Splendid. If training camps are anything like the ‘training’ or ‘camps’ that I’ve seen those places are mostly dirt with targets set a long distance away from the muddy spots where people kneel to shoot at them. Obstacles are made out of unpainted plywood and the barracks make your freshman dorm look like the Hilton. Building one of those would cost, what, $50k? It would take about five days to build another one using minimally skilled labor. A cruise missile costs a a million. A big GPS-guided bomb dropped by a stealth plane at night can’t cost that much less, and I doubt that the time and resources spent to ensure that the rest of our planes could overfly Iran without playing dodge-the-missile would come cheap either.
All of this takes for granted that the loyal Bushies in charge of choosing targets inside Iran can tell a training camp from a high school soccer field, which by now ought to be pretty hard to believe. I wouldn’t hire these guys to clean a Wendy’s for fear that they’d empty a mop into the deep fryer.
MattF
… and I, personally, think that a concurrent impeachment of Bush & Co. would improve the overall tone of the election campaign. No, really.
Delia
Well, golly gee. If we get a nice, shiny new war going just in time for November, and maybe even a new Mission Accomplished photo-op for Georgie, maybe it’ll get the voters all excited about voting for Honest John. You know, those voters who didn’t fall for Hillary’s gas-tax pander.
Notorious P.A.T.
And we know Iran is training Iraqi insurgents because. . . uh. . . because shut up, that’s why.
nightjar
Well hell, you can buy discount JDAM kits for the paltry sum of 14K and strap those suckers on any ol’ “dumb” bomb. What’s that, almost 4 to one cost ratio with your average mud hut. That’s big savings for the Pentagon pencil necks trying to stretch the war dollar. And just think of the jobs they’ll create and profits for defence contractors. snark
Bolton is insane, he doesn’t care about piddly training camps, he wants an all out war with Iran and that’s what we get making real his demented neocon fantasies. Goddamn these fuckers, I hate them and their bullshit ideology. And I got a bad feeling about what Cheney and Bush have planned before the election.
ploeg
Bombing a training camp would show that we are very very cross.
Bob In Pacifica
Can we bomb Osama?
frogspawn
Why the hell would the Iranians need to ship them to Iran to train? They’ve got the world’s best Urban Guerrilla Warfare Training Simulator right there in Iraq.
Jee. Zuss. Christ.
frogspawn
Forgot to add:
Courtesy of the American taxpayer by way of the Bush/Cheney Disaster.
Tsulagi
And why would anyone listen to Bolton? The Boltons, Wolfowitzes, and Feiths in the Party of Bush have proven themselves to have as much credibility on national defense as the Foley/Haggard/Vitter wing of the party on family values.
r€nato
yeah, how’s that ‘flypaper strategy’ working out? Seems like they have an inexhaustible supply of insurgents.
100 years, muthafuckas!
frogspawn
Man, I love this blog. We get to use bad words and everything. Now I’m drunk and going to bed. Good night, all
SamFromUtah
John Bolton can bite me.
No, wait, scratch that. He’s rabid.
calipygian
• When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for John Bolton’s moustache.
• John Bolton’s moustache doesn’t read books. It stares them down until he gets the information he wants.
• There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures John Bolton’s moustache has allowed to live.
• Outer space exists because it’s afraid to be on the same planet with John Bolton’s moustache.
• John Bolton’s moustache does not sleep. It waits.
• John Bolton’s moustache is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for its left and right moustache thingies
• John Bolton’s moustache is the reason why Waldo is hiding.
• John Bolton’s moustache counted to infinity – twice.
• There is no lip behind John Bolton’s moustache. There is only another fist.
• When John Bolton’s moustache does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the Earth down.
• John Bolton’s moustache is so fast, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head.
• John Bolton’s moustache’ hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush.
• John Bolton’s moustache can lead a horse to water AND make it drink.
• John Bolton’s moustache doesn’t wear a watch, IT decides what time it is.
• John Bolton’s moustache can slam a revolving door.
• John Bolton’s moustache does not get frostbite. John Bolton’s moustache bites frost
• Remember the Soviet Union? They decided to quit after watching John Bolton’s moustache on Fox
• Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Boltatorship.
Fuck John Bolton and fuck his moustache.
Dennis - SGMM
If Bolton had a shred of credibility he would have one shred more than he does now. In the next few months, watch for articles from various neocons and pundits offering their sage advice to the Democrats. This will provide a prelude to the blaming phase.
TenguPhule
Can we drop John Bolton on Iran?
Preferably from 20.000 feet up.
bootlegger
That is effen-a hysterical! But I stopped laughing when I remembered this little boy whose sandals and orange shorts are very similar to my little boy’s.
http://bp3.blogger.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/SBzCIjFzqNI/AAAAAAAAArc/epN2I-sUDfI/s1600-h/iraq.png
We need to stop this shit, right NOW!
TenguPhule
If Bolton had a shred of credibility, he’d still be in the red.
TenguPhule
Improved.
PhoenixRising
Here’s an idea of how to do it for a lot less: Drop Samsonites packed with pennies on the Jungle Gym of Terror.
Again, why would Iran bother with ‘training’ ‘insurgents’ in some sissy playground when they have all the live fire exercises they need to separate the men from the boys a short drive away?
mrrichardfeder
Since the fundamental purpose of this particular jihad is to provoke the US into spending itself into bankruptcy and collapse (see “Seven Party Mujahideen Alliance”), any asymmetrical response which leads our military to waste millions on a pointless attack will make the terrists day.
Bolton is a sociopath.
bago
I wouldn’t hire these guys to clean a Buick because they’d get lost finding the headlight fluid.
Kat
With my bold…
Newsweek Web Exclusive, May 6, 2008
Terrorist Triage
Why are the presidential candidates — and so many counterterrorism experts — afraid to say that the Al Qaeda threat is overrated?
