Hersh: Cheney prefers US attack on Iran
US journalist Seymour Hersh says Vice President Dick Cheney prefers US attack on Iran rather than Israel as Washington has much more firepower. "I'll tell you what Cheney says privately- what he says privately is, 'we can't let Israel go because, first of all, they don't have the firepower, we do. We have much more firepower. And secondly, if they go, we'll be blamed anyway'," Hersh said in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday. When asked about a possible military action before the US election, he said, "In general we just don't know. He [Bush] still wants diplomacy, I do believe that, but diplomacy for this president is these guys giving up everything in terms of enrichment before we discuss it and that's a non-starter too." Earlier, in a report published in the online version of The New Yorker magazine Hersh revealed that US Congressional leaders agreed late last year to President Bush's funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran. The article cites current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources as saying that $400 million was approved by Congressional leaders for clandestine operations against Iran. The New Yorker report also stated that American Special Forces have been conducting cross-border operations into Iran from southern Iraq since last year. However, US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker on Sunday dismissed the report on CNN television, saying, "I can tell you flatly that US forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran."
Is Bush really this stupid? Is Cheney really this evil? Is Israel really that violently paranoid? Are the Iranians that easy to shove around? If Bush greenlights an air assault on Iranian nuclear targets the rest of the planet will turn on America and Israel so quickly it will make the fall out from the WMDs in Iraq look like a tiff between lovers. I just can't imagine after the abortion Iraq and Afghanistan have both become that America could even contemplate another war.
Will never happen. Too much Tom Clancy style nonsense from some journalists.
ReplyDeleteYes, It will. I spoke with a retired US major who is fighting the use of DU and a full time anti war activist and he has people on the inside and they are all scared shitless.
ReplyDeleteThe crazies are running the mad house.
Doug Rokke?
ReplyDeleteIt's all a bit of banter between the two to send messages to each other just like those Israeli air exercises
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is that people like bomber take it seriously instead of trying to decypher what it really means. But thats what happens when you really don't know what you're talking about.
I agree this is journalistic bullshit.
ReplyDeleteHey Bomber - "Is Israel really that violently paranoid?" Why don't you go live in Israel and experience Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks, and live with the thought that Iran has sworn to wipe you out and is in the process of acquiring the capability to produce nuclear weapons to do so. Perhaps you might understand the paranoia
By the way an attack on Iran would probably have EU and maybe even Russian support. The whole planet won't turn on the US - more than it already has.
EU don't have the balls to deal with Iran just like they didn't in the 90s with Bosnia and Kosovo. That why they pass the buck to the US.
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ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is that people like bomber take it seriously instead of trying to decypher what it really means. But thats what happens when you really don't know what you're talking about.
Oh Anon, you are so bitchy love, just point out to me in the above blog where I said america is going to attack Iran, my entire blog questions the article, but I think Hersh has done some amazing investigative work in this field and knows his stuff, remember his peice on Israel getting a greenlight for the disgraceful Lebanon war from America months before it happened, that was a great article by Hersh.
I know you want to paint me into some type of corner here, but it says more about you than me, lift your game a little.
Hey Bomber - "Is Israel really that violently paranoid?" Why don't you go live in Israel and experience Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks, and live with the thought that Iran has sworn to wipe you out and is in the process of acquiring the capability to produce nuclear weapons to do so. Perhaps you might understand the paranoia
Oh I think I'll take your word on violent Israeli paranoia, I'd do my best to keep out of the way of the IDF, they didn't treat Haarmeet very nicely for four days.
By the way an attack on Iran would probably have EU and maybe even Russian support. The whole planet won't turn on the US - more than it already has.
I doubt this very much, the EU aree the loudest when it comes to ruling out miltary action and Russia is selling Iran the nuclear equipment.
Nice change of tune there bomber. You've been going on about the US attacking Iran in past posts and now suddenly you're repudiating your previous comments.
