As Iraq War Enters Year 5, Bush Cabal Is Cooking Up A New, Bigger War

By MANIFESTO JOE

There's nothing like a good old-fashioned war to divert public attention away from scandal(s).

According to some sources, the Bush administration has one planned, and it may be just a question of when: days, weeks or months.

The Times of India published this report last month:

US preparations for invading Iran are complete: Report

By Rashmee Roshan Lal

LONDON: American preparations for invading Iran are complete and a major conventional war with Teheran could begin any day, according to a chilling new report that coincides with leading US Democrat Congressmen's warning to President Bush that he does not have the authority to go to war with Iran.

The report, by authoritative defence expert Dan Plesch, says American military operations for Iran "extend far beyond targeting suspect WMD facilities and will enable President Bush to destroy Iran's military, political and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons."

Plesch, who is known to be well-connected and well-networked at the very highest reaches of the trans-Atlantic political and defence establishment, quoted unnamed British military sources to say that "the US military switched its whole focus to Iran" as soon as Saddam Hussein was kicked out of Baghdad.

He said his sources added that the US has continued this target-Iran strategy ever since, even though the American infantry continues to be bogged down fighting the insurgency in Iraq.

In an assertion that has astonished European capitals, the defence guru claimed that despite the gross failure to re-build post-Saddam Iraq, American hubris extends to plans for a "peaceful" post-invasion "settlement" for Iran. This plan will seek to create a federal nation, an "Iran of the regions", he said.


With the administration embattled with yet another scandal, involving the firing of U.S. attorneys, it's such a convenient time for Big Brother to get us a new, improved enemy, one that even many liberals can hate. After all, that country's leader is a hard-liner who has even denied that the Holocaust took place. He seems more than a bit of a kook -- even more of one than we have in the White House. (You know, the fella who has lots of meaningful dialogues with God, now that he's sober.)

I won't discuss whether such a war, to be fought over Iran's apparent nuclear ambitions, would be justified. I won't go back in time, to 1953, about how the U.S. set itself up for this dilemma by engineering a coup that overthrew a legitimate nationalist government and installed the Shah in power for 25 brutal years, largely because Big Oil coveted Iran's reserves. I won't even go into the usual tedious humanitarian objections to all the civilian carnage that would surely follow such an invasion. Let us assume here as the Right does, just for the sake of argument, that U.S. moral authority is beyond question and that we would have a perfect right to lay waste to large portions of Iran and its people, unless its government backs down on the nukes.

A new military adventure of this kind by the Bush neo-con cabal would have the potential to become a far worse disaster than the Iraq war has been. The problem is, and has been for four years now, that our all-volunteer military is severely overextended. We've already got two wars going, and even the one in Afghanistan now looks far from over. This administration, with its remarkable hubris, did not pick our battles wisely.

Afghanistan, historically, is a very bad place to make war. But toppling the Taliban seemed very much the thing to do at the time, since they were harboring bin Laden and al-Qaida. But then the neo-cons soon got us into an elective war in Iraq, one that at least initially had nothing at all to do with the particular terrorists we were supposed to be hunting. Message to the Right Wing: There was no verifiable link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida; even the administration conceded that, albeit long after the invasion.

To be sure, Saddam was an evil dude. But he was being effectively contained; and toppling him got U.S. troops caught up in a bloody civil war, and actually opened Iraq's borders so that al-Qaida terrorists could enter the country after that.

It's hard to understand how even the most indoctrinated super-patriot fails to see that this was, at the very least, a devastating blunder. And, there's not going to be any good way out of it.

And now we're looking at the possibility of war with Iran. Certainly they don't have the military technology to win, at least not outright. Their infrastructure would likely be demolished quickly.

But consider: This is a country of 70 million, over three times the size of Iraq, with the median age of the male population being 25.4 years, according to the CIA Factbook. And, as the Israelis discovered long ago, women can shoot, too. They can be very lethal rifle soldiers.

That's an awful lot of cannon fodder. Would there be an insurgency? Imagine Iraq, times 3 or 4. And Iran is overwhelmingly Shiite. The Iranians wouldn't likely be fighting each other very much, as the Iraqis are.

It's a bigger country than Iraq in land mass, too, and there's lots of mountains. It would require a huge occupation force. (Hey, young fellas -- ready to get that draft notice from Chickenhawk George?)

And, what will the neighbors think? Iraq has Shiite militias that aren't openly fighting us now. If we invade a Shiite neighbor, do you figure they might? And what about Syria, to name only one Arab country that might be chapped?

Let's think on an even broader scale. Is there a possibility that Israel would get involved on our side, and then attacked? (Not necessarily in that order.) They have nukes, by the way. And hey, I just remembered that Russia and China have nukes, too. Lots of them. And big armies. And they've already warned the U.S. against such military action. We can only hope that they would be loath to get involved in such a bloody mess and would limit themselves to strong condemnations of U.S. actions.

We've got the potential for World War III here, with the entire Mideast as Ground Zero. Surely, one would think, our leaders would be circumspect enough not to get us involved in such a needless Armageddon.

But think again. Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, has written about a group of men who served during the Reagan administration in the 1980s, and also Bush the First in early '90s, as high-level, but not top-level, officials. They were often referred to (reportedly, for one, by then-General Colin Powell) as "the crazies." Name any reckless military action you can imagine from that time, and they were for it.

Guess what? These are the men who have been in charge of Bush policy in the Mideast, for over six years.

And one thing we've seen over and over is that a nasty war, with lots of burning Humvees, bodybags and gutwagons, will be Page One, at least for a good while. In that news budget meeting, the fired U.S. attorneys wouldn't stand a chance. And flag lapel pins will become mandatory. ("Hey, hippie, America's at war. Git a f***ing haircut and join the f***ing Marines!")

I'm not much of a gambler. But if I were, I would bet a modest sum that the U.S., Israel and other allies would eventually win such a protracted, epic war -- but the costs would be almost unimaginable. Envision the United Kingdom in 1946 -- victorious, but in ruins. I would wager further that the U.S. would emerge in a similar condition, and our world "hegemony" would be ceded to up-and-comers like China, Japan and India. I don't think that's what the neo-cons, or any other "cons" for that matter, had in mind. Believe it or not, Righties, that ain't even what them godless liberals wants.

And by the way, this plan for postwar Iran -- sounds mighty familiar, doesn't it? Our officials seem to be stuck in a mode of: "We're going to make all the same mistakes again. But we're going to make them better this time."

Now back to that Times of India report:

Defence experts said the revelation that America's military planning is advanced and well-calibrated to wipe out chunks of Iran's installations and infrastructure and could lay bare swathes of the country was bound to scare policy makers and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic. ...

Plesch's report claimed the US Army, Navy, Air Force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for "Operation Iranian Freedom". He added that Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerised plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).

He chillingly claimed, "US defence establishment's programme called "Global Strike" means that, without any obvious signal, what was done to Serbia and Lebanon can be done overnight to the whole of Iran." He added saying, "We, and probably the Iranians, would not know about it until after the bombs fell. Forces that hide will suffer the fate of Saddam's armies, once their positions are known."

Semper fi, y'all.

Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his new blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.