Report: U.S. 'preparing the battlefield' in Iran

[Good Old Neon]

This one comes from Seymour Hersh - his reporting on Iraq has been essential. Let's hope he's wrong on this one.

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country's nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic's government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

 

White House, CIA and State Department officials declined comment on Hersh's report, which appears in this week's issue of The New Yorker.

 

Hersh told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, which involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents.

 

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

 

"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.

 

The new article, "Preparing the Battlefield," is the latest in a series of articles accusing the Bush administration of preparing for war with Iran. He based the report on accounts from current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.

 

"As usual with his quarterly pieces, we'll decline to comment," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told CNN

 

"The CIA, as a rule, does not comment on allegations regarding covert operations," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.

 

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, denied U.S. raids were being launched from Iraq, where American commanders believe Iran is stoking sectarian warfare and fomenting attacks on U.S. troops.

 

"I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else," Crocker said.

 

Hersh said U.S. efforts were staged from Afghanistan, which also shares a border with Iran.

 

He said the program resulted in "a dramatic increase in kinetic events and chaos" inside Iran, including attacks by Kurdish separatists in the country's north and a May attack on a mosque in Shiraz that killed 13 people.

 

The United States has said it is trying to isolate Iran diplomatically in order to get it to come clean about its nuclear ambitions. But Bush has said "all options" are open in dealing with the issue.

 

Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed at providing civilian electric power, and refuses to comply with U.N. Security Council demands that it halt uranium enrichment work.

 

U.N. nuclear inspectors say Tehran held back critical information that could determine whether it is trying to make nuclear weapons.

 

Israel, which is believed to have its own nuclear arsenal, conducted a military exercise in the eastern Mediterranean in early June involving dozens of warplanes and aerial tankers.

 

The distance involved in the exercise was roughly the same as would be involved in a possible strike on the Iranian nuclear fuel plant at Natanz, Iran, a U.S. military official said.

 

In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor.

 

Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, warned other countries against moves that would "cost them heavily." In comments that appeared in the semi-official Mehr news agency Sunday, an Iranian general said his troops were digging more than 320,000 graves to bury troops from any invading force with "the respect they deserve."

 

"Under the law of war and armed conflict, necessary preparations must be made for the burial of soldiers of aggressor nations," said Maj. Gen. Mirfaisal Baqerzadeh, an Iranian officer in charge of identifying soldiers missing in action.

 

source - http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/06/29/us.iran/index.html

[Guest Cousin Tupelo]

Bush is moving like a virus in the Middle East -- Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran ...

[explodo]

I am torn between outrage and complacency. In my lifetime, at least my semi-politically aware adult lifetime, America hasn't done anything good, so this kind of thing is just another roll-eyes and change the channel moment. I don't know how to do anything different and feel like it is going to accomplish anything.

[Guest Jules]

In my lifetime, at least my semi-politically aware adult lifetime, America hasn't done anything good, so this kind of thing is just another roll-eyes and change the channel moment. I don't know how to do anything different and feel like it is going to accomplish anything.

This is up there on the list of dumbest things I've ever read. I'm not one of those, "if you don't like it, then go away" kind of people, so, if you don't like it, fuck off.

[explodo]

This is up there on the list of dumbest things I've ever read. I'm not one of those, "if you don't like it, then go away" kind of people, so, if you don't like it, fuck off.

You're not one of those people, but that is the gist of your advice regardless. I am not naive enough to believe that I don't have it good, but I do believe, naivety or not, that I could have it just as good dozens (or hundreds) of other places. America, like it or not, is quick becoming one of those jokes that we don't get to be in on.

[Guest Jules]

You're not one of those people, but that is the gist of your advice regardless. I am not naive enough to believe that I don't have it good, but I do believe, naivety or not, that I could have it just as good dozens (or hundreds) of other places. America, like it or not, is quick becoming one of those jokes that we don't get to be in on.

Sorry, man, but I have no idea what this means.

[Mr. Kinsley]

What just absolutely kills me about this (the Iran thing, not the Jules vs. explodo thing - that I could give a shit about) is that because of our Iraq experience, we've screwed ourselves in terms of Iran. THEY seem to be the ones we should have been worried about in the first place. Sadam we could have kept in check with a few bombing runs here and there, but now if the current admin really is right about Iran what will we be able to do about them? Our military is over-taxed with a war on two fronts and the int'l community isn't going to jump on our bandwagon anymore, regardless of how good the intel might be.

 

Freedom ain't free, but we seem to be overpaying at the moment.

[bjorn_skurj]

Iran has three times as many people as Iraq. Occupying them with an all-volunteer army is a non-starter - we would need an f-ton of more troops, the kind of numbers only a draft would provide. I can see us and Israel combining on airstrikes and limited incursions, not to mention a naval battle for control of the Persian Gulf. It could be that the plan is to seriously degrade Iran's military capability while we still have all the infrastructure right next door and before a new president takes office. Iran would probably not take it lying down - the Iran-Iraq war was a really awful affair resembling World War I. Mustard gas; human wave attacks. Bad stuff.

[TCP]

America, like it or not, is quick becoming one of those jokes that we don't get to be in on.

Sometimes (well a lot of the time), yes, but I wish my country had someone like Barack Obama running for prime minister, so you know, take what you can get.

[viatroy]

I doubt the Russians will sit idly by when we invade Iran. Or the Chinese, for that matter.

[Guest Cousin Tupelo]

I doubt the Russians will sit idly by when we invade Iran. Or the Chinese, for that matter.

 

In defense of Bush (did I just type that?) it may well be that these incursions are nothing more than what special forces are doing every day of the year in one god-forsaken place or another. Gaining intelligence on the ground to take out potential nuclear installations (which I'm betting are surrounded by hospitals, day-care centers and embassys) isn't war, yet. Certainly not different than some of the things that went on under Clinton.

 

The only difference is Hersh got a hold of this. I had (many) drinks with him and some other Journalism students in college. The guy has an ego the size of Mount Rushmore, with as many faces, but he is a pit bull investigative reporter.

[viatroy]

That's how it begins. Apparently we had a pretty good intelligence operation going in Afghanistan, but the Administration was dead-set on Iraq, and Defense wasn't cooperating with CIA to consolidate on their gains in Afghanistan.

 

China and Russia are both supporting Iran's nuclear development (though Putin said he didn't support their nuclear weapons aims) and outfitting them with weapons systems. And Iran probably still has US weapons from the Iran-Contra clusterfuck stashed in a closet somewhere.

 

I have nothing against the people of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or any other -stan. I think we should institute UN death-match duels between heads of state and leave the innocents out of it.

[okp greg]

I still remember things my anthropology teacher said in the spring of 2003. She was from Iran and had family there, and was telling me that the U.S. was already staging people in the government and in political groups to start causing trouble. I wish she wasn't right.

[sweetheart-mine]

I have nothing against the people of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or any other -stan. I think we should institute UN death-match duels between heads of state and leave the innocents out of it.

viatroy, please run for office!

 

your last sentence reminds me of this from eisenhower and i've always liked it: "I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it."

[Good Old Neon]

In defense of Bush (did I just type that?)

 

To stop from throwing up in my mouth a little bit, I

[fatheadfred]

This shit is fukt. It shows how the Dems and Reps are both retards (no offense to those with M.R.)...full offense to the Dems and Reps...really makes me want to vote independent.