A non-trivial point regarding this from the Sy Hersh Iran piece in the New Yorker:
At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.” The former intelligence official added, “There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”
Playing dishonest games with national security, reckless, moronic, yadda yadda. What got my attention was how almost exactly opposite their current cover argument falls from the truth. Our bases in Iraq are supplied mainly by overland convoys from Kuwait through hundreds of miles of mostly Shiite territory. Conveniently enough, the British just ceded one of the most important traffic nodes to local control and they have too few forces in country to take it back.
Adding that together, to keep convoys rolling after southern Shiites decide to make them stop we would have to reinforce hundreds of miles of road about as thoroughly as we guard the road to the Baghdad airport. That’s about six miles of constant patrols and non-stop checkpoints. I’m not sure that we have enough forces in the entire country of Iraq to do that over five hundred miles.
The Iraqi Shiite community may not revere the Iranian leadership, but at this point they love Iran more than they love us. Remember, the administration itself spent over a year in near-hysterics about Iran’s deep penetration of the Iraqi insurgent community. Granting the Bushies even one tenth of what they claim (the border is indeed porous to the point of non-existence and some Shiite factions unquestionably answer to Tehran) it should be child’s play for Iran and its sympathizers in Iraq to end the truck convoys from Kuwait. When that occurs our very best option would be to airlift the men and dynamite our gear. After that the options get too awful to think about.
The argument from Cheney’s camp is not merely dumb, it is almost ludicrously counterfactual. In the name of protecting American troops an influential faction of our government plans to endanger them to the maximum degree possible. It’s buffoonery taken to the ethereal plane of a master like Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan.
Teak111
Tim, with all due respect, the “they are crazy idiots” argument doesn’t help when considering the right or wrong of bombing Iran. What is the Cheney arguement for action against Iran? You forgot to mention that.
Tim F.
(1) I don’t mention it because it changes every week. It’s like debating Mitt Romney’s healthcare policy.
(2) You can find the current argument right there in the post. In fact it’s the entire point of the post.
Cheney’s faction currently plans to argue that they need to attack the Rev. Guards in order to protect American troops. Last week they claimed that they had to disarm Iran. Before that it was the EFP bombs, until people discovered that Iraqis can make them themselves. The argument keeps changing and yet the goal of provoking a war of aggression with Iran remains exactly the same.
So what is the actual motivation behind Cheney’s warmongering? Who knows. Since neither of us are mind readers I don’t see much point in arguing about it.
Stooleo
Are you serious? Even if Iran needs the hell bombed out of if, you want these guys to do it. Its like having a monkey do an alignment on your Ferrari.
Zifnab
They took our ponies!
TenguPhule
Perhaps the next CARE package to the troops should include cyanide pills.
Because if Cheney and company get their wish, it’ll be a lot better then what the Iraqis and Iranians will do to them after an attack on Iran.
Punchy
Are there any polls out there that ask simply, “Would you support the US attacking Iran?”? I’d love to see those results.
Shinobi
I would like to see those Poll results too Punchy. But it wont matter what they are, the Bush Administration (via the Cheney Shadow Government) will bomb Iran even if the entire population of the country showed up on the White House lawn to protest.
It is SUCH a bad idea, the Iranians don’t hate us quite as much as Amenenajad would like us to believe. I think bombing a country whose people could be turned into our allies is a mistake. But then.. I thought occupying two countries at once was a bad idea too. What do I know.
Wilfred
Give me a break. From their opening position papers the neo-cons made it clear that their entire project was to make the Middle East safer and better for Israel. All the existential threat nonsense they drummed up the past three years depended on convincing Americans that the moment Iran got a nuclear weapon it would use it and guarantee its own destruction. It didn’t work, so now this new propaganda.
A stable regional hegemon in the presence of Iran breaks up the status quo – illegal Israeli settlement building, apartheid practices in the Occupied Territories and droplet cluster bombs criminally used in Lebanon. We never complain because Israel is, well, special, and Palestinians are brown people whose only friend is Iran.
John S.
