War In Iran

MATT MAson

BROADSIDE
Chatter about the possibility of this is getting louder by the day it seems. This is one of several pieces floating around:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/013107.html

I just can't get my head round Bush actually trying to pull this off. If this goes down, it will either be the end of Bush's presidency or the beginning of the end for the rest of us...
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Well, we all know Bush is the DECIDER,
and he's got his legacy to try to lay down -
can't have it be 'ruined Iraq' AND ' let Iran go nuclear' be on his imperial tomb.
Cheney's all into it , so the two headed monster wants to do what they can before they go.
Some previous threads here went over this in some depth , Condi and flacks deny it but ...
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
I know it looks ominously like the run-up to Iraq, but I cannot believe that Bush will go ahead with this. My money says it's sabre-rattling. A token air-strike on nuclear strikes (possibly by Israel) at worst, but certainly no regime change.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Planes positioned awhile ago
The Bush admin characterized the saber rattling as 'brushback pitches' to Iran
someone else called bombing known and suspected nuke sites a 'two fer'

The Cheney Interview on CNN last week made it pretty plain that the Bush and Cheney facade is still in place and puffing along

Ill winds stirred = 'blowback'
 

clappa

Aka Skrewface
I heard this on a UK radio, not sure which BBC but this has been known for months.
The upgrade of troops is just a cover name for the real operation in Iran.

I dont mean to alarm but I feel we are getting close to the end of us, but then again WHAT can we do about this?
 
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[
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men: -Plato


Chatter about the possibility of this is getting louder by the day it seems. This is one of several pieces floating around:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/013107.html

I just can't get my head round Bush actually trying to pull this off. If this goes down, it will either be the end of Bush's presidency or the beginning of the end for the rest of us...

Perhaps many imagine that the widespread public passivity and indifference to the long-planned invasion of Iran might have something to do with its semblematic cry-wolf "announcement" repeated every few months over the past five years (indeed, in 2002, after the failure to catch Bin Laden in Afghanistan and the subsequent decision to continue with the bloody mayhem in that country, a number of us were convinced that the next target would be Iran, not Iraq, until we realised that the latter was such a soft, easy target, not requiring the use of nuclear weapons).

People couldn't get their "head round Bush actually trying to pull" off the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but unlike THEN (Feb 2003), there's no millions this time out protesting on the streets, no shock or surprise, just a perfectly predictable fatalistic impotence ...

But what's happening right now is much more ominous.

Now. Let's see, then:


Iran: The War Begins

By John Pilger

As opposition grows in America to the failed Iraq adventure, the Bush administration is preparing public opinion for an attack on Iran, its latest target, by the spring.

The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on Iran.

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'US poised to attack,' claims Bulgarian agency:

The United States "could be using its two air force bases in Bulgaria and one at Romania's Black Sea coast to launch an attack on Iran in April," the Bulgarian news agency Novinite claimed.

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The War on Iran

By Stephen Gowans

The war has already begun and it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons and threats against Israel and everything to do with who rules America.

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U.S. Delays Report on Iranian Role in Iraq

By Paul Richter

The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence, U.S. officials said.

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Report: US plans strike against Iran:

The Pentagon was reported to be considering ways for the US to destroy nuclear facilities such as Iran's main centrifuge plant at Natanz, despite the fact that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney hoped that diplomatic efforts to restrain Iran would succeed.


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Francis Fukuyama: The neocons have learned nothing from five years of catastrophe :

Their zealous advocacy of the invasion of Iraq may have been a disaster, but now they want to do it all over again - in Iran
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Dave Lindorff: This is like Hitler's Suicide Order from the Bunker:

I wrote last September that Bush was gearing up for war with Iran, as evidenced by the moving up of the deployment date of the carrier group headed by the recently re-fueled and re-armed USS Eisenhower, some of whose crewmembers had leaked that its mission was to attack Iran.


