Senior US officials want to attack Iran....minds made up

[RedEarth]

Senior U.S. Officials “Want to Hit Iran”
Joseph Cirincione is a respected non-proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment, one who admits he “was the last remaining person in Washington who believed President George W. Bush when he said that he was committed to a diplomatic solution.” Yet, in a new column for Foreign Policy magazine, he says he now believes that senior U.S. officials have already made up their minds to attack Iran:

For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran. In the last few weeks, I have changed my view. In part, this shift was triggered by colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran. … What I previously dismissed as posturing, I now believe may be a coordinated campaign to prepare for a military strike on Iran.

The ramifications of such an attack could be disastrous. At a minimum, it would likely “rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq.” But most importantly, a military strike would “almost certainly speed…up” Iran’s nuclear weapons development by sparking a “crash nuclear program that could produce a bomb in a few years.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/04/iran-strike/

[acmavm]

1. Well duh! The ramifications of such an attack

could be disastrous. <snip>

[paul_fromatlanta]

2. All the signs point that way - in these threads about withdrawing from Ira

In these threads about withdrawing from Iraq - I keep pointing out that its not even on the table any time soon - that the question is what form the war with Iran will take.

[gordianot]

3. We do not have senior officials in the current Junta.They are a collective

[MadHound]

4. Well, it isn't like we couldn't see this coming from a mile away

Or at least eight years ago. PNACers Chency, Rumsfeld, Perle, et al. were calling publicly to invade Iran in their little position paper "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century"<http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm>

It can't be said that these thugs in power didn't warn us about what they were going to do. And didn't they even mention that it would take a "Pearl Harbor type event" to get their war on. Lucky them, we had such an event on 911:eyes:

[kenny blankenship]

5. And attacking ensures that when they do get the bomb, they'll use it

[JohnyCanuck]

6. Colin Powell's Chief of Staff says Iran offered to negotiate in 2003

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff at the State Department, says that in 2003 Iran offered, from all appearances in good faith, to negotiate with the US over their nuclear program, support for groups like Hezbollah, Hamas etc. However under the influence of the neocons their offers were ignored.

Looks like the neocons were looking ahead and didn't want to loose a prime testing ground for a second Shock and Awe demo (New and improved! Now with the super explosive power of nuclear powered bunker-busters! Money back guarantee if you are not totally delighted with the results!- Sorry, looks like the copywriter just got a bit carried away there). Of course the warmongering neocons never like to turn down an opportunity to stage another war/Shock n' Awe demo, especially since they never have to risk their own sorry, lilly-livered, old-fart, chicken-hawk asses in the fighting of it. And, goodness gracious, someone has to be prepared to make the brown people aware of the consequences of believing they can wriggle out from under Pax Americana, especially if they are sitting on big pools of oil.

Lawrence Wilkerson, then chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell, said the failure to adopt a formal Iran policy in 2002-03 was the result of obstruction by a "secret cabal" of neo-conservatives in the administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney.

"The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran," Wilkerson wrote in an e-mail to Inter Press Service (IPS).

The Iranian negotiating offer, transmitted to the State Department in early May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, acknowledged that Iran would have to address US concerns about its nuclear program, although it made no specific concession in advance of the talks, according to Flynt Leverett, then the National Security Council's senior director for Middle East Affairs.

Iran's offer also raised the possibility of cutting off Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organization, according to Leverett. That was an explicit response to Powell's demand in late March that Iran "end its support for terrorism".

In return, Leverett recalls, the Iranians wanted the US to address security questions, the lifting of economic sanctions and normalization of relations, including support for Iran's integration into the global economic order.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001320.php

[JohnyCanuck]

7. kick n/t