I’m sure it would look identical to polls that ask if the war in Iraq was worth it.
That’s amazing!!
Chris Andersen
Here’s a crazy idea.
There have been reports that attacks on Americans are dropping and the casualty rates amongst our soldiers have fallen. This may be a sign that increased American forces (the surge) may be having a positive impact.
But maybe it’s also a sign that the enemy in Iraq has made a strategic decision to cut back on the attacks in order to stockpile munitions for a latter time. Like, say, after a U.S. attack on Iran.
gypsy howell
Geez, think how much we’ll have to pay Halliburton to “provide security” when that happens. I wish I had Halliburton stock options.
Tsulagi
You just don’t see the big picture, Tim.
We don’t have to worry about our supply lines. A little judicious Shock and Awe then all the Iranian expats who hate the turbaned non-Christian leadership will quickly flood back to their country. Hooking up with the silent pro-America majority known to exist in Iran creating an unstoppable groundswell toppling the ayatollahs and their evil Ahmadiningguy puppet. All within a Freidman Unit. Two FUs at most. Do the math, moonbat.
D-Chance.
Not just the politicians. The brass among the Joint Chiefs have been telling Bush and Cheney that they’re bat-shit crazy if they even think about doing this. And from what I’ve heard and read (admittedly, among left-leaning sources), they’ve been fighting this idea for 4+ years now… ever since “Mission Accomplished”.
Ahmadinejad is about as unpopular in Iran as Bush is here. He’s little more than a figurehead hanging on by a thread. You want to turn him into a real leader with the blessings of the mullahs and 90+% popular support among the Iranian population, go ahead and ‘bombs away’.
grumpy realist
For some really good analysis of exactly how much of a CF this could easily turn into, I suggest looking at some of the archives of The News Blog (written by the late Steve Gilliard) and some of what’s being written over at the Group News Blog.
Basically, if the US attacks Iran, we’re the proverbial hitting the proverbial. We’re the guy with his dick in the hornet nest and EVEN WHILE IT’S STILL IN THERE we’re deciding to piss off the local lion. Scratch that–make that the local lion, a nest of sleeping rattlesnakes, and a definite dragon.
Condi Rice, 2008: “But nobody would have imagined that the Iranians would close the Straits of Hormuz!”
And what makes absolutely no sense at all is the neo-Likud rabble here such as Marty and Lieberman egging this all on “to protect Israel.” (Israelis are smarter than this bunch. Sure, they’d like to have the nuclear issue out of the way, but they can see further than the tips of their noses as to What Might Happen.)
I guess the neo-cons think that even if the US economy goes totally down the toilet that somehow this will have no effect on what support the US provides for Israel. If it is thought that Israel is the reason the US got into a totally stupid and unwinnable war with Iran that causes another Great Depression–well, simply screaming “anti-Semitism!” isn’t going to work at some point in the future–people are going to be so pissed off they’re not going to care as to WHAT names they get called.
Of course, given the present temperment of the average American, what’s probably going to happen is the Conservative Christians and the neo-cons will immediately point the fingers at Those Intellectuals And The DFH, bang the drum for It’s All Their Fault, and the media, having the brains of a concussed goldfish, will happily parrot the propoganda.
Alas, America, we knew you well. Too bad you were started by a bunch of religious wackos, populated by the same, and after 200 years their descendents finally managed to wriggle out of the straitjacket the Founding Fathers had fitted around them.
Davebo
Listen Dick, I get that you’ve got a hard on for Iranians. And I’m sympathetic, believe me.
But couldn’t you just knock off a 7-Eleven to get it out of your system?
BARRASSO
I don’t like Wayne Gretzky’s name used in a post about Cheney, Michael Jordan is a whore so I won’t complain.
rawshark
Blackwater?
You were Lemieux’s goalie, how can you think anything positive about that no talent hack Gretzky?
BARRASSO
We hockey players must have solidarity together against the scourge that is basketball! Come on a sport where scoring on an un-guarded goal is considered exciting, that must not stand. I will admit Gretzky is no Lemieux, or even Crosby.