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ReplyDeleteOh bullshit, I certainly did think there was a possibility of it a couple of years ago, but I've posted my recent doubt and if you read this blog again, (have you actually read it?), if you read this blog again you can clearly see me state my doubt about America invading Iran, let's remind ourselves that I was orginally accused of believing the invasion and judged ill-informed, when I was in fact stating my doubt, I pull you up on that and you play the 'nice change of tune' crap.
Is this going as well as you had hoped?
It's best to go with the evidence. Paul Krugman documented Bush's manifest incompetence in "The Great Unravelling" in 2003. Everything since then has been epilogue, reinforcing what had already become staringly obvious.
ReplyDeleteBush is that mad. Cheney is that evil and Israel really is that paranoid....at least under a (pseudo-Likud) Kadima-lead government.
It should be obvious by now that Israel does not want a settlement in Palestine as it would hen have to halt its slow-motion ethnic cleansing program in what used to be Palestinian lands.
I know many Jewish people who are horrified by what Israel has become. This isn't about anti-semitism. It's about a bad government doing bad things. Bombing Iran would be just one more bad thing.
Krugman is a hack whose writing on economics was so much better than his political stuff.
ReplyDeleteEvery military has contingency planning vis a vis potential adversaries, and the US undoubtably has a variety of scenarios being gamed out viz Iran. It also likely has spec ops troops running recon, sabotage and harassment missions inside Iran from Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan because, quite frankly, that is what they are trained to do and they need to pinpoint purported Iranian nuclear weapon R&D sites as well assess the capabilities of the Iranian military, particularly the Qud elements of the Revolutionary Guards. Plus, such operations divert RG resources and assets away from the cross-border support and training activities they are engaged in with Shiite militias. That is the just the nature of the game.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that does not mean a US/Israeli strike on Iran is imminent. JCS Chair Admiral Mike Millan publicly advised against it and said the focus should be on Afghanistan. The American public is not interested in another war, no matter that the Fox chicken hawks and Cheney may want one. Thus, for the US the best current option is to keep evrything low key and sotto voce, avoiding direct confrontations while diplomatic pressure is brought to bear on Iran about its nuclear program.
Bush/Cheney are more than lame ducks--they are the kiss of death for McCain's campaign and GOP congressional fortunes in November, so a move against Iran could backfire in a major way. Plus, and it is an important caveat, Iran has the capabilities and will to retaliate in a number of ways in a number of theaters, including some far from its home turf. With the US military stretched in its current deployment schedules, and with US public support for yet more war mongering at record lows, it is doubtful that the scenario Hersch describes is more than war-gaming. Even so, Hersch has an excellent track record on US military issues and many Pentagon insiders as contacts, so perhaps what is being discussed is not so much the various scenarios for using force against Iran but the operational requirements of a choosen course of action and whether Israel is going to be a party to the action.
Given the down side of a major offensive, especially in an election year and without European and Russian cooperation or at least tacit assent, the chances of a major assault on Iran are remote unless the Iranians do something rash and provocative. So far, they have not, being more cagey than crazy.
hey Paul - you reckon Iran is a rational actor? Even though they are a revolutionary regime they have a form of democracy within their limits, and there does seem to be some checks on the crazies. The Revolutionary Guard seem to be the irrational element (Ahmadenijad seems all talk), while the upper regime leadership seems pretty reasonable.
ReplyDeleteI am no expert on Persian politics, but here is what I believe is the situation.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing irrational in what the Iranians are doing. There are militant and moderate elements in the leadership who often are at odds on issues of policy, which has led to internal disputes and vote-mongering, but no serious splits or lunatic moves. The electoral system serves as a gauge of public support for various leadership factions, but it is Ayatollah Khameni who plays the role of chief power-broker. He is relatively moderate in his views on relations with the West and highly rational.
Ahmadenijad does not control the levers of government, nor does he control the RG. His presidency has more symbolic rather than practical value (as in France). He does, however, reflect the viewpoint of more militant elements of the RG. Even so, the Qud brigades are more professional than ideological, so even the RG has a pragmatic/rationalist element at its core.