Michael Sheehan is on a one-man mission to put terrorist threats into perspective, which is a place they’ve rarely or ever been before. Already you can see it’s going to be a hard slog. Fighting the inflated menace of Osama bin Laden has become big business, generating hundreds of billions of dollars for government agencies and contractors in what one friend of mine in the Washington policy-making stratosphere calls “the counterterrorist-industrial complex.”
Click the link for the rest.
Kat
John's Mom
You’re not going to bomb anything until you find that WMD, young man!
jake
Awww. Bolton Joe just wants the Air Force and Navy to get their share of the Freedomizing the M.E. fun.
Christ on a crutch. I bet Das Cookie Duster wants to get Iran riled up so they send their entire army into Iraq where our troops can pick them off one by one as they squeeze through the gap in the fence.
I know that makes no sense. But it still makes more sense than Mlle. Coo-coo-ca-choo.
SnarkyShark
Yep….a few splintered logs and a shredded tent or two. Worse case(or best case depending on your point of view) scenario, a couple of dead scrubs all for the low low cost of 50k+(low-ball estimate, lose one aircraft and its millions).
And the scrubs would have the AO policed and back doing PT within a few hours.
Thats why assholes who never had the nuts to join the military shouldn’t be let near any position that has to do with operational planning.
And I wouldn’t let this particular dipshit sweep up a whorehouse in Juarez as he would fuck that up too.
Which explains why he has risen to power within the Republican party.
calipygian
Very low ball estimate. Tomahawks are about a million a piece and a fully loaded SSGN carries more than a hundred of them (20 tubes possibly configured to carry missiles, a 7 missile rotary launcher in each tube possibly).
VERY low ball estimate.
Dork
Tim, I dont think they’d be using conventional weapons on training camps. Those fuckers need to be nuked. Twice.
David Hunt
Talking about the monetary costs is not going to convince much of anyone who likes the idea of attacks on Iran. It’s not about running a cost effective war. It’s about killing “terrorists.” The goal is attacks on those camps is not to destroy the facilities. It is to kill people. It does not matter that an attack on any target in Iran would be the best terrorist recruitment tool we’d could execute short of bombing Mecca. It does not matter that whether the target is actually a terrorist training camp is almost irrelevant to the recruitment effect. The only thing that matters is that (scary, brown) people die.
Soylent Green
Bolton’s remark is a trial balloon. The administration wants to pave the way in the public mind to the actual strike on Iran, which will be coming later this year. It will be timed for maximum political gain to the GOP candidate. One day before the Democratic convention would be best. Let us not forget that Dick Cheney and his trained monkey are still in power, and still have plenty of time to fuck up the nation in impressive new ways. Sending their mouthpieces out to suggest possible targets within Iran is deliberate strategery, designed to remind us which party is protecting us from scary terrists and which one wants only to hand them daisies.
The actual attack to come, in the form of many costly cruise missiles, won’t accomplish much in military terms. It will be just for show, and what a well-televised show it will be! The strike on Iran will dominate the news well into the debates, pushing Obama to the sidelines, will prompt fearful citizens to rally round their leaders, as they always do in such events, and will give Barbara Ann McCain a bushel basket of talking points to deliver on how he’s the guy to keep Amurkins safe.
It’s possible that saner heads in the White House and defense (are there any who haven’t been purged?) will keep this from transpiring. We shall see.
croatoan
John Bolton is the raisin to Wilford Brimley’s grape.
SnarkyShark
Tim, I dont think they’d be using conventional weapons on training camps. Those fuckers need to be nuked. Twice.
I think they should give you the honorable mission of being teh guy who gets to paint the target with a laser designator there Rambo.
Think of how the chix will swoon at such a hero as you!
Free Cheetos from now on!
And nukes for a few tent-fulls of scrubs. That won’t cost much or cause much blowback!
Brilliant.
I know he’s a parody, but damn if there aren’t some people here in the Republik of Texas who sound pretty much the same.
Tsulagi
Nah, like last time you do it right after the nominee’s acceptance speech. Convention is over so they can’t bitch about it during while on national TV, plus you manage the post-convention bounce. Smart, strong.
That 04 terror alert was a good one. Based on four-year old exterior photos of buildings in a laptop that could have been taken off the net. To justify that alert and claim the timing wasn’t political, the admin wound up burning the top AQ computer network administrator in Pakistan who had been flipped and was helping US and British intelligence. Caused a real fuckup in Britain which led the MI6 director to say in classic British understatement “I wish the Americans would think these things through.” Good times. Stay the course.
Reverend Spooner
I say we nuke the entire site from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.
Dennis - SGMM
Wait ’til there’s a Democratic nominee. Bolton, Feith, Perle, Kristol, et al, along with the echo chamber, will be offering cautionary advice to the Democrat. “Ya’ gots to bomb Iran,” “Don’t quit Iraq when we’re only six more months from being six more months from winning,” et cetera.
Soylent Green
Yeah, you’re right. Good thinking. Do it right in the middle of the speech on the last night of the convention. That wipes follow-up to the speech off the news and deprives the candidate of any good chance to respond.
If the Iranian response is to attack our ships or cut off our supply lines in Iraq, we can fix that later somehow. After all, who could have expected that they would fail to thank us for bombing them?
les
Bolton’s just pissed that his excellent plan to start WWIV from the UN headquarters didn’t come off.
LITBMueller
Silly Tim… don’t you know that there is NO cost too high in the War on Evil???
Besides, the military has always run on the Doritos Principle: “Bomb all you want, we’ll make more.”
RobW
I’m thinking the attack will come after the election. It wouldn’t be the first time a lame-duck President Bush saddled an incoming Democrat with a war.