Pentagon draws up plans for "three-day blitz" on Iranian military targets; Ahmadinejad says uranium centrifuge goal reached

If the US does eventually bomb Iran as it should what will the reaction of the Russians be ?

Sounds like another disaster in the making. A limited war can only have limited results. Unless there is a plan for all out destruction of Iran and its allies - it will be a prolonged nightmare.

Again, we will see our guys with targets on their backs, hands tied and unable to do their jobs.

Again, the Rhode's Scholars prancing around in uniform will have very complex and unworkable plans drawn up - instead of bold, ferocious and ruthless all out war.

Again, we will have lawyers and reporters attached to our units to ensure they are the ones who are killed.

Again the human dignity and rights of our enemies will trump the lives of Americans.

Disgusting.

Two questions: How is Alexis Debat privy to classified national planning? If so, why is he shooting off his mouth?

'Nuff said.

Re: “The Pentagon has drawn up plans.”

The Pentagon has always had plans on hand to bomb any potential threat, any number of ways. We pay lots of smart people to think about things like this full-time. This ‘leak’ is just bluster intended to influence Iranian policy, which it won’t.

Hint to the Administration. Shut up and do it or just shut up. See Theodore Roosevelt regarding empty threats.

I wonder if al sadr pulling his forces back so to speak until the spring has anything to do with when we'll hit iran. I found it interesting the timing.

Add at least one Zero to that three days.

"The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. 'They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,' he said."
--- from the article above

Unlike Tarbaby Iraq, this would not involve a land invasion but only assault from the air. Let's hope they mean it.

“If it ‘twere done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.”

I agree with pez's comment. And I'm sure half the staff of the Pentagon spends all their time drawing up plans for this or that.

Half of a newspaper reporter's time seems to be spent trying to figure out a way to create a story out of thin air.

This story is meaningless.

The US isn't likely to do anything to Iran that has a lasting impact.

I'm with Hugh, let's hope it gets done and done quickly. They should do it on September 11th, and let's see how many Muslims dance in the streets after that.

It's about time that the military option is being openly considered. Iran kills our troops and flaunts their growing nuclear capability, all the while arming Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.
I'm totally confident that Iran's military infrastructure can be annihilated in three days, four for good measure. The chaos that would result inside Iran may embolden the opposition. There's already a lot of dissatisfaction with the Monkey and his Mullahs - gas lines , shortages, repression and high unemployment.
I'm just afraid that the morons in the State Department will spike it.
I think a quick win in Iran will also help the Republicans regain credibility.

There are a whole bunch of plans coming out of our scenario office. I agree with infidel, we can't go to Iran without any post-war plan, the crucial mistake Rummy made in Iraq.

If we hit Iran real hard, there is no need to bogg down with them. Let them spend their petro $s to extinguish the fire.

I am pretty sure the Russians adn Chinese will make thumping noise in the UN. Who cares?

Before the United States launches any attacks on Iran, we should first go to all of our European allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and tell them we want their planes and pilots to participate in the attack.

I'm sick of this country being the patsy for for everyone else. All of these so-called allies would like to see us do their dirty work for them, as we've been doing for years. Then they sit back and play the good guys, all the while calling us "cow boys and "aggresors".

There isn't one of these countries that isn't vunerable to nuclear attack from Iran -- and they know it, and would like to see the threat removed by the United States. They just don't want to soil their hands helping themselves.

If any of our allies in Europe or the middle East refuse to supply Pilots and Planes in a strike, the United States should cut all aid, withdraw our ambassador and troops, and tell their governments that they are on their own, and not to come to us for help when they feel threatened.

Again, I'm sick of this country playing the Patsy for the rest of the world.

It's time the rest of the world grows up and starts making some diffiult decisions themselves, instead of always expecting us to do the dirty work necessary to save their asses.

Unlike what morons like Michael Medved claim when they say that such a move would only unite Iranians behind the regime, what's more likely is that if Iran does something like Pakistan and successfully tests nukes, that would unite Iranians behind that regimes.

OTOH, if they are taken out, then not only will their opponents not unite behind the regime - everybody will be fingerpointing as to who's to blame. As the saying goes, success is a bastard, but failure is an orphan.

THE POINT IS THAT YOU HAVE TO COMPLETELY DESTROY THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC, AND ITS OVERSEAS FORCES IMMEDIATELY, IF YOU ARE GOING TO ATTACK. IF YOU ATTACK, YOU HAVE TO TOTALLY ANNIHILATE THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC'S MILITARY AND PARAMILITARY FORCES, BOTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF IRAN.

I think that goes without saying, but I also think that their paramilitary forces are the most dangerous element in this military equation. Hezbollah, the Revolutionary Guard, and any other paramilitary forces connected to the Islamic Republic are actually our biggest problem here.

It goes without saying that we possess the absolute power to completely destroy every single military base, military piece of hardware, and every last jihadist in Iran quick enough before they can respond, within a day or two. They will be so busy trying to save their own skins, they won't have time to launch a military attack within the theater of war. Essentially, the United States is about to demonstrate the sheer might of her armed forces. Iran will be disarmed almost instantaneously. I'm looking forward to it.

The problem is Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the sleeper cells in North America. There is also the risk of related jihadist groups attacking else where along the front-lines, say a significant increase of attacks by the Islamic Front in Thailand or another attack in Europe along the lines of Madrid in 2004 or London in 2005. Out of solidarity with the Iranians we may see an attempt made after an American attack on Iran by a jihadist group, along those lines.