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Bush's Trash Talk About Iran
By Robert Dreyfuss

The Bush administration's charges against Iran are, for the most part, scare talk and nothing more. Iran has virtually nothing to do with the Iraqi resistance movement, which is commanded and staffed by Sunni Arab military officers and Baathists.


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Manufacturing consent for war with Iran:

Raid In Iraq Found Evidence Of Iranian Aid To Militias-TV : During a recent raid in the Iraqi city of Irbil in which Iranians were detained, the U.S. found what some officials claim is evidence Iran is providing aid to insurgents and militias, NBC News reported Tuesday.

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Bush 'spoiling for a fight' with Iran:

US officials in Baghdad and Washington are expected to unveil a secret intelligence "dossier" this week detailing evidence of Iran's alleged complicity in attacks on American troops in Iraq. The move, uncomfortably echoing Downing Street's dossier debacle in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, is one more sign that the Bush administration is building a case for war.

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A Powerful Iran not Tolerated by US :

Tehran's Ambassador to Damascus Mohammad Hassan Akhtari said that Americans have now resorted to a plot which has long been used by the British, and that is none but sowing discord among Muslim Shiites and Sunnites to divide them and to discredit the Shiite Iran.

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Sen. Robert Byrd: Bush Wants War with Iran:

Top Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd is warning that the Bush administration is preparing to go to war with Iran.

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The Danger of Bush's Anti-Iran Fatwa

By Juan Cole

The president's decision to use force against Iranian "agents" inside Iraq could snare innocent pilgrims, and raises the risk of open warfare.
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Iran, Israel, The Big Lie and The Real Threat

By Frank Scott

"Attempting to portray Iran as a nuclear menace to Israel and the world, in that order, even though it has no nuclear weapons and Israel has hundreds, is not merely a sign of dementia. It is indication of near idiocy in a society that can be repeatedly manipulated into believing such totally crackpot notions that have no foundation in the material world but exist only in a world of superstitious psycho-fantasy."
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Hillary Clinton calls Iran a threat to U.S., Israel:

Calling Iran a danger to the U.S. and one of Israel's greatest threats, U.S. senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said "no option can be taken off the table" when dealing with that nation
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US strike group transits Suez Canal:

A US Navy strike group led by the assault ship USS Bataan steamed through the Suez Canal on Tuesday on its way to join the buildup of American forces in the Middle East.

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Europeans fear US attack on Iran as nuclear row intensifies:

Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the US administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear programme.

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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Thanks Padraig, the Stephen Gowan's piece is really excellent. I particularly liked the following passage...

"The Class Basis of US and British Foreign Policy

The foreign policy of capitalist countries, including that of the US and Britain, is driven to secure investment opportunities for the high-level executives, bankers and hereditary capitalist families that have capital to invest and need places to invest it in. By virtue of their wealth and their ownership and control of major enterprises, they are able to dominate public policy and shape it to their own interests.

Two important ways in which this class secures opportunities for the profitable investment of its capital is by shaping foreign policy to dominate other countries in order to secure access to their natural resources, markets, and other assets and by providing opportunities for profitable investment in the production of arms and the machinery of war. Both imperatives necessitate a third: to invent threats to national security to justify massive military expenditures, to provide the basis for the deployment of military forces abroad to protect existing overseas investments, and to furnish a plausible reason for wars of conquest to pry open nationalist, socialist or communist economies to investment.

Here’s how it works. I have idle capital I need to put to work. I loan part of my capital to the US government by buying bonds. The government sells bonds to raise money to finance government programs, including military and weapons programs, and pays interest to me on my investment. I also invest part of my capital in companies that have secured contracts with the US government to supply the Pentagon with tanks, helicopters, bombers and missiles. Thanks to these contracts, I receive dividends from my investments on the profits these companies make. In effect I’m loaning my capital to the government to spend on companies I have investments in. Moreover, the military equipment I’ve profited from (through interest on the bonds I’ve bought and dividends from the defense contractors I have a stake in) will be used to deter foreign countries in which I’ve invested from confiscating my capital through programs of nationalization and may be used to pry open economies currently off-limits to my capital.