The real policy dilemma for the Iranian leadership is how to modernise and cope with the inexorable pressures of globalisation while maintaining adherence to traditional Shiia beliefs and values. The nuclear program and Western opposition to it are not central to maintaining regime stability, but in fact help bolster support for it on nationalist-religious grounds at a time when social mores and cultural values are under stress.
It is perfectly rational for the Iranians to want to pursue a nuclear deterrent to US aggression, as it is fully aware of the consequences of not having such a deterrent--witness it border neighbours to the immediate East and West. The trouble is that the US and other nuclear powers do not want them in their club and have the means to prevent them from joining. Moreover, the Sunni Arab world are deathly afraid of a Persian bomb because of the leverage it gives Iran across the diplomatic spectrum. Thus the consensus that Iran should be prevented from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.
In this case, though, an act of forcible prevention will be no cure...and may in fact be worse in terms of long-term prospects for international (or at least regional) peace and stability.
Iran's Nukes in a nutshell ...or out of someone's arse.
ReplyDelete"it is Ayatollah Khameni who plays the role of chief power-broker. He is relatively moderate in his views on relations with the West and highly rational."
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons on August 9, 2005. The full text of the fatwa was released in an official statement at the meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_fatwas#Fatwa_Against_Production.2C_Stockpiling_and_use_of_Nuclear_Weapons
WASHINGTON, Feb 29 (IPS) - The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the "laptop documents" -- 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop -- as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme.
....Tehran has denounced the documents on which the charges are based as fabrications provided by the MEK, and has demanded copies of the documents to analyse, but the United States had refused to do so.
The Iranian assertion is supported by statements by German officials. A few days after then Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the laptop documents, Karsten Voight, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry, was reported by the Wall Street Journal Nov. 22, 2004 as saying that the information had been provided by "an Iranian dissident group".
...However, CIA analysts, and European and IAEA officials who were given access to the laptop documents in 2005 were very sceptical about their authenticity.
The Guardian's Julian Borger last February quoted an IAEA official as saying there is "doubt over the provenance of the computer".
A senior European diplomat who had examined the documents was quoted by the New York Times in November 2005 as saying, "I can fabricate that data. It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt."
Scott Ritter, the former U.S. military intelligence officer who was chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, noted in an interview that the CIA has the capability test the authenticity of laptop documents through forensic tests that would reveal when different versions of different documents were created.
The fact that the agency could not rule out the possibility of fabrication, according to Ritter, indicates that it had either chosen not to do such tests or that the tests had revealed fraud.
...There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel's Mossad.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41416
Thanks Brewer Dan for your usual (and oft-repeated) line. It is not substitute for original analysis, but as cut and paste jobs go, it adds to the conversation--but nothing more.
ReplyDeleteSometimes information can be gleaned from what is not said rather than what is.
ReplyDeleteAlmost two years ago, Buchanan implied that Iran was developing Nuclear Weapons:
“It is possible that Hezbollah acted to divert attention away from Iran's nuclear weapons program,”
“the Iranians are not yet be ready to risk a direct confrontation with Israel (something which they fully expect to change once they acquire nuclear weapons).”
Perhaps two years ago, despite the fact that many commentators saw through the think-tank generated propaganda, Buchanan was simply taken in by it.
Yet once again we see Buchanan referencing "The nuclear program", "a nuclear deterrent", "a Persian bomb" while never once mentioning the fact that the NIE (the intelligence report distilled from all the intelligence agencies in the U.S.) has stated categorically that no such thing exists. This is also borne out by the reports of the AEIA and is disputed only by Neo-Con elements (who have not yet jumped ship from the Bush administration) and the right wing of the Israeli Government - who base their intelligence on the highly suspect laptop referenced by friend Gresham above.
Any analysis of the Iran situation is deficient if it does not at the very least explain why the analyst chooses to ignore these facts. One cannot resist asking oneself why not?
I am pleased to see the return of Mr Buchanan. I hope we will be given the opportunity to discuss his “Shadow Wars” address to Dov Bing’s seminar in Hamilton.