Russian intelligence sees U.S. military buildup on Iran border

[seemslikeadream]

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070327/62697703.html

MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran's borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

"The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran," the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran "that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost."

He also said the U.S. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, said last week that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future.

A new U.S. carrier battle group has been dispatched to the Gulf.

The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around 80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are heading for the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been deployed since December 2006.

The U.S. is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the region.

[Megahurtz]

1. So, is This What "ReDeployment" is Really All About???

:grr:

[onenote]

2. pretty vague story, imo

"Flurry of activity by US armed forces near Iran's borders." Which borders? The borders with Afghanistan and Iraq? Hardly surprising. Turkemistan? That would be interesting...are we in Turkemenistan? Saudi Arabia?

As for the Stennis...no big secret. Its deployment to the mideast was announced around the beginning of the year. THe announced plan is for it to take the place of the Eisenhower,which is supposed to finish its deployment sometime around the beginning of April. The STennis was deployed a bit early in a show of strength, but I don't know that there are any plans to keep two carrier groups in the region indefinitely.

[seemslikeadream]

3. Spying and Iran

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/03/28/midmorning2/
Broadcast: Midmorning, 03/28/2007, 10:00 a.m.
An acclaimed author and a former Iranian hostage talk about Iran's latest seizure of British sailors, and about the business of gathering intelligence.

Guests
Mark Bowden: Journalist and author of "Guests of the Ayatollah," about the Iranian hostage crisis. He also wrote "Black Hawk Down," about the U.S. involvement in Somali

William Daugherty: Former CIA agent and one of the hostages held in Iran for 444 days in '79 - '80. He's the author of "Executive Secrets," and he teaches political science at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia.

[Peace Patriot]

4. If it happens, we're toast. The world will bring us down, if not militarily, by a deliberate

crashing of the US dollar, or other such means. Russia, China and India recently held talks on how to do it. South America is already moving toward a South American "Common Market" and common currency (to get off the US dollar). The only Bush ally left on the entire continent, Colombia, is engulfed in a rightwing paramilitary scandal that may well end up implicating the Bushites. On his recent visit, Bush was publicly lectured by Latin American leaders, from Brazil to Mexico, on the sovereignty of Latin American countries. The overwhelming message of Latin American countries to Bush/US is "butt out!" Europe--especially southern Europe, which would be most affected by chaos and/or nuke warfare in the Middle East (with refugees, pollution, etc.)--may well break off diplomatic relations, if the sentiments of its people are any guide (and Europe tends to have governments that are more responsive to their people than ours is--and currently has leftist governments in Spain and Italy). And, besides all this, we will have worldwide jihad by aroused Muslim countries, with infuriated moderates joining the jihad, and Iran itself is not Iraq--decimated by 12 years of sanctions. Iran is prepared to defend itself. And we may find that China does not take kindly to a US military attack on one its major oil suppliers. Then there's Pakistan, one assassin's bullet away from a jihadist takeover of their nukes, and the threat that may pose both to Iran and India...

I cannot think of anything more destructive, or more wildly insane, than a Bush/US assault on Iran. Is this to be the Bush Junta criminals' final gift to us--the ruination of our country? --completely unnecessary world war?

I don't necessarily trust Russia in this situation--nor what their motives might be for promoting news of a bigger US threat to Iran than everyone already knew about, if it isn't true. On the other hand, I have no faith in Bush/Cheney's sanity, and I am afraid that we cannot necessarily trust the US military commanders under their control. Oil and that great cancerous growth on our backs, the "military-industrial" complex, are at issue--with an increasingly restive US citizenry, 75% of whom oppose the Iraq war and want it ended, and 84% (!) of whom oppose any US participation in a widened Mideast war (according to a poll posted here at DU last summer). We could be looking at bankruptcy, destabilization and civil disorder in the US. This widened war that Bush/Cheney want is more and more resembling WW I--that completely unnecessary, monarchical war, that brought down the Tzar of Russia, decimated the youth of Europe and Great Britain, and paved the way for Hitler's rise. Is this what the "unitary executive" is all about--they are the Tzar; we are the Russian peasants? Or worse, they are Hitler, and we are the goosestepping masses, grateful just to have food on the table and the trains running on time?

Personally, I don't think history repeats itself. And, despite the Bush Junta, I think humanity is on an upward progressive trend. But history does seem to turn--like W.B. Yeats' notion of the gyre--on certain repeating themes. A peoples' ability to stop unnecessary, aggressive, ruinous war, by an out-of-control leader, is one of them. Democracy--and very pointedly, the US Constitution and its "balance of powers"--was conceived as a solution. And if it fails--which the coup against our vote counting system was likely deliberately designed to insure (vote counting with "trade secret," proprietary code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, amidst the mind-boggling silence of the Democratic Party leadership)--it will not be the Bushites and their corporate masters who suffer. They no doubt have their stolen booty in foreign currency by now. It will be "we, the people" who suffer, and who will then need to invent a political system that works. The concurrent crisis of global warming may then do us all in, all peoples everywhere, since the US contributes 25% of the pollutants that are causing it, and US action on it is likely critical to the survival of the planet. Instead, we have leaders who are plotting to end up with all the riches in the world piled up in their bunkers on islands in the Pacific, or on Mars? Who knows with these people? Not Paraguay (Paraguay just gave the finger to Bush by joining the Bank of the South! Big leftist movement in Paraguay.)

If it happens, it happens. There is little we can do about it, right now, with half the Democrats in Congress hog-tied to the "military-industrial complex" (and likely beholden to Bushite-corporate controlled voting machines). Best to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, on whatever reforms we are working on, and hope those 75% and 84% American opinion figures mean that there are lots of politicians, military commanders and other leaders who will prevent it. They are Americans, too.

[blues90]

5. i thought the Stennis was already sent last month

So it should be there by now . There were two other carrier groups sent tthis month , I don;t recall their names .

[NNN0LHI]

6. Russia is trying to intimidate Iran too

Russia wants to sell Iran the fuel for Iran's reactors. Big money in selling fuel for reactors. Russia can name their price for the fuel when the only place Iran can get it from is them too. Iran isn't going to fall for that scam either.

Don