The sleeper cells in North America are of big concern; unless the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the CIA have plans to take out the cells we KNOW FOR A FACT are here in North America, we're going to see a big attack here on the continent. We know that Hezbollah operates extensively in the Western hemisphere, drug running and bootlegging in South America connected to raising funds, praticularly in the Tri-Border region (and there's a lot going through Misiones, Argentina). They have cells north of the Rio Grande, positioned for just such an occasion (ie. an American attack on Iran). The Pentagon's plans for an attack on Iran itself are useless, unless there are plans to take out Iranian proxies in North America and the Middle-East.

If Nasrallah's boasts are to be believed, then Hezbollah is in possession of chemical/biological weapons which they will not hesitate to use in an attack on Israel if there is an American attack on Iran. The only thing the Iranians can do is retaliate outside of Iran, principally against North America and Israel, this is what it all comes down to. If Israel is believe to possess any credibility it will be participating in the Iranian offensive. Which would seem to imply IDF operations along Israel's borders to counter Hezbollah attacks in the North and Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and from Hamas' base in Gaza. The Palestinians are up to something, or at least they have been for the last couple of months. I wouldn't be surprised if a deal hasn't already been struck between Fatah and Hamas for this very occasion (i.e. the attack on Iran). I think the Palestinians and to a lesser extent the Syrians on the Golan Heights are the only ones who will respond to the attack on Iran. So it's a question of what Israel is preparing to do in the Middle-East. The Israeli air force will probably be involved in attacking Iran directly, in spite of Olmert.

This is going to be pretty big moment in world-affairs. Olmert just plainly reeks, the amount of weakness he has shown in the last few months to save his own skin have been the biggest breach in Israel security since before the 1967 war! That's how bad it is in Israel. A disciple of Chamberlain sits in office in Jerusalem and these dogs smell blood. They think they can take Israel out and restore Palestine ("from the river to the sea"). F**k that s**t!

The enemy's strategy here is to hit America and Israel hard in retaliation and re-build in Iran once the attacking is finished. The United States is not going to occupy Iran (thanks to Iraq) which means another military confrontation is in the cards, once the Iranians rebuild. THIS ISN'T OVER BY A LONG SHOT, IT'S ONLY JUST GETTING STARTED. They'll get help re-arming from the Russians, the Chinese, and probably a few European companies. Our biggest concern is in preventing the retaliatory attacks from happening outside of Ian.

SO, IN A SENSE, YOU HAVE TO PLAN ATTACKS AGAINST THE IRANIANS, INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF IRAN. THIS IS THE KIND OF WAR WE ARE FIGHTING. THIS IS THE NATURE OF POST-MODERN WARFARE. YOU HAVE TO ATTACK YOUR ENEMY ON MORE THAN ONE PHYSICAL LEVEL, SUCH IS THE NATURE OF FIGHTING AGAINST THE JIHAD.

WHAT DOES EVERYONE ELSE THINK?

Alireza Jafarzadeh, who is mentioned in the article, would be someone worth listening to. He published a book within the year called "The Iran Threat". In the book he explains how Iran has been planning to take over Iraq since Bush announced plans to invade. His description of the preparation by the Qods forces, the Revolutionary Guard, and the nuclear weapons plan are entirely consistent with every report I have seen since the book came out.

If his observations about the locations of the nuclear facilities are correct, and he makes a very convincing case that they are, the destruction of these facilities will result in very high civilian casualties since they have been purposefully built in, on (many underground), and adjacent to residential neighborhoods. This is not to say the collateral damage negates the necessity of an attack, but the commentators above who forecast attacks on the U.S. from forces outside of Iran are probably correct. The U.S. will be vilified in western press for high collateral damage should the attacks be carried out as they need to be.

Jafarzadeh has not been listened to because he believes the solution is not military action, but from within Iraq and he thinks unleashing the MEK with U.S. military support would be sufficient. I understand the MEK is just another band of jihadist; same long-term agenda, different short- term political allegiances.

I think - TheDiggler knows what he is talking about. His essay provides some of the clearest thinking we've had in a while (no offense intended to others!).

No, Iran isn't going to directly take on America - there won't be an invasion of the homeland by Iranian landing boats. What we'll get will be long-term vengeance like the 1983(?) bombings at the Marine barracks in Beirut, and the two bombings in Buenos Aires by Hizb'ulah (Iranian proxy).

President Reagan left the world a much freer place than he found it, but one thing he really messed up was our response to the Beirut bombings. Just imagine if he'd bombed the crap out of Khomeini, the mullahs and the Iranian military - how would the last 24 years have been different? The State Department has consistently identified Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism; Iran sponsors Hizb'ulah, the largest terrorist murderer of Americans before 9/11; Khomeini's revolution inspired the jihadists of the world for the first time in our generation with a vision of a state thoroughly governed by shari'a. If Reagan had taken them out in 1983, imagine the horrors we might have been spared...

What TheDiggler is asking, implicitly, is this: do we have the spine to weather the inevitable horrific blowback?

Two comments. One, although my support for the war in Iraq puts me at odds with many on this site, I thoroughly agree that the administration has been abysmal at defining the war, defining the enemy, and educating the public to understand that this is not Grenada or even Vietnam - this is a war with an enemy who has been fighting us for 1400 years, and has a population dwarfing Germany, Italy and Japan combined. Again, I insist that JW/DW has not defined the war or the enemy either, and if we allow the enemy to define it, we've lost. It's the War Against Militant Islam, and our enemy are the militant Muslims or jihadists.

(Comment on comment one: two huge mistakes America made after WW2 were renaming the War Department the Department of Defense, and signing the Geneva Conventions. I would immediately restore the original name of the former, and withdraw from the latter, as well as the UN.)

