Brace yourself for the Iran War

[GAsux]

I suppose Rice's speech today pretty much sets the bar. Neato.

[sspadowsky]

True dat. Why didn't she just say, "We'll make the obligatory token gesture to the UN, as if we give a fuck what they say, and then we start flash-fryin' the towel-heads."

I mean, really, at this point, why not just come out and say it?

[ziggytrix]

Cuz for the most part, Americans have the benefit of doublethinking that we are totally in the right, and anyone who disagrees is with the terrorists anyway.

[Ant10708]

Or the commies!

[thebiggameover]

Originally Posted by GAsux

I suppose Rice's speech today pretty much sets the bar. Neato.

link

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe...ice/index.html

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Freedom is on the march.

[Immortal Goat]

Originally Posted by Condoleeza 'Kick a fieldgoal through my teeth' Rice

no timetable had been set

What is so fucking hard about picking a date and sticking with it? It seems that every time something that SHOULD have a deadline doesn't.

When is the Iraq war going to end? No timetable?
When are we going to start paying more attention to where Bin Laden is? No timetable?
When will we bring about the events of the Book of Revelations through the use of nuclear weaponry? Within the next four years.

[The Whackmiester]

After Iran, who's next?

[Mr. Oysterhead]

You lucky bastards across the ocean in not-brown lands.

[Supercooldude]

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a muslim extremist country which deserves to be bombed because they harbor terrorists, fund terrorist groups, and are trying to obtain nuclear capability. GO BUSH! GO USA!

[KevinTheOmnivore]

[The Whackmiester]

Originally Posted by Supercooldude

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a muslim extremist country which deserves to be bombed because they harbor terrorists, fund terrorist groups, and are trying to obtain nuclear capability. GO BUSH! GO USA!

Attacking now would be a mistake: most of America's troops are in Iraq, and Iran seems pretty hard to reach, what with the barbaric insurgency blowing everything to crap and what not.

[Ant10708]

Attacking now would be a mistake but not because we have troops stationed all around the country. If anything thats an advantage.

[Dole]

who the FUCK is the 'whackmiester'? -in fact, don't answer that just KILL IT NOW

and drown 'supercooldude' while you're at it.

[FurankuS]

Well, Iran IS a threat...

With the recent elections in Iraq the possibility of the country splitting is pretty high (especially since it looks like the Sunni Muslims aren't going to pull through). If Iraq split:

The Shiites would most likely merge/ be conquered by Iran (the badness of this should be obvious)

The Kurds would start raising hell in northern ex-Iraq/ eastern Turkey to establish a Kurdish state

The Sunnis would...uh...I don't know what they'd probably do.

So if civil war breaks out in Iraq, Iran becomes VERY important.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by FurankuS

With the recent elections in Iraq the possibility of the country splitting is pretty high (especially since it looks like the Sunni Muslims aren't going to pull through). If Iraq split:

The Shiites would most likely merge/ be conquered by Iran (the badness of this should be obvious)

I think it's pretty unlikely that the Iraqi Shiites would simply hand themselves over to Iran. I don't think the high number of Shiites who voted last month simply did that with a hope of getting annexed by Iran.

As for Iran "conquering" the Shiite sections of Iraq, I think that's out of the question.

The Kurds have already essentially voted for a regional governing body for themselves. I think they would like their own nation, but I think they also realize that working with the Shiite electorate to establish a democratic Iraq is a very good first step. I don't think the Kurds will feel compelled to squabble with Turkey over land if they feel that the nation of Iraq could serve as their potential homeland.

So if civil war breaks out in Iraq, Iran becomes VERY important.

I don't really see that as a key reason to worry about Iran. I'd say their undemocratic practices, their nuclear capacity, as well as their history of state-sponsored terrorism should be cause for more alarm than whether or not Iran has a key role in the hypothetical impending civil war in Iraq.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/funct...8-111237-6122r

Iran readies for feared attack by U.S.

By Borzou Daragahi
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published February 19, 2005

