[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Isn’t it a valid diplomatic tool to say you might invade, even you actually have no serious intent to do so?
[/QUOTE]
What non-military political end would that accomplish in this instance, other than spurring previously discontented Iranians to rally 'round the flag?
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
What non-military political end would that accomplish in this instance, other than spurring previously discontented Iranians to rally 'round the flag?
[/QUOTE]
Hey, if there’s no serious intent to invade, let them rally all they want. It just makes them waste energy and ramp up their own rhetoric which might isolate them from potential allies. The point is to avoid saying anything definite so it could easily serve Bush’s goal to have one advisor publicly calling for invasion while another publicly discourages it, leaving everybody guessing.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0302-31.htm
Ray Mcgovern is becoming convinced. I do not put it past president Cheney and VP Bush.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Five years ago, the idea that we would invade Iraq was already being discussed as a serious problem.
Six years ago, the idea that we would invade Iraq was being discussed in terms of “what excuse will the Neo-Cons need or dream up to pull it off?”.
You have to go back seven years to find people scratching their heads and wondering “Did GWB really say he wanted to start another war?”.
[/QUOTE]
I dunno, Tom. Sure, there were saber-rattlers in July 2002 and earlier, then someone else in the Administration would always say we had no plans to invade Iraq. For instance, that June, Bush said “there are no [Iraq] war plans on my desk.” Until September came around and it was time to roll out the new product.
At the time, most of us still believed Bush wasn’t insane, or a liar, or even a person who would get us into war without a damned good reason. So I certainly figured he meant it when he said that. After all, only a crazy man would invade Iraq, Bush had said he had no plans to do so, and only a liar would say something like that to the American people if he really wanted to make war on Iraq soon.
In September, we found out he was a liar and a crazy man.
At least no one in this thread is arguing any kind of attack on Iran would be a good idea. That’s progress, of a sort.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
… leaving everybody guessing.
[/QUOTE]
One problem with that, of course, is the chance they may guess wrong, they may decide that we intend military action when we don’t, and decide a first strike is strategicly desirable. Or worse, their delusional fuckwits are just as crackers as our delusional fuckwits.
It is our best hope that saner heads will prevail, both here and in Teheran.
(I keep thinking what Ms Barbara Tuchman, of the justly famed Guns of August would make of all this…)
[QUOTE=elucidator]
One problem with that, of course, is the chance they may guess wrong, they may decide that we intend military action when we don’t, and decide a first strike is strategicly desirable.
[/QUOTE]
Which might be exactly what Niccolo Cheney is counting on.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
No? We now have half the ships in the United States Navy patrolling off Iran’s coast.
[/QUOTE]
Even if this were a true statement (its not afaik…unless you have a cite that HALF the US Navy is off Iran’s coast), so what? The keen eyed observer will note that aircraft carriers and such aren’t very good for invading countries. Launching a sortie, air strikes, tossing a few tomahawks, sure…but not for invasion. The only ships that really count out there are the carriers…and afaik there are the same number of those in the gulf (and in striking distance to Iran) as usual. If there are more than normal…again, this might indicate either the rattling of Iran’s cage or perhaps the possibility of an air strike. Unless thats all you are talking about then again…so what?
Even if all the Marine amphibious ships were mobilized and ALSO in the Gulf, we STILL couldn’t invade Iran that way. Not without stripping Iraq to the bone. Invasion of Iran is a left wing fever dream…
-XT
[QUOTE=xtisme]
Even if all the Marine amphibious ships were mobilized and ALSO in the Gulf, we STILL couldn’t invade Iran that way. Not without stripping Iraq to the bone. Invasion of Iran is a left wing fever dream…
-XT
[/QUOTE]
I suspect the scenario might be something like:
Air attacks on the nuclear program, perfectly justified, of course.
Iranian response by stepping up support for the Iraqi insurgents.
Escalation, including clashes between US and Iranian troops, near the border. (Which side would be in dispute.)
Invasion.
Sure hope you’re right, XT, I surely do. I hope most sincerely that you have the opportunity, some months from now, to gloat most loudly. I would be happy for all of us. But I’m a pessimist, and I’m not wrong often enough.
[QUOTE=xtisme]
Even if this were a true statement (its not afaik…unless you have a cite that HALF the US Navy is off Iran’s coast), so what?
[/quote]
It’s in the OP.
[QUOTE=xtisme]
The keen eyed observer will note that aircraft carriers and such aren’t very good for invading countries. Launching a sortie, air strikes, tossing a few tomahawks, sure…but not for invasion.
[/QUOTE]
The prospect of even a limited airstrike Iran is a great big fat “so what.” Experts who have wargamed that scenario could find no way of preventing it from escalating into a general regional war.
gonzomax, would you at least have the decency to look at the dates of your links before you post them? Your first link was dated March 7, 2006 and your second link was dated March 2, 2005. You’re regressing.
And while I am not nearly as comfortable with the thought that Bush is not a loon as I wish I were, the reality is that both of those statements were made before he dragged his own party to a significant defeat at the polls, before he began losing the support in his own party for his continued war in Iraq, and before Britain’s “I’m with you, George” Prime Minister stepped down. It was also before significant fraying of our military was clear to the most obtuse observer.
There is no way that the president will get a resolution in the current Congress supporting another armed conflict (barring an actual attack on the U.S.).