Secondly - the blowback MAY be smaller than we feared. We have taken out much of al-Qaeda and the Taliban government. We overthrew Saddam and his terror-supporting regime. Libya gave up its nuke program. Syria formally withdrew from Lebanon (this success is only partial). North Korea announced its intention to give up its nuke program. Al-Sadr has, at least temporarily, stood down his forces. I would say that the terrorists can still create havoc, but they're finding it slightly more difficult with each passing day. As long as our media stop revealing secret government surveillance programs, we might succeed in making it very difficult for terrorists to carry out their goals. I think they're ready to go anytime, if they could - why not now, unless they can't? I know, they patiently waited 8 years with respect to the WTC, but I think we should give ourselves more credit.

London Times:How the West summoned up a nuclear nightmare in Pakistan

Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark reveal how misguided deals with Pakistan have created a terrifying threat of nuclear terrorism
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2368174.ece

In 2001, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, had proof that Osama Bin Laden had received in person two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists at his secret HQ in Afghanistan. Both had become Islamist radicals in retirement.

According to the son of one of them, Bin Laden told them he had succeeded in acquiring highly enriched uranium from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and he wanted their help to turn it into a bomb. Amazed, they explained that while they could help with the science of fissile materials, they were not weapons designers.

Soon afterwards, a secret army audit discovered evidence that 40 canisters of highly enriched uranium (HEU), the feedstuff for a nuclear bomb, were missing from the Kahuta enrichment labs outside Islamabad after A Q Khan retired.

Dr Muhammad Shafiq ur-Rehman, an insider who is the son of one of Khan’s former key aides, revealed: “They could only account for 80 out of a supposed 120 canisters.”

The ISI reasoned that some of the drums had probably gone to North Korea, and some to Iran and probably Libya, according to a former ISI officer.

Enough highly enriched uranium remained at large to fuel 1,000 dirty bombs or a sizable nuclear device. All it would take for a doomsday scenario is 100lb of HEU – a mass the size of a sugar bag as the material is heavier than lead – to get into the hands of terrorists with the right expertise.

Split into two loads to prevent accidental fission, it could be machined into semi-spheres, loaded into a cannon-style device, and driven in the back of a van to a western target.

Behind this desperately worrying state of affairs lies a grand deception. For three decades, consecutive US administrations, Republican and Democrat, as well as governments in Britain and other European countries, allowed Pakistan to acquire highly restricted nuclear technology. Key US agencies were then misdirected and countermanded in order to disguise how Pakistan had sold it on.

Intelligence gathering in the US was blunted while the departments of state and defence were corralled into backing the White House agenda and forced to side-step Congress and break federal laws. Officials who tried to stop the charade were purged.

The deceit began under President Jimmy Carter; but it burgeoned under Ronald Reagan, who used Pakistan as a springboard for American aid to the antiSoviet jihad in Afghanistan.

US officials converged on Islamabad carrying cash and the message that America would ignore the growing nuclear programme – while Reagan publicly insisted that nonproliferation remained a primary policy.

A flavour of the duplicity comes from Robert Gallucci, who was director of the bureau of near eastern and south Asian

affairs at the State Department in 1982 at a time when the Reagan administration was desperately struggling to suppress evidence that Khan was designing a bomb.

After British intelligence caught the Khan network shopping in the UK for reflective shields made from beryllium, which could boost the power of a nuclear device, Reagan sent General Vernon Walters, a former CIA deputy director, to see President Zia in Islamabad.

Gallucci, who accompanied him, remembers: “Our evidence was incontrovertible. ‘This is what your experts have been up to’, we said, as politely as we could, giving Zia a get-out.

“However, the president rejected our briefing, saying our information had come from the Indians.”

Gallucci was not privy to a secret agenda. Walters confided to a senior State Department colleague on his return that, far from demanding a rollback in nuclear trading, he had been asked to warn the Pakistanis to do it more discreetly.

“He came in looking miserable,” the colleague recalled. “He said, ‘I was told [by the White House] to tell Zia to get that nuclear problem off our radar’.

“I was shocked. It was the antithesis of what we were supposed to be doing. Instead of giving it to them with both barrels, Walters had told the Pakistanis they had better hide their bomb programme, lest it humiliate Reagan.”

On another website (sorry I don't have the link) someone clever observed that when instituting a new nuclear power infrastructure, you have to build out your power grid-- transformer stations, towers, 220K lines, etc.-- *in advance* of the generation of energy. Well, it looks like Iran hasn't made much progress along those lines (no pun intended) which further puts the lie to their claim of only developing "peaceful nukes".

Islam is all about "honor" and pride, but the foundation for this is false and rotting.

Full military annihilation -

We'll be left with a pair of nations known collectively as Iransaq.

The country formerly known as Iran will spend the next decade fending off influence from their beloved friendly neighbors.

Let's do it!

"Iran's ultimate stated goal for the Natanz facility, the only site now open to full IAEA monitoring, is to run 54,000 centrifuges — enough for dozens of nuclear weapons a year"....from headline.

But these are "peaceful" nuclear weapons, right?

Some things I hope we've learned from Iraq: Use those tools we have to advantage - high tech air power and missiles - and downplay ground forces and nation building projects. Pay attention to Hugh's posts and you'll see those points.
As Lao Tzu said, Know your enemy, and know yourself.

I fully support taking out Iran's nuclear facilities; but that's like cutting off the tip of a snakes tail. To kill it you need to cut off it's head.

One more observation. Recall that when the UK defeated Argentina in the Falklands War, the result was the overthrow of the military junta in Argentina. While we did not have similar success in Afghanistan or Iraq, we may be more hopeful about Iran, whose young people apparently depsise the regime and desire more freedom.

Hold on, wait a minute, I'm planning a ski trip to Iran. There are some great mountains between Tehran and the Caspian sea. Plus if we bomb, all of those beautiful Iranian babes are going to be mad at me.

Hint to the Administration. Shut up and do it or just shut up. See Theodore Roosevelt regarding empty threats.

Posted by: pez at September 2, 2007 3:19 PM

My sentiments exactly, pez ...

