Bush setting America up for war with Iran
Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran’s nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.
Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — Back on July 13, the New York Sun reported:
President Bush is set to instruct the Treasury Department to block assets associated with Iran’s revolutionary guard corps in a new executive order declaring financial war on foreign saboteurs of the Iraqi government.
The paperwork to designate Iran’s revolutionary guard corps, or IRGC, and Quds Force is now on the president’s desk awaiting his signature, according to three administration officials who requested anonymity. The designation of the IRGC and Quds Force would mark the first time the finance related executive order process, reserved usually for foreign terrorist organizations, would be used against a branch of a foreign military.
On August 15, a month later, the Washington Post reported:
The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.
Today, in an article that refers to the “intensifying the debate over the Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the New York Times reports:
While some White House officials and some members of the vice president’s staff have been pushing to blacklist the entire Revolutionary Guard, administration officials said, officials at the State and Treasury Departments have been pushing a narrower approach that would list only the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, or perhaps, only companies and organizations with financial ties to that group.
If either the Quds Force or the entire Revolutionary Guard fits the legal criteria for a “specially designated global terrorist,” why would President Bush have waited two months to sign the order? What the debate and the delay makes clear is that if and when this designation is made it will be done so for purely political reasons. Indeed, if the Iranians were guilty of everything about which they are being accused, the question would not be about when it becomes expedient to apply the force of the US Treasury Department; it would be how the United States is going to respond to acts of war.
We’ve been here before. Whenever this administration is bobbing and diving in the process of shaping its legal arguments, the political thrust is already evident. George Bush’s gut is telling him, it’s time to hit Iran. The legal, strategic, political, and purely rational arguments are being constructed after the fact.
And where in this is it possible to imagine that lessons learned from Iraq are being applied?
Inside Cheney’s brain, I imagine it runs something like this: Shock-and-awe works — it brought down Saddam; reconstruction doesn’t. So long as we don’t send in the army, the air force and the navy can take care of Iran.
And now that the British poodle is no longer available to provide Bush with some sycophantic “international support,” a French poodle has happily taken his place. The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner today said, “We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war.”
Hi Paul,
Your site is blocked in Iran but there are ways to get around the problem. I hope you don’t mind but I am placing a comment that is directed towards Iranians outside Iran but your readers may also also find relevant. Thank you for your coverage of Iran.
http://www.iranian.com/main/blog/mohammad-alireza/connecting-dots
.
Connecting the Dots
by Mohammad Alireza
16-Sep-2007
Tehran, Iran
.
What’s the connection between; the theft of the 2000 Gore-Bush election, Cheney’s secret meeting with oil executives, September 11th 2001, the invasion of Iraq, and plans for destroying Iran’s military defenses and setting it’s economy back 50 years?
.
The connection is Peak Oil.
.
If you have not figured this out and are still lost in your hatred for the mullahs, or still worshiping the Pahlavi’s, or are part of the Rajavi cult, then you are in for a very rude awakening. When Iran is attacked and you see your dead and maimed countrymen on your television set or computer monitor it will be too late to do anything to prevent this war crime against your home and country.
.
Do your part in preventing Bush and Cheney from destroying your country. Get informed. Write, call, fax, email your political representative. Using your networking skills organize a peace delegation to Washington or 10 Downing Street. We Iranians that are in Iran do not have access to any of these freedoms. The fools here are even blocking sites that are working to prevent the attack on Iran.
.
The warmongers are planning not only on destroying Iran militarily but also economically. Iran is the only obstacle remaining between America and the energy reserves in the Middle East being controlled by the military industrial complex. America is running out of oil and gas and if it does not have a “reliable source” its vital national security will be placed in danger. Wake up people.
We in Iran need your help to head off this catastrophe. There is still time for diplomacy. Nobody here wants war, but if Iran is attacked our country will be transformed into a warrior nation and the bloodshed will last for decades.
.
Do whatever you can to prevent this from happening. We in Iran need you to put aside your hatred for the current regime and work for peace so that we can one day put our energies towards bringing about freedom and democracy and the rule of law to Iran.
.
When Iran is a smoldering ruin irradiated with depleted uranium and there is no electricity, water, or infrastructure, the priority will be survival not regime change. Wake up people!
exactly !! wtf is up with the french ??? i bet the french people are regretting their vote for that assklown sarkozy !!!! i mean, we just got rid of one lapdog poodle in blair and now another slobbers in to take his place !!! why in the world would the french want to wallow around in a Qwagmire with the usa ???
and if cheney does decide to War Criminally attack yet another country, will the rest of the planet finally step in and do the right thing ???
i cannot believe that no country ( other than Iran, and that is for the Shia only ) has stepped up to assist / defend Iraq.
Yep, War is coming. There is no way to stop it because there is no way for the US public or Congress to prevent it. The Military leaders will not rebel so it will go as planned, at least initially. Of course once the blow back starts, the US will lose all control and the devastation in the US and Israel will be extensive and tragic. It is quite possible that Bush and Cheney will be executed, by Americans, on the Whitehouse lawn, but by then the damage to the US will be severe and long lasting. It has been proved a thousand time over throughout 5000+ years of history that when a group is attacked, it will counter-attack with whatever means it has and Iran has the means for a very devastating counter-attack no matter what the chicken hawk armchair generals in their extreme delusion may think. Many people do not realize that once oil infrastructure is destroyed, it can take as much as five years before it can be replaced. Iran will very likely take out most of the Saudi oil infrastructure, immediately sending the price of oil through the roof and availability through the floor. When that happens the clock starts on mass starvation in the US since the food distribution network is almost entirely based on trucks. No fuel for the trucks means no food. Of course there is the probability that Israel will cease to exist so the very thing the attack was designed to prevent will happen. Essentially an attack on Iran will be suicidal for Israel and near suicidal for the US. Be prepared to relive the 1800s with horses replacing horseless carriages and steam trains replacing diesel locomotives. Notice though that no US media is willing to talk about the likely consequences of war with Iran, just how the US is being “forced into it because Iran wants nukes (which are no danger to the US). Be prepared for a very rocky ride.
If Iran truly represents the danger that Dick Cheney and George Bush are trying to spin then they should at least have the guts to make their case before the Congress and ask for a formal declaration of war.