I use part of my capital to buy lobbyists and help fund think-tanks and foundations to press the government to change policies I dislike – not only in my own country, but in other countries as well. I press for the opening of investment opportunities that are closed to foreign investment (in the oil industry in Iraq, for example), for the removal of restrictions on investments overseas, and for the improvement of conditions for the profitable investment of my capital. To pre-empt opposition to policies that enlarge my capital, I buy public relations expertise, fund university chairs, employ sympathetic researchers and buy media outlets to make the case that policies beneficial to me are natural, desirable, necessary and ultimately advantageous to all.

To ensure the public policy prescriptions formulated by the think-tanks and foundations I support are implemented (and which in turn are promoted by the public relations network I underwrite) I put part of my capital to work by contributing to the major political parties. I also hand out high-paying corporate and lobbying jobs to ex-politicians who have looked after my interests while in office. In this way, I send a message to those who hold public office today that if they play their cards right, they’ll be rewarded. I support the candidacies for public office of promising high-level executives in companies I have major investments in and the high-level operatives of the think-tanks and foundations I support. In this way, those who implicitly share my values and understand my objectives are placed in positions in which they can shepherd public policy through the executive and legislative branches of government to facilitate my profit-making activities.

The Real Reason for War by Other Means

The US, Britain and Israel are at war with Iran. The war is not conducted, at the moment, anyway, through missile strikes, bombing campaigns or land invasion, but by intimidation, provocation, subversion, and economic warfare. While the war is being justified as a necessary response to a growing threat of nuclear proliferation and to counter the alleged existential threat to Jews living in Israel posed by the president of Iran, the real reason for the war is to be found in the domination of public policy by the owners and high-level executives of banks and large corporations and in the directions in which the logic of capitalism pushes them to shape foreign policy."
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
The points about the lack of public reaction to this are very interesting. I think people are maybe not apathetic, but instead just completely isolated from any belief in any political viewpoint, not because they are all the same, as some people seem to be saying, but because there is nothing attractive to the majority of people to believe in. Most people believe that the governments of the US and Uk lie on a regular basis and mess up foreign policy royally. However, there is no palatable left wing alternative in this country (the UK). Left wing politics is still recovering from the influx of "hippy" type people that now seem to lead the majority of opposition to the war. I can find nothing attractive in the politics i've heard: what's the point in being a socialist when it's been proved socialism doesn't work? I admire the aims of socialism but it just isn't practical. Neither's anarchism. I don't believe or believe in the mainstream politicians. I don't believe or believe in the alternative left wing politicians. And i think this goes for alot of people. Left wing politics needs to recover some sort of appeal to the middle/upper working classes, ie most of the population.
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
ps.

despite the political posturing and the shittiness of it, from a purely military point of view surely the us military cannot conceive of attacking a well armed country? We're always hearing stories about how forces are stretched to the limit. Is the military that under the thumb? (that sounds kind of dumb, but surely there aren't that many INSANE commanders in the US army.)
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Its already in the process of indirect non-military conflict. But even so, I think the sticking point is oil transactions--- ie the moment America angers Iran too much (by military or non military means) the Iranians will shift oil transactions from dollars to Euros, and in so doing (hopefully) begin to change the way the entire oil market operates (amongst those disinclined to American geopolitics). However this might mean that America would be compelled to invade just to prevent this from occurring.
 

vimothy

yurp
ps.

despite the political posturing and the shittiness of it, from a purely military point of view surely the us military cannot conceive of attacking a well armed country? We're always hearing stories about how forces are stretched to the limit. Is the military that under the thumb? (that sounds kind of dumb, but surely there aren't that many INSANE commanders in the US army.)

What makes you think that an American attack on Iran would be insane from a military standpoint? I'm sure you are familiar with Iran's massive economic and demographic problems, to say nothing of the government's lack of popular support - doesn't seem that ridiculous to me.