And lets not telegraph our punches either, this bluster allows Iran to relocate their military into cemetaries, where they know they will be safe. Remember this?

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_wires/2006Sep13/0,4675,AfghanTalibanPhoto,00.html

U.S. Declines Taliban Funeral Target

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military acknowledged Wednesday that it considered bombing a group of more than 100 Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan but decided not to after determining they were on the grounds of a cemetery.

The decision came to light after an NBC News correspondent's blog carried a photograph of the insurgents. Defense department officials first tried to block further publication of the photo, then struggled to explain what it depicted.

NBC News claimed U.S. Army officers wanted to attack the ceremony with missiles carried by an unmanned Predator drone but were prevented under rules of battlefield engagement that bar attacks on cemeteries.

In a statement released Wednesday, the U.S. military in Afghanistan said the picture _ a grainy black-and-white photo taken in July _ was given to a journalist to show that Taliban insurgents were congregating in large groups. The statement said U.S. forces considered attacking.

"During the observation of the group over a significant period of time, it was determined that the group was located on the grounds of (the) cemetery and were likely conducting a funeral for Taliban insurgents killed in a coalition operation nearby earlier in the day,"the statement said."A decision was made not to strike this group of insurgents at that specific location and time."

While not giving a reason for the decision, the military concluded the statement saying that while Taliban forces have killed innocent civilians during a funeral, coalition forces"hold themselves to a higher moral and ethical standard than their enemies."

The photo shows what NBC News says are 190 Taliban militants standing in several rows near a vehicle in an open area of land. Gunsight-like brackets were positioned over the group in the photo.

The photo appeared on NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders'blog. Initially military officials called it an unauthorized release, but they later said it was given to thejournalist.

NBC News had quoted one Army officer who was involved with the spy mission as saying"we were so excited"that the group had been spotted and was in the sights of a U.S. drone. But the network quoted the officer, who was not identified, as saying that frustration soon set in after the officers realized they couldn't bomb the funeral under the military's rules of engagement.

Defense Department officials have said repeatedly that while they try to be mindful of religious and cultural sensitivities, they make no promises that such sites can always be avoided in battle because militants often seek cover in those and other civilian sites.

Mosques and similar locations have become frequent sites of violence in the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they have often been targets of insurgents and sectarian fighting in Iraq.

***********************

So, why do I have trouble believing this latest bravado from this administration?

I thought talking them to death was the game plan of the State Department.

The whole planning session is a nothing more than a fools errand.

America will lose this venture too.

Why?

First of all, we need to identify an enemy; we refuse to do that.

Second, we need to determine exactly what the objectives are; merely bombing something can be accomplished on a military training area.

Third, we need a declaration of war from Congress; unthinkable -- won't happen.

Unless this administration can get its head out of its ass and figure out what VICTORY means; my suggestion is to forget bombing Iran.

Let Iran get nukes; let them bomb seven American cities with millions dead; and only THEN will you get a clue as to WHY and HOW you should fight a WAR!

One prob with that plan as I see it.We need to give them a reason to dance in the streets on 9/10....THEN hit them on 9/11 while they are celebrating. If the sites are built on/near civilian targets, oh well.

If they are built on cemeteries, TOO DAMN BAD!!!

In a war you should hit the enemy at every opportunity....Hit them hard, fast and brutally.

As to the sleeper cells, when they rear their heads hunt them down and KILL THEM!!!

Pez, et al ,

I agree. Walk softly over to the red button and press hard.

We don't need any advance notice. Please, let us wake up and have that 'Christmas morning' feeling all over again.

The quote by Alexis Debat should reveal that what is going on here is an attempt by Debat and others not to endorse such a plan, but to derail it. For Alexis Debat has been -- like Jim Guirard and a few others -- one of those who has not been promoting a clear-eyed understanding of Islam, but rather the Higher Appeasement, beginning with arguments in favor of "negotiation" -- such as it could conceivably be -- with such groups as the Muslim Brotherhood.

He made himself available to the author of the English piece as someone working to prevent such an act -- an intelligent, justified act of preventing a dangerous, calculating, relentlessly aggressive regime in Iran from acquiring such weaponry. And even if Iran were not ruled by Khamenei (and Ahmadinejad as the public face), even if that country were now to be ruled by the Shah himself, Shah Reza Pahlevi (or his son, now biding his time) it can not be allowed, for no Muslim country can be allowed by the Americans and other Infidels, to acquire such weaponry, because any Shah Reza Pahlevi can be followed by an Ayatollah Khomeini, and that is a permanent danger with every Muslim state or society.

I, for one, am very concerned about domestic 'blowback' (that's a perfect term!).
We know sleeper cells are here in the US, staffed with people from other countries and probably home-grown terrorists, too. They're trained, and waiting to go into action.
I look at the area I live in and wonder what would happen. Small city; plenty of open spaces; not a lot of people; lots of weapons; lots of people who hunt and shoot. Traps could be set...and the local law enforcement agencies could be wiped out pretty quickly. I have no doubt that the bad guys would end us dying at the hands of armed citizens, but the carnage that could be created here by only a few determined terrorists is mind numbing. I stop and think at times that I've gone crazy and nothing like that could happen here, but them I'm reminded that Abu Marzook once set up shop right under our noses and no one knew anything was going on until after he was gone.

To that end, I spent the afternoon shooting targets, and our emergency preps as a family continue. I encourage you guys to do the same: make plans to take care of yourselves and your families. I feel war with Iran is coming, and we might soon learn exactly what kind of people have been crossing over our very open borders.
Pray, Plan, Prepare.

Use punitive bombing, but don't go to the ground. Let the Muslims howl, and if they present any real threat, bomb them again, and again and again. This is what should have happened with Iraq.

