itemid=135%20
As you may know -- unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of
course -- yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was
committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George
W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever
Dick Cheney tells him to.
The bipartisan Senate resolution – the brainchild (or rather the bilechild)
of Fightin' Joe Lieberman – affirmed as official fact all of the specious,
unproven, ever-changing allegations of direct Iranian involvement in attacks
on the American forces now occupying Iraq. The Senators appear to have
relied heavily on the recent New York Times story by Michael Gordon that
stovepiped unchallenged Pentagon spin directly onto the paper's front page.
As Firedoglake points out, John McCain cited the heavily criticized story on
the Senate floor as he cast his vote.
It goes without saying that all of this is a nightmarish replay of the
run-up to the war of aggression against Iraq: The NYT funneling false flag
stories from Bush insiders. Warmongers citing the NYT stories as "proof"
justifying any and all action to "defend the Homeland." Credulous and craven
Democratic politicians swallowing the Bush line hook and sinker.
To be sure, stout-hearted Dem tribunes like Dick Durbin insisted that their
support for declaring that Iran is "committing acts of war" against the
United States should not be taken as an "authorization of military action."
This is shaky-knees mendacity at its finest. Having officially affirmed that
Iran is waging war on American forces, how, pray tell, can you then deny the
president when he asks (if he asks) for authorization to "defend our
troops?" Answer: you can't. And you know it.
This vote is the clearest signal yet that there will be no real opposition
to a Bush Administration attack on Iran. This is yet another blank check
from these slavish, ignorant goons; Bush can cash it anytime. This is, in
fact, the post-surge "Plan B" that's been mooted lately in the Beltway. As
you recall, there was much throwing about of brains on the subject of
reviving the "Iraq Study Group" plan when the "surge" (or to call it by its
right name, the "punitive escalation") inevitably fails. Bush put the kibosh
on that this week ("Him not gonna do nothin' that Daddy's friends tell him
to do! Him a big boy, him the decider!"), but that doesn't mean there isn't
a fall-back position – or rather, a spring-forward position: an attack on
Iran, to rally the nation behind the "war leader" and reshuffle the deck in
Iraq.
Post Labor Day Product Rollout: War with Iran
http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/08/post-labor-day-product-rollout-war-with.html
Post Labor Day Product Rollout: War with Iran
On September 7, 2002, The New York Times White House correspondent Elizabeth
Bushmiller treated readers to an explanation of how the Bush administration
planned to sell the invasion of Iraq:
White House officials said today that the administration was following a
meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the
allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.
The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before
President Bush's vacation in Texas last month. It was not hastily concocted,
they insisted, after some prominent Republicans began to raise doubts about
moving against Mr. Hussein and administration officials made contradictory
statements about the need for weapons inspectors in Iraq.
The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of
disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to
kick off their plan.
''From a marketing point of view,'' said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House
chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, ''you don't introduce new
products in August.''
A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr.
Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action
against Iraq, which could come early next year.
The Pathetic Words: Too Late With regard to foreign policy, every politician
in Washington is Craig
Posted by seemslikeadream on Sat Sep-01-07 09:21 PM
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/08/pathetic-words-too-late.html
The Pathetic Words: Too Late
This will be short, and very rude.
Ray McGovern asks: "Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?"
Answer: NO.
Sorry, Ray. Sorry, world. As I have explained at some length, and as the
King quote at the conclusion of McGovern's article has it, it is already too
late. It may not have been in February of this year, but it is now.
Tragic beyond measure, but it's the truth.
And my God. Is anything more pathetic than the liberal-progressive bloggers
who continue to shill for the Democrats? They still are completely without a
clue.
And some of the progressive bloggers actually seem to still believe that the
Democrats will end the occupation of Iraq.
Stupid, and not paying attention. As I explained in detail before:
WE ARE NOT LEAVING.
Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern08312007.html
By RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA Analyst
Why do I feel like the proverbial skunk at a Labor Day picnic? Sorry; but I
thought you might want to know that this time next year there will probably
be more skunks than we can handle. I fear our country is likely to be at war
with Iran-and with the thousands of real terrorists Iran can field around
the globe.
It is going to happen, folks, unless we put our lawn chairs away on Tuesday,
take part in some serious grass-roots organizing, and take action to prevent
a wider war-while we still can.
President George W. Bush's speech Tuesday lays out the Bush/Cheney plan to
attack Iran and how the intelligence is being "fixed around the policy," as
was the case before the attack on Iraq.
It's not about putative Iranian "weapons of mass destruction"-not even
ostensibly. It is about the requirement for a scapegoat for U.S. reverses in
Iraq, and the White House's felt need to create a casus belli by provoking
Iran in such a way as to "justify" armed retaliation-eventually including
air strikes on its nuclear-related facilities.
Bush's Aug. 28 speech to the American Legion comes five years after a very
similar presentation by Vice President Dick Cheney. Addressing the Veterans
of Foreign Wars on Aug. 26, 2002, Cheney set the meretricious terms of
reference for war on Iraq.
Sitting on the same stage that evening was former CENTCOM commander Marine
Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was being honored at the VFW convention. Zinni later
said he was shocked to hear a depiction of intelligence (Iraq has WMD and is
amassing them to use against us) that did not square with what he knew.
Although Zinni had retired two years before, his role as consultant had
enabled him to stay up to date on key intelligence findings.
The Telegraph UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/02/wiran102.xml
Will President Bush bomb Iran?
By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 12:17am BST 02/09/2007
In a nondescript room, two blocks from the American Capitol building, a
group of Bush administration staffers is gathered to consider the gravest
threat their government has faced this century: the testing of a nuclear
weapon by Iran.
President Bush dramatically stepped up his war of words with the Iranian
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The United States, no longer prepared to tolerate the risk that Iranian
nuclear weapons will be used against Israel, or passed to terrorists, has
already launched a bombing campaign to destroy known Iranian nuclear sites,
air bases and air defence sites. Iran has retaliated by cutting off oil to
America and its allies, blockading the Straits of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf
bottleneck, and sanctioned an uprising by Shia militias in southern Iraq
that has shut down 60 per cent of Iraq's oil exports.
The job of the officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the
Departments of Homeland Security and Energy, who have gathered in an office
just off Massachusetts Avenue, behind the rail terminus, Union Station, is
to prevent a spike in oil prices that will pitch the world's economy into a
catastrophic spin.
The good news is that this was a war game; for those who fear war with Iran,
the less happy news is that the officials were real. The simulation, which
took four months, was run by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think
tank with close links to the White House. Its conclusions, drawn up last
month and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, have been passed on to military and
civilian planners charged with drawing up plans for confronting Iran.
News that elements of the American government are working in earnest on how
to deal with the fallout of an attack on Iran come at a tense moment.
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?t=13074