There was an Iranian joke at the time of the 2003 liberation/invasion of Iraq - that Iranian people were standing on the roofs of their houses as the American bombers flew past with signs saying, "this way please".
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
well you're right, i'm no military expert, but I would of thought that in order to invade a country even facing minimal resistance, you would need more troops than the Us could currently field. But i may be wrong.
 
"Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck.

The responsibility for wars falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these same masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anyone else. To stress this guilt on the part of the masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom fighters; the latter that attitude held by power-thirsty politicians." : Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." : General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951


well you're right, i'm no military expert, but I would of thought that in order to invade a country even facing minimal resistance, you would need more troops than the Us could currently field. But i may be wrong.

You're thinking of a land invasion; the planned Iranian invasion has from the beginning been seen as an air invasion (with special forces units in position within Iran - there are hundreds of them already there) - which is why the "manufacturing of consent" by the mainstream media and the MIC for the attack has revolved around nuclear weapons, legitimising the pretext for their use. Smoke and mirrors, as caught on CNN and Fox ...

As for the US military, they oppose the planned invasion, just as they opposed the Iraq one, and continue to do so (only their vested interests in an ever-expanding Keynesian Militarism, in maintaining [an unsustainable] war economy keeps them kow-towing to the publicly-supported war criminals running the US/UK governments).

It Is No Use Blaming Iran For The Insurgency In Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn

Confrontation with Iran, diverting attention from the fiasco in Iraq, may be their best chance of holding the White House in 2008.

From Mega Surge to Dual ollback
By Siddharth Varadarajan

The U.S. will not leave Iraq without first militarily weakening Iran. Washington has scuttled every initiative that could have provided a diplomatic solution to the troubles with Tehran.


Israel's Bomb, Iran's Pursuit of the Bomb and U.S. War Preparations
By Walter C. Uhler

The sins of the United States are quite well known. Acting on the advice of Albert Einstein, who feared that Nazi Germany might obtain nuclear weapons, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized a crash program, the Manhattan Project, to develop the bombs that would be dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
 

vimothy

yurp
well you're right, i'm no military expert, but I would of thought that in order to invade a country even facing minimal resistance, you would need more troops than the Us could currently field. But i may be wrong.

Attack and invasion are not necessarily the same thing, although obviously if the USAF doesn't have enough resources to do one or the other, neither will happen.
 

vimothy

yurp
if you honestly think there were any people in tehran in 2003 who weren't employed by the cia and actually thought like that then you're a fucking nudnik

though fortunately you don't actually think that's true, right?

[What the hell is a "nudnik"? Actually, it doesn't matter.]

If you think only a CIA stooge wants to live in a democratic country not ruled by savage theo-fascist bastards, you're a frocking num-num. (In fact, is your real name Tony Benn)? Consider this: http://www.zhilaa.com/english.htm and pull yr head out yr ass.
 

tht

akstavrh
though it seems that it's not enough to actually advocate dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium on some subject people to ensure agony and cancers for decades to come without introjecting a sick orientalist pathology to convince yourself that these people you know nothing about are willing for their children to be born with birth defects for hundreds of years to come, unexploded ordnance, subcontracted torture, further violent subjugation (fallujah?), theft, abject humilation by people who have complete contempt for their culture and very likely chaotic internecine violence?

this is a county of unusual hetereogeneity, with very many highly educated people of many ethnic groups, an essentially westernised urban middle class, and where awful things happen largely as a concession to fundamentalist sentiments within its citizenry that are only being fed by the threat let alone enactment of american/israeli wars

the eradication of their nuclear program may be seen as in the interests of these, and there is widespread popular antipathy to the extant theocracy but to conflate the two as a justification for submitting them to the full pnac treatment is intellectually and ethically corrupt

there is no categorical difference between what you advocate and any other neoimperial project undertaken in the last hundred years (poland, manchuria, vietnam etc) and this is why you and your ilk are such sickeningly loathesome cunts

also quite funny you are unaware of that word in particular, though it probably discounts the possibility you may be jewish and therefore have an understandable (if confused) fear in instances such as this (and i'm far from an antizionist, although not an expansionist)
 