Ever wonder why we've heard nothing from Libya? We sent the right message.

This said, I don't think GW Bush has the confidence of the people to act in this capacity as president. He may have the legal power, but not the moral assent of the people. This is something that if possible must wait until 2008, if at all possible.

If the US does bomb Iran, it must cut and run from Iraq soon after. The troops are tired and the cause lost due to the Bush administration underestimating the depravity within Islamic countries. The Iraqis wanted vengeance and petty religious tribalism more than they wanted democracy.

Please don't let Bush bankrupt your country over his delusions that he can win an insurgency war in the Middle East.

promises and promises............just get it underway..................

If we Bomb Iran, We will not be able to stop for quite some time. We may dismantle a great deal of their Conventional capability but the Asymetrical warfair will linger. I see Myrters by the thousands charging across the Border to get at us in Iraq. Like Ants they will come.

Large areas will be de-populated. People with death wishes usually get what they wish for.

Europe will just about melt. PC will get tossed right out the window. It will look very ugly and the Governments will find it necessary to actually shoot.

I really feel sorry for the really peaceful Muslims?-if Iran activates sleeper cells in the US. With something like a Million Vets on the Home Front who will refuse to accept American Streets looking like Badad.

I agree with Pez. Walkk softly and carry a big stick. Debat should be answering a prosecutor's questions by now.

But I cringe at the idea of a war with Iran. In the 1930's, Japan thought itself the country to rescue China from both the Communists and a corrupt, unpopular non-Communist government. The result? A China unified in its will to resist holding down a million Japanese troops despite the occupation and devastation of its most wealthy provinces and the destruction of its best armies. In the end, Japan found itself occupied by the USA and China again in the throes of a civil war which the highly weakened Nationalist government lost in 1949.

As for the Mujaheddin-e-Qalq, they are an unholy mix of Marxist and Muslim militancy and boast about being the first "revolutionary fighters" into the "Nest of Spies" back in 1979. Such people have stated very clearly and succinctly that they believe that the only possible posture for Iran vis-a-vis the USofA is implaccably hostile. Their conflict with the Khomeini-ites is only one cannibal tribe eating another. Every one of their supporters in the USofA should be rounded up and deported; every one of them found in Iraq should be interned at least.

I remain 150% unrepentent about telling an MEK that I encountered soliciting signatures on the Washington Mall that he had a lot of bloody, umitigated chutzpah to dare show his face anywhere in the USofA, and was just like the shmuck who murders his parents with an axe and demands clemency from the judge on the grounds that he's an orphan. I went on to say that if my country had a shred of dignity, his crowd's deeds would have provoked us to an action that would make all surviving 22 Ithna'asharriyah Shi'ite Muslim Iranians think of Huleku Khan and Timur-e-lenk as merciful men as they watched their country become a settler state overwhelmingly populated by non-Muslims recruited from elsewhere. I'm happy to say that I had the pleasure of watching the deluded scumbag turn from a swaggering abuser of American freedom of speech and assembly into a pale, quivering piece of human tofu.

Still, I want nothing to do with a war with Iran. it will be the sort of thing in which we will have to behave in a manner traditionally repulsive to us. These are perilous times, friends, perilous times. Pray that God would be merciful to two post-Christian civilizations which have been insulting Him for 14 centuries in the case of one and 140 years in the case of the other.

Our cruise missiles can be launched from planes (even some commercial jets can carry Tomahawks), submarines, and stationary locations around the globe. And they strike with pinpoint accuracy.

The flight paths for DSMAC (digital scene matching area coordiates) are everywhere, and Iran is at the top of the list. These missiles can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.

Iran would not know what hit them, without the U.S. losing a single soldier. Yes, MSNBC will scream, but they always do. Loose lips sink ships. I say shut up, and give them D-Day now on our terms instead of reacting to their aggressions later.

If the international "experts" are correct and Iran "only" has 2000 centrifuges spinning, and stops building more of them, it could take Iran a year and a half to have a working nuclear weapon ready. But if, as Ahmadinejad says, they have 3000 spinning, it could take only a year. And if the Iranians continue to install new centrifuges at a rapid rate, then they could have a nuclear weapon in significantly less than a year.

So it's understandable that many, in several governments, are beginning to contemplate air strikes to wipe out Iran's nuclear facilities and its military.

The progress of technology, however, will make those strikes a very temporary solution. Biotech, according to some analysts, is doubling in power every two years, much like computer technology. Within a few years, some scientists say, biotech will allow for the creation of WMD by people with relatively limited financial and scientific resources. Other advances in technology will make various new forms of WMD increasingly accessible. Management of the accelerating development of technology's destructive aspects, therefore, may require a kind of surveillance far more pervasive than Westerners have become accustomed to. If so, one must hope that democratic societies will find ways to retain significant social freedoms despite the far more pervasive surveillance that may be coming.

Then there is the question of why Ahmadinejad is being so openly provocative, as if he very much wants war. Is it that he believes the Mahdi will only return in a context of wars and chaos? Is it that, like Al Qaeda, Ahmadinejad wants war with the West as a way to separate the West from the Islamic world and "purify" the latter? Is it the primitive "honor" culture to which Ahmadinejad perhaps subscribes, and which would compel him into insecure, wild bluster and braggodochio? Is it all of these things together that explain Iran's seemingly intentional provocativeness and desire for war?

I don't think there will be an attack for quite some time. The hatred for Bush in the US would drive the country into anarchy if he proceeded with an attack. This time, he would have to do his homework really well and sell it first and by that time he's out.

The consequences of Iran developing a single nuclear bomb are not acceptable. Jaw-Jaw with the moulahs is a waste of time for us and a gift of time for them. Fear of blowback from the rest of the world should in no way delay ruthless action to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb. Let's get out the scales: loose one of our cities or suffer blowback? Answer seems pretty obvious to me.