Is it possible that this adminstration might still include enough crazies to do something utterly stupid? Perhaps. However, citing Op-Ed pieces from (what amounts to) ancient history does not support your position or carry this discussion forward.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
There is no way that the president will get a resolution in the current Congress supporting another armed conflict (barring an actual attack on the U.S.).
[/QUOTE]
No – but, does he care?
[QUOTE=xtisme]
Even if this were a true statement (its not afaik…unless you have a cite that HALF the US Navy is off Iran’s coast), so what? The keen eyed observer will note that aircraft carriers and such aren’t very good for invading countries.
[/QUOTE]
Naval vessels are, however, good for provoking international incidents.
“Go ahead, Iran. Knock this chip off my shoulder…”
Why does he need any such “resolution”? If he can provoke and/or manufacture an incident, who’s going to stop him? The Congress is a brontosaurus, cut off a foot of its tail and its six months before the information gets through its notochord and back.
This is one trick that always, always works.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Why does he need any such “resolution”? If he can provoke and/or manufacture an incident, who’s going to stop him?
[/QUOTE]
Ron Paul may be a nutcase, but even a blind squirrel, etc.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
It’s in the OP.
[/QUOTE]
To be sure…though ‘Almost half of the US’s 277 warships are stationed close to Iran’ sounds like a bit of a waffle in a whole bunch of different ways (a carrier battle group, for instance, is ‘stationed close to Iran’ if its in the Med). In addition, the part you quoted says ‘he aircraft carrier USS Enterprise left Virginia last week for the Gulf. A Pentagon spokesman said it was to replace the USS Nimitz and there would be no overlap that would mean three carriers in Gulf at the same time.’, which would indicate to me that the Nimitz battle group (with all its support ships) will probably be leaving as soon as Enterprise is on station.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
The prospect of even a limited airstrike Iran is a great big fat “so what.” Experts who have wargamed that scenario could find no way of preventing it from escalating into a general regional war.
[/QUOTE]
The time stamp on that cited article is 2004. In addition I’m finding it hard to believe that there is no way to prevent escalating to a general war from some air strikes into Iran. YMMV, but that seems a bit out there to me.
Even if so, I’m unsure that limited air strikes into Iran are necessarily a bad thing considering all the angles at play here. YMMV, but just because its Bush doesn’t automatically mean its the wrong action…and Iran hasn’t exactly been the one with a halo in this little comic opera going on.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
Naval vessels are, however, good for provoking international incidents.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps…but whats your point? Do you think Iran will attack them? Or that a limited strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons program would cause an international incident? I suppose it would if we call limited air strikes by the US on Iran an international incident (there would be two nations involved I suppose).
The thing is that naval vessels (especially carrier battle groups) are ALSO good at doing something else…applying pressure on a country to comply with what the US wants them to comply with. No shots need be fired…cages simply need to be rattled. The EU certainly hasn’t had a lot of success getting Iran to comply using the good cop tactics…maybe its time for the bad cop to rattle the cage a bit?
Part of the problem here is that BG (among others) have been crying wolf about Iran and the evil designs of the administration for so long that its hard to take this seriously. I don’t think Bush et al have the political capital to use bad language against Iran at this point…let alone do even limited air strikes. Oh sure, they COULD authorize said strikes…but I think the fall out for that (even though IMHO it might be the right move, if not now, in a few months if Iran continues down their current path) would fall like a ton of bricks on an already beleaguered administration that is having a hard time swimming 6 feet below the level of shit (let alone keeping its collective head above).
YMMV, but I’m not going to start fretting over this until I seem something more concrete than the US doing what we ALWAYS do when we want to rattle some nations cage…i.e. moving the fleet in and having the carriers do the whole ‘big stick’ thingy. When I start seeing AIR FORCE assets moving in theater, or Army and Marine ground units being pre-positioned…well THEN its time to start going ‘hmmm…’.
-XT
[QUOTE=xtisme]
Or that a limited strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons program would cause an international incident?
[/QUOTE]
YES.
Can’t believe you even posed that as a question!
[QUOTE=Cervaise]
I regard Hersh’s writings on Iran as approximately equivalent to the warnings about the Y2K bug. Had nobody noticed the Y2K problem until the very last minute, the results would have been, maybe not catastrophic, but definitely severe. Instead, the trumpets were sounded years in advance, and the worst problems averted. Similarly, were Hersh or some other crusader not alerting us to the covert activities of the hawks, their unperceived planning would have advanced further than it has. And just as nontechnical people complained that the predictions of digital doom were unrealized on January 1, 2001, failing to understand that it was exactly the loud attention to the problem that permitted action to be taken, it is, at least in part, the warnings sounded by Hersh that are allowing saner heads to obstruct the militaristic madmen with whom Cheney has surrounded himself.
[/QUOTE]
With all due respect… that’ a pretty wild analogy. The problem with the Y2K but was that, while any given fix was relatively easy, it’s was hard to determine the millions and millions of places that the problem might pop up. And saying that the fact we haven’t attacked Iran is proof that Hersch is right is circular logic, plain and simple. I think it equally as likely in the murky world of politics and diplomacy that Hersch is being fed disinformation so that word gets out to Iran from a respectable journalist that the US really is preparing a military strike. Or maybe not. I don’t know how to assess his “unnamed sources”. Maybe they are just career pentagon types with a bone to pick with the administration.
If our leaders pondered long into the night, about how best to solidify the support for the anti-American factions in Iran or elsewhere, they couldn’t cook up a better scheme.
Are we beloved of the nations, XT? Do they have an abiding faith in our calm good sense and reasonability?