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vimothy

yurp
tht - Your post was a great example of the old saying (tho' might have misremembered it or just made it up), "do not aim where you enemy is, aim where you think he will be".

though it seems that it's not enough to actually advocate dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium on some subject people to ensure agony and cancers for decades

Mate, you are completely mis-representing me in quite an offensive way (but then, that's what makes people like you such sickening cunts - right?). Firstly, I didn't advocate anything at all, and secondly I certainly wouldn't advocate the killing of civillians in the most twisted ways you can think possibly of. Where have you got this from?

to come them without introjecting a sick orientalist pathology

Well, I won't question your pejorative use of the term "orientalist", which Said, a Western English Professor at (I think) Princeton, twisted up for later generations, I'll just ask in what sense do my three sentences "introject... orientalist pathology"? I could easily say that you are the pomo distant viewer looking at Iranians from across a vast gulf - they're too Persian for democracy (otherwise: stooges); they're too different to understand; blah, blah ...

to convince yourself that these people you know nothing about are willing for their children to be born with birth defects for hundreds of years to come, unexploded ordnance, subcontracted torture, further violent subjugation (fallujah?), theft, abject humilation by people who have complete contempt for their culture and very likely chaotic internecine violence?

Straw man, perhaps? I dunno, maybe I do secretly want to torture Persians ...

Oh yeah, and

further violent subjugation (fallujah?)

WTF?!

this is a county of unusual hetereogeneity, with very many highly educated people of many ethic groups, an essentially westernised urban middle class, and where awful things happen largely as a concession to fundamentalist sentiments within its citizenry that are only being fed by the threat let alone enactment of american/israeli wars

Always the same old bullshit isn't it, there would be no radicalism in the Middle East if it weren't for the US and the Israelis. You sound just like Galloway (in NYC believe it or not): I believe those planes on 9/11 didn't come out of a clear blue sky but out of a swamp of our own making. I think you should expand on this. Personally, I don't see how it could possibly be true, and I think it is flatly contradicted by the evidence, but I am interested to hear more.

the eradication of their nuclear program may be seen as in the interests of these, and there is widespread popular antipathy to the extant theocracy but to conflate the two as a justification for submitting them to the full pnac treatment is intellectually and ethically corrupt

More transference: I never said that I wanted the US to invade or attack Iran, never said that it would be a good thing, never said that the authoritarian and anti-US government deserved or justified it, never said that i wanted to kill Iranians and their unborn babies...

there is no categorical difference between what you advocate and any other neoimperial project undertaken in the last hundred years (poland, manchuria, vietnam etc) and this is why you and your ilk are such sickeningly loathesome cunts

Why is there no emoticon sighing or holding its head in its hands?

also quite funny you are unaware of that word in particular, though it probably discounts the possibility you may be jewish and therefore have an understandable (if confused) fear in instances such as this (and i'm far from an antizionist, although not an expansionist one)

Now you've totally lost me; what does being or not-being Jewish have to do with anything?
 

tht

akstavrh
did you notice i didn't refer to the name of any of islamic country in that post? and that the only concrete signifier of political intent was a sympathy for jews in their homeland?

just had 3 cups of tea thanks

maybe you are not a cunt and i have misread callowness as sociopathy? that would be owing to

There was an Iranian joke at the time of the 2003 liberation/invasion of Iraq - that Iranian people were standing on the roofs of their houses as the American bombers flew past with signs saying, "this way please"

the assumption that this could have been told is ineluctably orientalist (that is almost common language, and does not suppose everything that someone wrote in an eponymous book)

and whilst i try not to get fucked off by things written on the internet, this is sickening because the same sentiment - assuming the subjected as infantile, undifferentiated and needy and just asking to be providentially violated by a wise and well-intentioned western potentate, even if it involves dropping high explosives upon their awed imploring eyes - is current in some quarters despite the awful suffering it has caused, and may be employd again in the near future to justify further suffering
 
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