As for fear of offending Muslims by bombing cemeteries being used by Al Qaeda, they do it to each other all the time. More dumb advice to our military originating from Armstrong and Esposito, no doubt. These are tribal fanatics, and our response to them must appear fanatical. Curtis LeMay had the right idea.

It would be well for the USA to develop an independent interior special forces group the size of several infantry divisions, ready to act within the country on cells of Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, etc., assuming there are more cells than the FBI can handle. The FBI is not trained to counter these guys (and in fact is being trained to be nice to them by CAIR). It needs to be under the Department of the Army, not subject to CAIR/Saudi/State/Homeland Security overview.

THE PLAN:

Day One: drop Harry Reid on Tehran.

Day Two: drop Dick Durbin on Tabriz.

Day Three: drop Jack Murtha on Qom.

(If nothing else, we'll have a better Ameica.)

The Pentagon makes war plans like this for all conceivable scenarios all the time. It is their job. Think, plan, prepare.

Great comments folks...any number of scenarios I could go along with . However I fear it will take a thousand deaths of American civilians in some metropolis to goad this country into action of the types described here. I know it and so do you.

Maybe the answer lies in the Spanish Civil War? That was a civil war which became an international conflict. Not because of the (eventual and hesitant) involvement of foreign governments in the Spanish conflict, but because of the international brigades which fought the fascists to the death. Fighting fascists to the death (again) is a prospect that w will all soon have to face. The Islamic Republic is building nuclear bombs and potentially arming its proxies with biological and chemical weapons. And what's the American response? Talk and maybe plans to (eventually) hit the Iranians, but to NOT OCCUPY Iran after doing so. America is not going to wake up, and America was the last chance we had.

I remember that scene from "Obsession" where Alfons Heck is talking about how Germany was an advanced society, and they fell for Hitler. Britain was an advanced society (and the world's most powerful at the time) and they fell for Hitler as well. America is an advanced society and (alone) it will fall for Islam when it is too late. Britain (and America) managed to beat Hitler eventually, but Britain won't be around this time.

Eventually (that word keeps coming up for some reason), if the West is destined to survive another attempt to destroy it (wipe out the democracies, kill all the Jews, we've been here so many times before, etc.) it will only be after a massive amount of people have been slaughtered (a repeat of the last Great War) and the point of no return is THAT near, then we're sure to act. Our governments are going to fail us again. We're on our own.

The jihad is fought by paramilitary groups and sleeper cells. If a bunch of cave dwelling fanatics devoted to killing themselves and others in the name of the Moon God can launch paramilitary operations into any corner of the globe, surely a determined band of crazy Westerners could launch operations of equal potency and power into any corner of the globe as well. Couldn't we? The Spanish Civil War had its international brigades, the counter-jihad is in desperate need of its own volunteer brigades, from the West and beyond. This is after all a conflict on an international scale, so where are the international volunteers?

Everything Public is toxic these days; public health care, welfare, public education, etc.. We can include public (government) defense in that category as well. Not because our men and woman in the armed forces aren't brave and capable, no quite the opposite. They are by far the bravest and the toughest sons of bitches in the world. When ever they have come face to face with the jihad the outcome as always been one-sided in our favor.

The problem is that the men who lead the military, and the bureaucrats in charge of AUTHORIZING military operations haven't a clue as to what's going on. They are deaf, dumb, and blind, and as long as they are in charge of our military services here in the West, they will ensure that our men and women will be prevented from doing their job, which is to defend the West. Harry Reid wants the troops out in the spring. Harry Reid sees a poll that says no, Harry Reid doesn't want to pull the troops out anymore. Fighting the jihad through polling. The United States is about to attack Iran but it will NOT OCCUPY Iran after doing so. The West will not invade and occupy Islamic nations after Iraq, this is the slippery slope we've all been waiting for. The auspices say no, the polling says no. Do any of the people who log onto this website and read the information posted by Robert here, day in and day out, do any of you seriously expect Western bureaucrats (of all people) are going to be the ones who will effectively fight and defeat the Islamic jihad?

The jihad is averaging dozens of attacks on a global scale every day now. They've launched over 9,000 attacks world-wide since September 11th. The only thing the government can seem to do is to arrest a gay senator from Idaho in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. Meanwhile, Muslim cab-drivers in that very airport are doing their part to fight the jihad (as their fathers did before them, and so on since the time of the Prophet) by simply refusing to pick up anyone with a dog or a bottle of alcohol. Having come from a place devoid of ice or snow, it's strange how the jihad grows in much the same way a snowball does as it rolls down the mountain-side, getting bigger and bigger, until it's absolutely huge and there's no way for you to get out of the way before it runs you over.

If you want to fight the jihad, you've got to go to the Private Sector. If you have an infestation of vermin, what do you do, call in the government? Of course not, you call your friendly neighborhood pest control expert. Got a problem with Islamic jihad in your neighborhood? Call your friendly neighborhood counter-jihadist. Call it a civilian militia, the last-line of defense, the thin red line. We have to fight the fascists of today using the same tactics the men and woman of the thirties used to fight the fascists in Spain. And this time, we have to win. We've been here before, but we've also fought conflicts like this before, don't forget.

The Spanish Civil War was fought by the international brigades in much the same way Muslims are fighting the jihad today. Foreign volunteers, using weapons purchased on the black market (or received from friendly governments, such as Iran is giving to the insurgents in Iraq), through the use of funds raised by the civilian populations throughout the Muslim world. From Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Islamabad, Medina, Istanbul, and Sarajevo ordinary Muslims are being privately funded and armed in their attempts to fight the jihad. They're doing it privately and they're doing it successfully.

