Seymour Hersh: The Iran Plans (The New Yorker)

[carincross]

Seymour Hersh has just published a new article in the New Yorker in which he claims that the Bush administration is ready to launch an attack against Iran using tactical nuclear weapons. The objective is not just to destroy their nuclear capability, but to cause "regime change." Sound familiar? Mr. Hersh is a careful and reliable reporter. That's what makes this so frightening!

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium… There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

The President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”… One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11.

[aquart]

1. Timothy McVeigh thought bombing a fed office building would do that

Tim McVeigh was sure that destroying the federal office building in Oklahoma City would cause Americans to rise up and bring about a regime change in the United States.

Bad theory. Doesn't work even a little.

George W. Bush: thinks like a really stupid terrorist.

[yurbud]

2. post that idea somewhere righties can see it.

[JPZenger]

3. Iranians Have Us Where they want us

The lesson the Iranians and North Koreans learned from the Iraq invasion was the exact opposite of the what the neocons wanted. The Iranians and North Koreans realized they better have nuclear weapons ready to use if they wanted to deter a US invasion.

Now the Iranians have us where they want us. Our military is so tied down and overextended in Iraq that we cannot challenge Iran.

[MISSDem]

4. No problem really. They won't need troops

just missiles.

[katty]

5. before the end of April