The Other Steve
It’s either a credible article, or Sy Hersh knows spoof. That’s definately a Republican argument.
DragonScholar
Pretty much my worry is that if we attack Iran, period, as noted our Troops suddenly wake up in the meat grinder. And as it’d take at least a year from what I can tell to get them out (leaving equipment behind), it could be a disaster. That’s also leaving out what can happen in the Straights, worldwide terrorism, etc.
That of course is JUST focusing on Iran and Iraq. What the hell is going to happen in other countries? Is this going to topple Musharaf (sp? – I never get it right) and leave nuclear missiles in the hands of a radical party? What’s going to happen in Turkey? How the hell will we look to the rest of the world?
I jokingly said that perhaps Cheney’s goal is to make sure our military is destoyed so Blackwater can take over. I used to think that’s funny, but this is so insane I wonder if his motivations are that crazy.
Lee
While this is all fun to debate the insanity of the administration, there is really nothing to stop them from dropping bombs on Iran (or anyone else).
I recommend everyone get ready for a massive war in the Middle East.
Zifnab
Listen, Pakistan is an ally – much like Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Our administrative officials would never suspect bad things about our allies and to suggest that Pakistan would use its nuclear weapons irresponsibly is the height of unseriousness.
Besides, you haven’t even really scratched the surface on “Bad shit happening on the World Stage.” Russian Democracy is crumbling, the Chinese economy is rocketing towards the stratosphere on the back of American credit cards (what could go wrong there?) while China and Japan head off into an Asian Arms Race, and if we have a couple more genocides in Africa I don’t think there will be anyone left. So, while its nice to keep your eye on the ball, the world continues to turn no matter what new clusterfucks we manage to get ourselves into.
Blackshirt is the new Brownshirt? Seriously, who even names itself Blackwater except a brutal band of paramilitary thugs-for-hire? If we find out the company is secretly run by Goldfinger and Cobra Commander, I won’t even bat an eye.
Punchy
Translation–If a war with Iran can be shown on a TV station that doesn’t interrupt American Idol and The Office, nobody’ll care.
If, however, they must continue to interrupt these shows with live updates of dead Americans, then Bush’ll face impeachement.
sglover
I’ve mentioned this to a couple of Orthodox Jewish friends of mine: This Israel-can-do-no-wrong mentality seems like an extremely short-sighted approach, particularly for people who pride themselves on several millennia of tradition and memory. In particular, the devil’s bargain of aligning oneself with fundamentalist Christians — whose own angle is that we’ve got to help the Jews in order to hasten their destruction so that we can secure our Rapture — seems, ahem, not exactly the shrewdest alliance, ever.
But I can’t imagine anything more likely to catalyze serious anti-Semitism, of a kind that we’ve never seen, than an anti-Iranian military adventure that causes our oil-dependent economy to go belly-up. I expect that white-hot resentment would initially be directed against Iranians and Muslims — they are, after all, the last ethnic group whom it’s pretty much alright to hate and despise. But give it a few years, let the rumors simmer, and it’s not hard to imagine that same blowtorch turning on the American Jewish population.
None of this speculation makes a dent in the thinking of my friends, of course.
DragonScholar
Zifnab,
See, in this case, I think even Cobra Commander would be more competent than the current band of yahoos. We’re really talking Starscream-level here ;)
whippoorwill
yea, the world is going down the shitter. But there’s reason for hope in a new face for world peace. I give you
DragonScholar
Sglover,
I’ve had similar thoughts myself.
Right now all it takes is the right kind of massive backfire of policy (which we’re sort of headed for), and the wrong publicity, and you’ll have an Anti-Semetic backlash. When America looks for someone to blame, a general “blame the Muslims” may seem satisfying, but we’ve got our own Anti-Semetic currents that may be far easier to inflame. In short, America has more direct practice being Anti-Semetic.
Also for Americans, blaming Israel may just be easier – one country, one people. It’s far easier than dealing with the complexities of the Mideast, various Arab and Persian cultures, different strains of Islam, etc.