With the amount of wealth, technical knowledge, and weaponry available here in the West, and with the surprisingly large amount of people who want to fight back, you think it would be easy to get something going? The conditions for a perfect Islamic storm are ripe, but the conditions (the raw materials) for the perfect resistance, a perfect counter-jihad, nay, a perfect Crusade are right in front of us, staring us in the eye. We're no better than the Democrats who want to talk with Iran. It's understandable why we talk and read, have debates, and write columns and what-not with each other. The books so far have been of tremendous help. We couldn't have gotten here with out the work of people like Robert. But at the end of the day all any of us are really doing is talking. That's all any of us are doing right now to fight the jihad. They've sucked the will right out of us, that's how bad it is. We can't see ourselves picking up a gun and defending ourselves from those who want to slit our throats. We haven't even thought about it.

I'll be honest with you, if I knew I wouldn't be the only one going, I'd buy a ticket to Chad, cross the border and defend (at least what's left of) the villages in Darfur. Orders would be simple: take this gun, if you see a crazy Arab running at you shouting "Allah Akbar" whilst brandishing a sword, shoot him, before he kills you. All it takes is one bullet and a clear line of sight. What we need to see is groups of volunteers who are willing to arm themselves and fight. You want to stop the jihad, if you really want to stop them, you fight them hand to hand, in the desert if need be.

The jihad has its own paramilitary groups, now the West needs its own. The jihad had its ideological founder in Sayyid Qutb, the Western counter-jihad has had it's ideological founder in Fallaci (as far as I'm concerned). If Muslims from the West can go and fight the jihad, why can't Westerners travel to the same regions their so called "fellow citizens" are traveling to and organize, fight, and deny their so called "fellow citizens" in their efforts to bring down the West.

Picture a Muslim kid from the West joining the jihad. He's got money to buy a plane ticket after spending the summer working at McDonald's. He's going off to Afghanistan to kill foreigners. He's beyond redemption, he is forever lost to us. There is no talking with him. He's the Moon God's disciple now. Picture that kid now, in Afghanistan, in the trenches with his brothers who have come from all over the world, all to fight in the name of the Moon God. Our kid is in the heat of battle, he's found an infidel lying on the ground. Could be a kid or a woman. Doesn't really matter. He wants to behead the innocent infidel right away, for the glory of the Moon God. He takes the sword in his hand and raises his arm, he's going to saw the neck in half. And just before he brings the sword down, just before the jihad claims another victim to be forgotten, a bullet is fired from the barrel of a gun, pointed by a Western kid from the very same town as that Muslim kid from across the way, picked off through the scope of a sniper rifle purchased in Flint Michigan (take that fatso). He too was able to buy a plane ticket, he too was able to find a group of people fighting against the Moon God and his Prophet. While their governments are sitting helpless, timid, and in the dark back home, these people are out on the front-lines. They're on Islam's bloody borders. Could be Thailand one day, Serbia the next. The Sudan or Caucasus after that. They move from one country to the next, just like the jihadists do. They fight in the day, the fight in the night. They raid slave camps in the Sudan, like Chindits they fight in the jungles of Indonesia, the dig-in against Hezbollah in the Lebanon. They raise their funds in the West, they get arms purchased in the West. Private citizens privately licensed to fight the jihad. You're friendly neighborhood counter-jihadist. Volunteers in the droves who signed up to fight the jihad, to fight it will looking it square in the eye. Governments in need of distress, resistance movements about to be slaughtered at the hands of the Moon God's fanatics, these people who cannot defend themselves are the types of people we need to defend. We need to start defending those who cannot defend themselves.

When we start to see international volunteers from the West going to fight the jihad on its own turf, when we start to see this happen, when we start to see Westerners fighting hand to hand against the jihadists, then we'll be on the path to victory. Until then, all we're doing now is navel gazing at our own imminent destruction. The Pentagon can draw up whatever plans it likes.

"I fully support taking out Iran's nuclear facilities; but that's like cutting off the tip of a snakes tail. To kill it you need to cut off it's head." champ

Champ is right. The west needs to use overwhelming strength against the military and nuclear capability of Iran, but the real unarticulated issue is if the west has the resolve to launch an attack against the real center of power in Iran, the mosques. The issue is whether the west will refuse to attack the head of the snake, the place from where this cesspool of filth, evil and profligacy originate! In Iran the mosque is the state. There is no separation. There are several thousand mullahs who are the scum murdering evil that dominate Iran in its sickening ways and have done so since Dhimmi Carter was stupid enough to allow them to rape and pillage and mayhem their way into power. If the west is smart, it will attack on a Friday at one of five specific times.

It would be nice for our leaders to have a little more faith in the ideology of the west,and go to war against the islamic ideology , But no we have to treat Islam like robins eggs and denegrate western culture .
Islam is the source of the problem say that and show the proof . Thats step one .

KAOSKTRL_

"But no we have tio treat islam like robin;s eggs...".

When we should be treating Islam like cuckoo's eggs.

Two points on here I agree with:

If we have the intelligence that says this move on Iran is crucial, then all of our "allies" must be on board or they will be off the books.
Second, take off the kid gloves and annhialate their military with no regard to civilian casualties. We risk the lives of thousands of our servicemen just to spare one civilian placed in harm's way by these cowards.
I get the creepy feeling that something is coming to a head here, and likely AQ has a big one coming.

Blowback? How could the Muslims get any angrier, or more insanely violent than they are now? There can't be any consequences of attacking Iran that are worse than what we've already experienced. And if they could do worse now, they would, attack or no.

The real problem of nuclear Iran isn't that they would explode one. That would be the end of our problems really, because there would be near unanimous (ok, Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore) support for their vaporization. The problem is that they would use them as a threat, implicitly, to increase their power. As in N Korea, we would be forced to feed the people who can't be fed because of their suicidal government.

