Posted by Damozel | Did you know that George W. Bush a/k/a 'Richard Cheney' is still commander-in-chief of the US Armed Forces? It's true. Will it surprise you to learn that he -- or rather 'they' --- are gearing up for a military strike in Iraq?
The US military is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilise Iraq, western intelligence sources said last week. One source said the Americans were growing increasingly angry at the involvement of the Guards’ special-operations Quds force inside Iraq, training Shi’ite militias and smuggling weapons into the country. (ToL)
By 'the Americans', the aforementioned 'source' meant 'the Bush Administration,' of course, and by 'the Bush Administration,' specifically --- or, rather, especially --- frustrated puppet-master-in-chief Richard Cheney.
So. The plan is to initiate military action against Iran to win a war that no objective observer believes they can win, or could ever have won, because they are just that delusional. So now they've shifted to the sort of thinking one always sees on the part of those who make massive, catastrophic errors in judgment: pointing to what's at most a contributing factor in their failure as the cause of all their downfall.
Despite a belligerent stance by Vice-President Dick Cheney, the administration has put plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the back burner since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary in 2006, the sources said.
However, US commanders are increasingly concerned by Iranian interference in Iraq and are determined that recent successes by joint Iraqi and US forces in the southern port city of Basra should not be reversed by the Quds Force....
They acknowledged Iran was unlikely to cease involvement in Iraq and that, however limited a US attack might be, the fighting could escalate.
Although American defence chiefs are firmly opposed to any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, they believe a raid on one of the camps training Shi’ite militiamen would deliver a powerful message to Tehran. (ToL; emphasis added)
In the meantime, the Brits seem to think that the chief role of the Iranians has been in causing trouble in Basra.
British officials believe the US military tends to overestimate the effect of the Iranian involvement in Iraq.
But they say there is little doubt that the Revolutionary Guard exercises significant influence over splinter groups of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, who were the main targets of recent operations in Basra.(ToL; emphasis added)
At Newhoggers, Cernig says:
The report is by Michael Smith, defense correspondent at the Times and the journalist who revealed the Downing Street Memos. Smith is widely considered to be the British intelligence community's imbedded journalist in the UK media and...has a strong record of being well-informed about matters of concern to British spooks.
The tone of the article suggests that, yet again, his sources are British intelligence officials worried by the American course. The Bush administration have proven themselves past-masters at inept non-consideration of consequences - always followed eventually by the phrase "no-one could have anticipated..." However, the probabilities for blowback from even a single airstrike into Iran, in Iraq and throughout the Middle East, have been well documented by experts....
Exactly, so why isn't this the only topic in the headlines? Why isn't our useless press all over this? Why? Why? Why?
Journalists: leave the campaign gossip and the speculation and the armchair quarterbacking to us bloggers and please --- this time, for once, I beg you --- do your jobs. Stop whining about how the line between blogging and journalism is becoming blurred and start reporting on information that Americans desperately need to know RIGHT NOW.
Better yet, won't our custard-livered Democratic representatives in Congress find their spines and do what they can to prevent this? Can't we impeach Bush and Cheney before they make all our current woes, bad as they are, even worse?
Memeorandum here.
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I'm terrified that the administration will initiate an attack in the October timeframe, in an attempt to make the election a referendum on whether we like Iran or not. I don't think it would work, but it could. The saber-rattling is getting louder in a predictable and familiar way.
Posted by: Adam | May 07, 2008 at 02:08 PM