Seymour Hersh: "US special forces already inside Iran"

what does this mean?!?!
now where was that thread about avoiding the news & avoiding depression...

International support will be minimal/non-existant, will Iraq be in a position not to require a massive US troop presence for scurity, let alone be secure enough to have a full scale war launched from it?

Add to this that Iran is not going to be as easy to defeat militarily I just can't see it without, Iraq magically becoming secure, a major terrorist attack on the US with obvious Iran ties, the draft.

The idea seems to be to avoid that in favor of kicking down what is perceived as an unstable structure. Though personally I have my doubts as to the accuracy of that.

...HOW UNSTABLE IS IT??!!

It's so unstable their people run around with bombs strapped to their backs...

and i would love to hear how we're going to overthrow their government WITH US SOLDIERS while avoiding a conventional war.

i just kinda like reading these long things in print form

I'm hoping Sistani says something about this, if not now, then after the Iraqi elections. I almost think that a threat from Sistani would be enough to put the brakes on.

"This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."

are you making this is up or is this a summary of the plan as outlayed in the article??

I simply can't believe that the US financial and business community won't be aghast when they learn what disasters they have invited on thier heads. They are so bemused by the Big Payoff of privatizing Social Security that they don't see what's slouching toward Bethleham to be born.

this is exactly what i'm talking about.

"The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible," the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.

. . . .

The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership. "Within the soul of Iran there is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement," the consultant told me. "The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse"—like the former Communist regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz share that belief, he said.

Don't worry, Wolfy and Rummy have Ahmed Chalabi some treacherous fool, ready to lead the grateful Iranian people with flowers, cake and kisses for our boys!

uh, i think this last bit was actually debunked, despite certain groups wishing it not so.

Pentagon spokesman Laurence DiRita said on Monday that Hersh's article did not do justice to the "global challenge" posed by the "Iranian regime's apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organisations".

Mr DiRita said the article was "so riddled with errors of fundamental fact" as to destroy its entire credibility.

"Views and policies" ascribed by Hersh to several top US defence department officials were not accurate, he said.

I'm so reassured!

Ah, so their primary problem with his article is that he doesn't see just how early this military action is.

on the one hand i always oppose military action. on the other hand, i'm not sure why i should be upset at the idea of americans bombing military targets in iran. because 1) the strategic / military targets we're talking about in iran are by and large segregated from the people and 2) because the military in iran is tied up with the "security forces" that are the arm of the mulllahs.

i am forced to ask myself why i feel this different from the situation in iraq (because i strongly opposed the war in iraq). first, the national infrastructure is not dependent on 20+ yrs of saddamist (is that a term?) strongarm rule. iran is a mixed secular/religious system with a strong democratic tradition and a good chance of post-war success ("success" roughly defined as: no civil war, no reign of islamist terror). second, iran hasn't had its back broken by 10+ years of sanctions, and the military in iran isn't hiding behind human shields. poverty isn't out of control in iran, airstrikes won't be hitting "human shields", etc etc so i'm not as concerned with the humanitarian consequences. finally, i hate to admit it, but it seems pretty clear the iranians have a happening nuclear weapons program. i think iranians feel strongly they deserve the capability and whether or not that's their right is another debate - i certainly think they're no less trustworthy than, say, pakistan.

i think there's a real chance that the military will roll over if the americans invade, because that's what they do: they rolled over for the british in the 40s, the rolled over when mossadegh was arrested and they rolled over when the shah lost the popular support of the people. but thinking about a ground invasion is skipping ahead, i think.

the real question is will american airstrikes re-radicalize the iranians or not? most iranians think american military action is inevitable and they seem blase about the prospect ... but i'm not enough of an expert on their culture to make any pronouncements (i only get the emigre perspective, which is strongly pro-western but generally very very skeptical of american foreign policy).

it would be a terrible setback to the democratic movement if we somehow swung popular support towards strongly anti-western mullahs by rushing into airstrikes.

i should point out that this isn't exactly analogous to iraq. obviously the insurgents in iraq are not islamists but many different small groups with very specific political agendas (ant-baathists, pro-baathists, anti-shiite, anti-sunni, tribal, etc). whereas if there were an insurgent movement in iran it would probably closely follow the pattern of upheaval experienced in iran pre-revolution (pro-islamist thugs vs pro-government thugs).

also sorry for rambling.

Airstrikes - the condom of the US Military - are perhaps the major reason for the failure of post-invasion US puppets. Hitler tried it in 1940 - didn't work. Why the US persist is beyond me.

though the sanctions sort of worked in that they created a huge pool of highly motivated applicants for the new iraqi army and secret police.

interesting - "Iran Claims It Has Nukes (Sorta)"

would anybody who caught the afternoon session or who has a better source than me please summarize her answer on iran??

This surprises me, just because the Iranian emigre population in Los Angeles seems so well-educated and Westernized. Aren't there Iranian nationalists who are not thugs? Once this woman came up to the reference desk and she wanted to find out when the Persian Sea had its name changed to the Arabian Sea and she explained to me that Iranians were not happy about it.

haha yeah that's the rub. the fallout of the revolution was the victimization of everyone who benefited under the shah's rule. ie non-muslims, the wealthy, the westernized and the well-educated, in roughly that order. my family qualifies for 3/4 of that equation, and to give you a sense of what this means, out of the ~300 people that i consider my extended family (grandparents generation down to one after mine, all people my parents speak to at least 2 or 3 times a year) only 1 remains in iran. we have fewer people in iran than average but i wouldn't say our experience is atypical by any means.

iranian revolution = brain-drain of the highest order.

Duelfer also stated that U.S. intelligence had "almost no contact with Iraq over more than a decade" and had become increasingly separated from reality in the country. He noted, for example, that U.S. experts had insisted before the war that the presence of decontamination trucks was clear evidence that chemical weapons were nearby. But, "when you spend time in Iraq," Duelfer said, "you realize the Iraqis could be selling ice cream out of those vehicles." (Iraq's Illicit Weapons Gone Since Early '90s, CIA Says; Hussein wanted to make banned arms, but his ability to do so was 'essentially destroyed' after the Gulf War, the chief inspector reports.; [HOME EDITION] Bob Drogin and Greg Miller. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: Oct 7, 2004. pg. A.1)

read: the CIA is not producing the intelligence the Bush administration wants it to, so it is being marginalized/purged

transition to european social democracy = no, probably not. they generally preferred the benevolent dictatorship of the shah, are integrating fairly well into western society and usually have unkind words re: leftism, humanism, the future prospects of the middle east, themselves, etc.

transition to 1st world capitalism = now you're talking. many many emigres have been returning to set up business in civil engineering, telecom, finance, service industry, etc as the iranian postwar free market gets rolling again in a big way.

linking the two concerns = obv the problem of the post-globalization world as well as the specific problem of iran.

also what are you grousing about ned, you live in costa mesa!! bring michael mayer to culver drive!!

Alas.

also what are you grousing about ned, you live in costa mesa!! bring michael mayer to culver drive!!

I have no problem with this excellent suggestion.

Rice: Attack on Iran 'not on agenda'
Secretary begins European trip with talks with Tony Blair
Friday, February 4, 2005 Posted: 12:58 PM EST (1758 GMT)

LONDON, England (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says an attack on Iran over its nuclear program is "not on the agenda at this point."

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/WORLD/europe/02/04/uk.rice/story.rice.ap.jpg
Not on the agenda: "Many diplomatic tools still at our disposal" on Iran, said Rice.
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WELL! i guess that settles it then. we can all sleep easier tonight.