Diggler - interesting idea, though fraught with perils.

But 1930s Spain is perhaps not your best analogy.

Think Orde Wingate and the Zionists in the 1930s; Wingate taught them how to defend themselves against Arab raiders; in particular, he taught them how to carry the battle to the enemy and how to fight by night as well as by day.

The Knights Templar.

The Knights Hospitallers, the Knights of St John who held Malta in 1565.

(Though the history of both the Templars and the Hospitallers is also a warning on what to avoid).

The Sikhs were, in a sense, to Hindu India facing Islam, as (say) the Knights of St John were to Christian Europe facing Islam. The antibodies produced when an essentially civilised and law-abiding society encounters something essentially lawless and violent that is bent on total destruction.

Awhile ago - and I deeply regret that I cannot give the specifics, I thought it was an article on Patrick Sookhdeo's 'Barnabas Fund' website which supports persecuted Christians in Muslim lands, but I haven't been able to find it through there again- I read a most thought-provoking article by (I think) an African Christian. He was drawing on Biblical teaching about civic order and government, and Christian teaching about just war, and trying to work out some ground rules that could be used by bodies of Christians seeking to defend their communities and restore order in places like Nigeria or Sudan or Liberia (or, for that matter, one might think of Papua or the Moluccas) where central public order has either collapsed or is implacably hostile. The idea being to avoid becoming mere vigilante squads with fighting an end in itself.

A final thought - at times I have mentioned Michael Gladwell's book, 'Blink'. You should read the chapter entitled 'Paul Van Riper's Big Victory' because I think it will give you some ideas - and some hope about the fighting potential of our society, if once it can be unlocked. Gladwell recounts the story of an American general who took his men to visit the trading floor New York Stock Exchange. I quote, for it should be both instructive and hopeful for others like yourself, reading here:

"Once, out of curiosity, Van Riper and Klein and a group of about a dozen Marine Corps generals flew to the Mercantile Exchange in New York to visit the trading floor. Van Riper thought to himself:"I've never seen this sort of pandemonium except in a military command post in war - we can learn something from this." After the bell rang at the end of the day the generals went onto the floor and played trading games. Then they took a group of traders from Wall Street across New York Harbor to the military base...and played war games on computers. The traders did brilliantly. The war games required them to make decisive, rapid fire decisions under conditions of high pressure and with limited information - which is of course what they did all day at work."...

"'I remember the first time the traders met the generals,' Gary Klein says, 'It was at the cocktail party and I saw something that really startled me. You had all these marines, these 2 and 3 star generals, and you know what a Marine Corps general is like...Then there were all these traders these brash, young New Yorkers in their twenties and thirties and I looked at the room and there were groups of 2 and 3 and there was not a single group that did not include members of both sides. They were not being polite. They were animatedly talking to each other. They were comparing notes and connecting. I said to myself, 'These guys are soul mates!' "

Read the rest of it, Diggler. It bears directly on the war in Iraq among other things, for it has to do with two types of military philosophy, and only one is what you are trying to get at, and which the West - or Thailand, or India, too - needs to recover in order to defeat the Jihad.

Once the pony-tailed stock exchange trader decides to avenge his mates who died in the Twin Towers, and joins the Marines or the anti-jihad irregulars, he may turn out to be the most formidable adversary bin Laden ever faces.

Thanks for the tips! It's so funny that you would mention the Templars because I was thinking about them as I was writing that post. I know more about the Spanish Civil War, growing up studying that period in history, so I went with the International Brigades as an analogy.

I still think the Spanish Civil War analogy is our best analogy. Think about it for a second. Who are we fighting? Well, we're fighting Islam, or more importantly, we're fighting political Islam, and that war was definitely a political fight.

In the 1930s, Westerners raised funds and supplies here in the West and volunteered to go to Spain and fight the fascists on their own turf. In this conflict with the jihad, we're relying on an incompetent political class, who refuses to even ACKNOWLEDGE the enemy threatening to destroy us. My point is, if they can't act accordingly (Iraq is only now starting to show progress on the ground), then it is up to us to get the job done. My main point is that we cannot rely on others to get the job done, especially if those people we are relying on are unwilling to even name the enemy we face.

We have to keep thinking politically. Muslims around the world would definitely think twice (at the least) if they knew that they weren't the only ones lurking in the jungles and in the sands of the desert. Right now jihadists can move with impunity from Indonesia to Morocco, burning churches and temples, kidnapping and raping women, and beheading those who oppose them. South Korea just paid millions to the Taliban which means things are only going to get worse there. The Pentagon can bomb Iran as much as it wants, but it won't mean anything in the long run if the political leadership survives. You have to kill the roots.

Who are we defending against the jihad? We're defending the West, but we're also defending Israel, India, Thailand, Japan, sub-Saharan Africa, the ENTIRE NON-MUSLIM world. We're defending Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, atheists, women, children, homosexuals, the list goes on. Buddhist monks are on the ground in the south, helping the Thai army defend the people against the jihadists. They've seen (as I have) the pictures of what Muslims are doing to Buddhists in southern Thailand. Buddhists can recognize inhumanity with the best of us. If a Buddhist monk can recognize the need to fight in order to defend ourselves, why can't we? That's my main point. What I'm talking about is a Do-It-Yourself-Counter-Jihad.

I'd love to get my hands on that book. I'm not surprised that marines and stock-traders could get on that easily. As you say, they basically do the same thing, whether in combat or on the trading room floor. We need to help the people in Thailand in the same way we tried to help the Republicans in Spain back in the 1930s. That's how the jihadists are fighting their war against us today. They're doing it all on their own. Like I said, in my original post, if a bunch of cave dwelling fanatics devoted to the Moon God can wage that kind of warfare today, why can't we?