**Military Resistance Forced Shift on Iran Strike**!

[babylonsister]

Military Resistance Forced Shift on Iran Strike
Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2007-10-20 12:59. Iran | Nonviolent Resistance

By Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON - The George W. Bush administration’s shift from the military option of a massive strategic attack against Iran to a surgical strike against selected targets associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker earlier this month, appears to have been prompted not by new alarm at Iran’s role in Iraq but by the explicit opposition of the nation’s top military leaders to an unprovoked attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The reorientation of the military threat was first signaled by passages on Iran in Bush’s Jan. 10 speech and followed by only a few weeks a decisive rejection by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of a strategic attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Although scarcely mentioned in press reports of the speech, which was devoted almost entirely to announcing the troop “surge” in Iraq, Bush accused both Iran and Syria of “allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq”. Bush also alleged that Iran was “providing material support for attacks on American troops”.

Those passages were intended in part to put pressure on Iran, and were accompanied by an intensification of a campaign begun the previous month to seize Iranian officials inside Iraq. But according to Hillary Mann, who was director for Persian Gulf and Afghanistan Affairs on the National Security Council staff in 2003, they also provided a legal basis for a possible attack on Iran.

more...

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/27889

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Resistance by the top brass may be all that saves us from disaster

People may not know that the top German military officers tried to talk Hitler out of invading Poland in 1939. They predicted that he would enjoy some easy victories at first but that he was embarking on a course that would eventually lead to the destruction of Germany.

Hitler threw a tantrum, and the military leaders reluctantly agreed, because ultimately, their code valued obedience über alles.

[aquart]

6. Which is how we wound up in Iraq.

[leveymg]

9. Most Americans also don't know that members of the General Staff also tried to assassinate Hitler

on several occasions. The last of which, July 20, 1944, also coincided with a coup attempt that almost succeeded.



On July 20, 1944, a bomb detonated during a conference between Hitler and his top advisors in his headquarters on the Eastern Prussia, the "Wolfschanze."

Though the bomb failed to kill Hitler, Rommel, along with some of the highest officers in the German military, was implicated for his part in the assassination attempt. Facing a propaganda nightmare Hitler himself ordered Rommel to commit suicide. With Hitler using the safety of Rommel's family as leverage, Rommel poisoned himself on Oct. 14, 1944, while publicly he was said to have died in an automobile accident. Not able to afford to lose Rommel's prestige before the German people Hitler had Rommel buried with full military honors and Rommel's complicity in the 20th of July Plot was never made public.

[rodeodance]

2. Recall that it was Patraeau that said NO to Joe Lieberman during his testimony in sept

[HCE SuiGeneris]

3. Fallon and his supportering commanders

deserve a hearty thank you if the information in this article is accurate. I'm sure they won't get it from * and Co.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

5. I suppose this thread killing comment

is an unpopular viewpoint. However, all I can see emanating from this news is tens of thousands of lives spared from another new war.

[leveymg]

11. We should also thank Pete Pace for holding the line against the neocons

For several years, he was the most public symbol of the top brass' push-back against the Administration's plans to "fall forward" into Iran.

[bahrbearian]

4. I wonder how Cheney will get rid of Fallon?

[aquart]

8. Won't matter if he does.

No one who is really in our military supports this crap. They know we haven't got a war machine, not the men, not the equipment, not the money. We have to order replacement parts from China.

I'm beginning to wonder if Wayne Madsen didn't get it right about the nuke flyover. Yikes, that's a hard admission.

We KNOW Bush was/is trying to go to war with Iran. We KNOW it. We KNOW he wants to nuke someone, ANYONE. Things are gonna be tense till 1/20/2009.

[patrice]

7. "Surgical strikes" = Tactical nukes. nt

[TahitiNut]

10. Perhaps they have a quota on "illegal orders"?

:shrug:

It's more likely that the JAG got religion.

[shadowknows69]

12. This makes some of my predictions about this make more sense

ala the stories I heard in my taxi from troops as long as two years ago who were certain that we were going to engage Iran with full force including groud troops. I think the shrub thought he had a bigger army than he did to play with. I hope the same military leaders that delayed this get smart enough to tell him his other two campaigns aren't working for shit either.

[DemReadingDU]

13. afternoon kick