Iran has begun preparing for a possible U.S. attack, announcing efforts to bolster and mobilize recruits in citizens' militias and making plans to engage in the type of "asymmetrical" warfare used against American troops in neighboring Iraq.
"Iran would respond within 15 minutes to any attack by the United States or any other country," an Iranian official close to the hard-line camp, which runs the country's security and military apparatus, said on the condition of anonymity.
Tensions between Tehran and Washington have increased over Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology.
Tehran insists its desire for atomic energy is entirely peaceful while Washington accuses the Muslim state of using nuclear energy as a fig leaf to make weapons.
President Bush said in an interview with Belgian television yesterday that he strongly prefers a diplomatic effort over military action to deal with Iran.
"You never want a president to say never," Mr. Bush said, "but military action is ... never the president's first choice. Diplomacy is always the president's first choice, at least my first choice."
The president issued his strongest warning to Iran during last month's State of the Union speech, telling Tehran that it "must give up" its nuclear program and support for terrorism, and pledging U.S. support for Iranians who openly oppose Iran's unelected regime.
In recent days, Iranian newspapers have announced efforts to increase the number of the country's 7-million-strong "Basiji" militia forces, which were deployed in human wave attacks against Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
Iranian military authorities have paraded long-range North Korean-designed Shahab missiles before television cameras. Iranian generals have conducted massive war games near the Iraqi border.
One Western military expert based in Tehran said Iran was sharpening its abilities to wage a guerrilla war.
"Over the last year they've developed their tactics of asymmetrical war, which would aim not at resisting a penetration of foreign forces, but to then use them on the ground to all kinds of harmful effect," he said on the condition of anonymity.
It remains unclear how much of the recent military activity amounts to an actual mobilization and how much is a propaganda ploy.
Iranian officials and analysts have said they want to highlight the potential costs of an attack on Iran to raise the stakes for U.S. officials considering such a move and to frighten a war-weary American public.
"Right now it's a psychological war," said Nasser Hadian, a University of Tehran political science professor who recently returned from a three-year stint as a scholar at New York's Columbia University.
"If America decides to attack, the only ones who could stop it are Iranians," he said. "Pressure from other countries and inside America is important, but it won't prevent an attack. The only thing that will prevent an attack is that if America knows it will pay a heavy price."
Bush administration officials have said there are no immediate plans to attack Iran and the possibility is considered remote because deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere limit U.S. capacity for a major new offensive.
Iran, in addition to developing plans for guerrilla warfare against an invading army, also is attempting to give the impression that it is bolstering its conventional forces.
In December, Iran announced its largest war games "ever," deploying 120,000 troops as well as tanks, helicopters and armored vehicles along its western border.
More recently, Iran's press reported that the Iranian air force had received orders to engage any plane that violates Iranian airspace. These reports followed the disclosure that unmanned American drone planes have been monitoring Iranian nuclear sites.
"It is obvious that with Iran surrounded by the United States forces and America pressing the nuclear issue, Iran wants to make a show of force," said a Western diplomat from Tehran, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Iran's army includes 350,000 active-duty soldiers and 220,000 conscripts.
Its elite Revolutionary Guards number 120,000, many of them draftees. Its navy and air force total 70,000 men.
The armed forces have about 2,000 tanks, 300 combat aircraft, three submarines, hundreds of helicopters and at least a dozen Russian-made Scud missile launchers of the type Saddam Hussein used against Israel during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Iran also has an undetermined number of Shahab missiles based on North Korean designs that have ranges of up to 1,500 miles.
But both outside military experts and Iranians concede that the country's antiquated conventional hardware, worn down by years of U.S. and European sanctions, would be little match for the high-tech weaponry of the United States.
"Most of Iran's military equipment is aging or second-rate and much of it is worn," military expert Anthony Cordesman wrote in a December 2004 assessment of Iran's military. He said Iran lost between 50 percent and 60 percent of its military equipment in the Iran-Iraq war, "and it has never had large-scale access to the modern weapons and military technology necessary to replace them."
Iran's highly classified Quds forces, which have a global network of operatives and answer directly to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could create a myriad of woes outside Iran's borders.
In neighboring Iraq, where the United States says Tehran already has been interfering, many brush off the current low-level infiltration as minor compared with the damage Tehran is capable of unleashing.
"If Iran wanted, it could make Iraq a hell for the United States," Hamid al-Bayati, Iraq's deputy foreign minister, said in a recent interview.
• David R. Sands contributed to this article.

[ItalianStereotype]

http://207.44.245.159/article8130.htm

Scott Ritter Says U.S. Plans June Attack On Iran

By Mark Jensen

02/19/05 --United for Peace of Pierce County (WA) - - Scott Ritter,
appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped
two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia's
Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that
George W. Bush has "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and
claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in
Iraq.

Olympians like to call the Capitol Theater "historic," but it's doubtful
whether the eighty-year-old edifice has ever been the scene of more
portentous revelations.

The principal theme of Scott Ritter's talk was Americans' duty to protect
the U.S. Constitution by taking action to bring an end to the illegal war in
Iraq. But in passing, the former UNSCOM weapons inspector stunned his
listeners with two pronouncements. Ritter said plans for a June attack on
Iran have been submitted to President George W. Bush, and that the president
has approved them. He also asserted that knowledgeable sources say U.S.
officials "cooked" the results of the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.

On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed
off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its
purported goal is the destruction of Iran's alleged program to develop
nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also
expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to
regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter
regards with the greatest skepticism.

The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush
has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the
advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S.
authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the
percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to
48%.

Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official
involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be
reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan
magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh.

On Jan. 17, the New Yorker posted an article by Hersh entitled The Coming
Wars (New Yorker, January 24-31, 2005). In it, the well-known investigative
journalist claimed that for the Bush administration, "The next strategic
target [is] Iran." Hersh also reported that "The Administration has been
conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last
summer." According to Hersh, "Defense Department civilians, under the
leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and
consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and
missile targets inside Iran. . . . Strategists at the headquarters of the
U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the
military's war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of
Iran. . . . The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become
clear that the Europeans' negotiated approach [to Iran] cannot succeed, and
that at that time the Administration will act."