. . . I just argued America may switch to being more Anti-Semetic as it’s easier, didn’t I? How depressing.
BFR
I don’t think that’s even a joke – they have a division called “Raven Development” and another called “Greystone Limited.” I guess SPECTRE Development and Treadstone Limited were too obvious.
grumpy realist
Well, isn’t it “a conspiracy of ravens” and “a murder of crows”?
The other aspect of latent, virulent anti-Semitism is a) there’s a heck of a lot more Jews than Muslims in the US, b) anti-Semitism is, well, something we have more historical experience with here in the US (not that I’m sure that the WASPY country clubs wouldn’t have been happy to keep out any Muslims as well, but we’ve got the covenants against “people of the Jewish race” down quite historically.) Also c) after the Arabs got kicked out of Spain, there’s never been a sizable enough population within European culture to really get up a good head of steam against them. Hatred of Jews? Hey, it’s positively Traditional!
Add to that the conspiracy theories already swirling about about “Jewish bankers” and the Rothschilds maneuvering behind the scenes to cause every bit of Western history up until WW1–see the latest Chinese outbreak of this–and, well, let’s say that although the “Mooslims” are on the list, “teh Joos” are just right behind….
Sometimes looking at the human race makes me think we should have remained amoebas.
Badtux
One word: Stalingrad. If the supply lines to the south are taken, I fully expect some modern-day Gen. Wolfram von Richthofen to insist that it’s possible to supply U.S. forces in Iraq purely by airlift. The fact that this is not so will be ignored just as surely as it was by Adolph Hitler. Dear Leader will believe what he wants to believe.
The ultimate destruction of all U.S. forces in Iraq will simply be a coda to Dear Leader’s insane delusions. Like Hitler in his bunker as the Soviets closed in, Dear Leader will move non-existent units around on the map and issue insane orders to units that have ceased to exist. And given the ass-kissing sycophants that have been promoted to lead our military, they will tell Dear Leader exactly what he wants to hear, and U.S. military power will be destroyed for a generation. Maybe for the better, but I don’t think the families of those U.S. soldiers sent to their deaths will thank anybody.
BFR
Actually, I’d disagree with this – I think they could maintain troops in Iraq almost indefinitely. The Germans were relying on obsolescent Ju-52s which didn’t carry much of a load even by 1940s standards and didn’t perform very well in the local climate. The US and UK were effectively able to support the city of Berlin via airlift only a few years later, partially by having access to substantially more modern aircraft.
The US has a substantial fleet of C-130s, C-5s, C-17s and on down the list. I’d think feasiblility is less of a concern and more around casualty rates (both personnel and equipment) and costs.
BFR
And as an aside, I thought this was Hermann Göring’s idea – that the Luftwaffe had sufficient equipment and operational readiness to resupply the Russian expeditionary forces.
Bob In Pacifica
Tim, the problem with the road to Baghdad comes after the problem of Basra which comes after the problem of the Gulf of Hormuz. The Iranians have stockpiled lots of the latest Soviet version of the cruise missile which may actually be better than America’s. They are hard to defend. So far in the wars we’ve been since the advent of the cruise missile we have been the only ones with them. One well-placed missile at the waterline of an aircraft carrier could cause quite a problem. The Iranians are also supposed have developed an incredibly fast torpedo.
Expect the Gulf and the Straits to be an oily mess and more than a few of both military ships and oil tankers to take a hit. Expect Iran to demand that oil stop flowing through the Straits. Expect sabotage at the docks of Basra and in oil fields of any country friendly with the U.S. throughout the region. And if the U.S. is going to bomb them for aiding the insurgents in Iraq, expect them to really aid the insurgents.
American troops without supplies in a country where everyone wants to see them gone, or dead.
What is Cheney’s plan? To get oil to $500 a barrel.
Dreggas
I don’t know if this has been pointed out yet but am I the only one somehow seeing the name “Iran” somehow changing back and forth from “Iran” to “Cambodia”? Granted if they did that this wouldn’t be like that situation in that we’d know about it and even Bush couldn’t declare “we are not bombing Cambodia”.
