should the West invade and/or bomb the fuck out of Iran?

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/lindorff

1. America sending warships to the Middle East (shocking)
2. Partisan hacks denouncing Bush

I'm not convinced.

Strained, Army Looks to Guard for More Relief

By THOM SHANKER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — Strains on the Army from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become so severe that Army officials say they may be forced to make greater use of the National Guard to provide enough troops for overseas deployments.

is it too much to ask generals not to obey their orders? is that a remote possibility?

is it too much to ask generals not to obey their orders? is that a remote possibility?

i have long felt as though, through its actions, the bush administration have effectively been waging a kind of proxy war against americans, because they've made us all considerably *less* safe for generations. if they do anything to iran you can be sure this will get much worse.

wow.

SP is maybe learning a lesson from the Iraq was that is not fully transferrable. In Iraq, the invasion went well, but attempts to build a new friendly Iraq have been a disaster, but the Iraqi state was undoubtedly destroyed by the invasion. So, maybe when he talks of a "raid", SP means a big invasion, aimed at sending a panzer legion to Teheran, to decapitate the Iranian regime, and then to pull the fuck out, leaving the country to collapse into chaos.

I don't think the Iranian regime would be as easy to decapitate as that of Iran - it is more broadly based, the ideological underpinnings behind it touch more nerves, and by virtue of its being more politically open it is less likely to be the case that exterminating Khamenei and Ahmadinejad would see Iran tip into chaos. So I reckon that the kind of smash and grab raid that I suggest SP is advocating would just make the Iranians very pissed off and make them more inclined to develop nuclear weapons as a way of deterring any future US adventurism.

Today, the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group leaves port in Norfolk for the Persian Gulf. The group includes the USS Anzio, the guided-missile destroyers USS Ramage and USS Mason and the attack sub USS Newport News. Time and The Nation are among the mainstream mags saying this is the beginning of the war.

Put Options Accumulating for October (Surprise)? :.

WARNING: The following is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.

With my recent commentary on oil in mind, add this to the mix:

"Do you like October suprises? Is there a big bang coming to hit the markets? If you believe that those in the know use insider information before major events then you might be interested on the HUGE number of October 6th put options for the big indexes.

Dow near record highs. The consumer going broke on stupid real estate deals. If I was a gambling man, which I'm not, I'd be taking puts on the major indexes too.

But is there more to it? We'll find out in a few days.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NAZ20061001&articleId=3361

If a peaceful solution to the Iranian nuclear problem is to be found, it is time for Washington to plan for war. Diplomats cannot break the current impasse simply by trying more aggressive diplomacy. Tehran will only change course if it believes it faces a credible threat for defying the will of the world.

...

Indeed, the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East may be underestimation of Western resolve. On Aug. 27, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said of kidnapping Israeli soldiers that, had his militia known how fierce Israel's retaliation would be, "we would definitely not have done it."

You see, the main problem with diplomatic efforts these days is that America and Israel are not militaristic enough.

This, however, is not quite the picture of a profoundly capable Iranian military:

Video of Iran's test missile called fake
Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times

Sunday, September 10, 2006

(09-10) 04:00 PDT Washington -- U.S. military intelligence has determined that a video released by the Iranian government purporting to show a test of a new submarine missile is bogus, three Pentagon officials confirmed.

The Iranians released the video Aug. 27, one of a series of steps the Tehran government has taken in recent months to display its military potency in the midst of a confrontation with the United States and other Western nations over its nuclear ambitions.

The test apparently was designed to intimidate Iran's neighbors in the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which are U.S. allies and important oil-producing countries, regional experts said. The video showed what appeared to be a successful test of a submarine-fired missile that flies above the water's surface to attack ships.

But U.S. intelligence officers analyzed the plume of smoke from the missile and determined it matched a video of an earlier Chinese test.

"It's the identical launch," a Pentagon official said. "The plume, everything, is the same."

U.S. officials have been unable to confirm whether any test took place during the Iranian exercise. They say they are certain, however, that the video of the purported test is not of an Iranian sub in the Persian Gulf.

U.S. intelligence agencies have been closely tracking developments in Iran in an attempt to monitor Tehran's efforts to build up its nuclear capabilities as well as its conventional military capacity. The surveillance efforts are part of what experts see as a strategic contest of increasing complexity, with the two nations working to decipher each other's motivations and intentions.

The purported missile test, which was announced by Iran's official news agency a day before the video was released, was made public days before an Aug. 31 deadline set by the United Nations for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment.

The test video was broadcast on Iranian state television and picked up around the world, including by CNN and Fox News.

What has American military officers scratching their heads is why the Iranians would see the need to release a bogus video.

"They have enough things they can do to frighten people, I don't know why they would have to fake something," a senior defense official said. "They are frightening enough as it is without faking things."

Iran said it was conducting the missile test as part of a summer war games exercise in the Persian Gulf that began Aug. 19. U.S. military officials believe such exercises are aimed primarily at intimidating gulf countries.

"It is like when the missiles went through Red Square in front of the Politburo," a military official said. "Their MO is to put on a media blitz."

The officials asked that their names not be used because the Defense Department had decided not to publicize the discovery of the bogus test. Taking on the role of superpower tattletale could exacerbate already tense relations, or potentially provoke more, real tests.

Pentagon officials said Iran possessed several Russian Kilo-class submarines, the kind of sub shown in the Chinese video. Iran's growing naval capability is real, said the senior official, which is what made the use of bogus video seem particularly "clumsy."

"They do have a serious military capability," the official said. "They are a growing military problem
===
Years ago, it was often said you could tell operations were imminent when lots of orders for pizza came out of the Pentagon late at night.

I wouldn't bet the Iranian navy or air force could survive much beyond a few days, if that, against an activated Global Strike plan which, it's my understanding, doesn't particularly require forward deployments. The idea is to be able to hit anyone very hard anywhere on the globe within hours of receiving the order.

However, what comes after that is pretty unknowable.

Reminds me of the parts of Dr Strangelove where George C. Scott as the Pentagon general in the warroom is advising the president to launch a full scale attack. "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed," he says, or something to that effect.

Then there's dialog later in the movie to the effect that the enemy talks big but doesn't have the know-how of our boys flyin' the B-52's.

I like this one.

However, what comes after that is pretty unknowable. "

this strategy sure worked wonders in Iraq didn't it. fucking people.

uh don't american ships deploy to the persian gulf all the damn time? big deal.
-- hstencil (hstenc!...), October 3rd, 2006 2:05 PM. (hstencil) (link)

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otm -- wonkette ain't going to break anything this big anyway.
-- the classic sounds of the seventh of january 1998 (miltonpinsk...), October 3rd, 2006 2:07 PM. (Enrique) (link)

I think there's more to this than Wonkette ruminating over a deployment to the middle east.