Scott Ritter said that although the peace movement failed to stop the war in
Iraq, it had a chance to stop the expansion of the war to other nations like
Iran and Syria. He held up the specter of a day when the Iraq war might be
remembered as a relatively minor event that preceded an even greater
conflagration.

Scott Ritter's talk was the culmination of a long evening devoted to
discussion of Iraq and U.S. foreign policy. Before Ritter spoke, Dahr Jamail
narrated a slide show on Iraq focusing on Fallujah. He showed more than a
hundred vivid photographs taken in Iraq, mostly by himself. Many of them
showed the horrific slaughter of civilians.

Dahr Jamail argued that U.S. mainstream media sources are complicit in the
war and help sustain support for it by deliberately downplaying the truth
about the devastation and death it is causing.

Jamail was, until recently, one of the few unembedded journalists in Iraq
and one of the only independent ones. His reports have gained a substantial
following and are available online at dahrjamailiraq.com.

Friday evening's event in Olympia was sponsored by South Puget Sound
Community College's Student Activities Board, Veterans for Peace, 100
Thousand and Counting, Olympia Movement for Justice & Peace, and United for
Peace of Pierce County.

Mark Jensen is a member of United for Peace of Pierce County.
http://www.ufppc.org/


I tend to think that Ritter is a douche, but there's always the what if. I'm torn on war with Iran; on one hand, it'll put the Chinese in check and destroy a major bastion of international terrorism, but our resources are also stretched enough as it is.

[Sergeant_Tibbs]

So is this Bush just trying to get european support before blowing the shit out of Iran?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story...423628,00.html

The US president, George Bush, said today that world leaders should speak with one voice on Iran as the second leg of his European tour took him to Germany and a meeting with Gerhard Schröder.
Alongside Syria, Iran has been the focus of Mr Bush's foreign policy pronouncements during his meetings with European leaders on what has been billed as a fence-mending trip to heal the divisions caused by the Iraq war.

He said the international community needed to present a united front if it was to prevent Iran manufacturing nuclear weapons, which Washington suspects is the purpose of its civilian nuclear programme.

"It's vital that the Iranians hear the world speak with one voice that they should not have a nuclear weapon," Mr Bush said at a press conference with Mr Schröder. "Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, for the sake of security and peace."

Germany, Britain and France are involved in negotiations to persuade Iran to switch to a form of reactor technology that cannot be used to make warheads in return for other incentives, but Washington does not support proposals such as offering Tehran membership of the World Trade Organisation.

Mr Bush said the Iranians had been caught enriching uranium in violation of their international agreements.

"They have breached a contract with the international community. They're the party that needs to be held to account, not any of us."

Mr Schröder sought to downplay differences with the US.

"We absolutely agree that Iran must say no to any kind of nuclear weapons," he told reporters. "Iran must not have any nuclear weapons. They must waive any right to the production thereof."

Iran, global warming and the EU's plan to lift its arms embargo on China are the principal points of disagreement between Washington and Europe.

On Syria, over which the US has cooperated with France on a UN resolution calling on it to pull its troops out of Lebanon, Mr Bush reiterated the demand and added that Damascus must also withdraw its "secret services" from its southern neighbour.

Since the assasination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hiriri last week, which opposition politicians in Beirut blame on Syria, international pressure has mounted for it to end its involvement in Lebanon.

The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, today dispatched his intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, a veteran of negotiations between Israel and Palestinian factions, to defuse the tension in Damascus.

Syria opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq and is accused of harbouring senior former Iraqi regime officials and allowing Islamic militants to slip into Iraq to fight US forces.

Mr Bush thanked Germany for its "vital" contribution in Iraq. Germany refused to deploy troops but is training Iraqi security officers in the United Arab Emirates and has forgiven billions of Iraqi debt.

"I fully understand the limit of German contributions," Mr Bush told the press conference.

The next and final stage of Mr Bush's visit takes him to the Slovakian capital of Bratislava for talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by ItalianStereotype

I tend to think that Ritter is a douche, but there's always the what if. I'm torn on war with Iran; on one hand, it'll put the Chinese in check and destroy a major bastion of international terrorism, but our resources are also stretched enough as it is.

I tend to take Scott Ritter at his word, especially considering our inability to find the "stockpiles" of WMDs that Ritter said all along weren't in Iraq.

However, with that said, I have my doubts about this one. The guy hasn't been in that line of work for like seven years now, and while I trust him on Iraq based off his experience there, I don't know how reliable he is on Iran.

As for war with Iran-- Well, this is sort of why I think I disliked the justification for war in Iraq. At least one of the reasons. Iran has a very clear record of state sponsored terrorism, and particularly the scary Islamic fundamentalist kind that hit us on 9/11. I also think there's much more of a statement to make by working with the French to get Syria out of Lebanon, one of the few Middle Eastern countries who can even brag about having some semblance of democracy.

I dunno, from what I've heard, Iran is just full of red-staters waiting to be liberated and buy stuff at GAP and McDonalds (do they have those there already?). But we've heard that before.

[ziggytrix]

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. Having said that, all options are on the table," Bush said.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe.../bush.iran.ap/