For those who doubt Hersh…YES THE MOTHERFUCKERS ARE JUST THAT FUCKING INSANE!
Carl Gordon
This is a common result of GOP conservative martyr syndrome, or as we learned in the 3rd grade, not getting your way all the time. It’s usually acompanied by embarassing physical ailments, not unlike goat polio, as well as pointedly stupid debates about nothing (see Ann Coulter) and a ludicrous absence of common sense.
Unlike Goat Polio, spillage and pissing is more common in adult conservatives than in kids. It is entirely possible to introduce this silly behavior into a previously uninfected herd by feeding silage, sudden changes in kind of feed, parasitism, dramatic weather changes, and advanced stages of pregnancy, or shit-kicking defenseless dead people by pinhead pundits.
Symptoms include depression of common sense, decreased appetite for obvious onion dips, beaver fever, leaning or stumbling or moving in one direction only while lollygagging, head pulled to flank with rigid neck during oral sex, facial paralysis on one side due to oral sex, slack jaw mouth breathing, and drooling during Republican primaries. Diarrhea is present when conservative principles or so-called “family values” are instigated while lacking any discernable point or value. Embracing GOP talking points can be mistaken for rabies. Immediate treatment is critical – Recovery is more “iffy” than with Goat Polio.
The exact manner in which both republican ideology and Goat Polio affect the average pinhead is not well understood at this time. Treatment involves administration of high doses of boot leather to the dumb ass of the victim every six minutes for three to five days, then daily for an additional seven days. Forty-thousand IU per kg of body weight of common sense is needed to cross the blood brain barrier and put sufficient amounts of grey matter into the tissue of the dope’s central nervous system. Remember that one kilogram (kg) equals 2.2 pounds.
Badtux
BFR, the Berlin Airlift did not have to support combat operations by mechanized soldiers. A M1A1 tank burns 5 gallons per mile of diesel. A Bradley burns about 1.5 gallons per mile of diesel. An uparmored Humvee gets about 5 miles per gallon. All in all, our troops require over 3 million gallons of fuel per day to operate in Iraq. Each gallon of fuel weighs around 8 pounds once you consider the weight of the barrels it has to be transported in. That’s 24 million pounds of fuel. The entire operational C-17 fleet in theatre would be used just hauling fuel and that’s assuming that they’re all operational and that there’s no maintenance backlog. Add in the rest of the logistical requirements and the rest of the U.S. airlift capacity and it might be theoretically possible to supply the military by air in Iraq, but not very likely in any way that would maintain significant operational capabilities, especially after Iranian MANPADs cut off the ability to fly C-5’s into BIAP. The U.S. Army literally marches on its JP1. And BIAP only has two runways, only one of which can handle a C-5, so can handle maybe 500 flights per day. And those flights have to originate somewhere, which right now would be the two military airstrips we have in Kuwait. Everything right now is going into Kuwait by… uhm.. SHIP. And those ships end up at the bottom of the Persian Gulf the moment we hit Iran. So where do we originate our flights from then? Probably Germany, which greatly reduces the number of flights that our available airlifters can make per day.
But because it seems feasible to you until you work the numbers, it will seem feasible to Dear Leader too. Those number thingies? Too complicated. Hurts the head. Gotta go with the gut. Agh.
John Rohan
OMG you are all so gullible:
So this is according to an unnamed source, in other words, unverifiable and completely anonymous. If I can put another name on it, how about “fictional”?
Seymour M. Hersh has predicted the US military attack on Iran no less than five times now over the years. According to him, we should have been occupying Tehran by now. But everytime the attack doesn’t happen, he keeps moving it farther to the right on the calendar. Where’s he going to move it once we get to tlate 2008 and there’s still no attack?
TenguPhule
And yet here we are now, with Bush and Dick running the EXACT SAME GAME PLAN as they did with the Iraq War.
I can always trust in these Republicans to always do the worse thing possible.