Make it so!
Posted on 01/16/2005 8:17:42 PM PST by FairOpinion
The Bush administration has been carrying out secret reconnaissance missions to learn about nuclear, chemical and missile sites in Iran in preparation for possible airstrikes there, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.
The effort has been under way at least since last summer, Hersh said on CNN's "Late Edition."
In an interview on the same program, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said the story was "riddled with inaccuracies."
"I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact," Bartlett said.
He said his information on Iran came from "inside" sources who divulged it in the hope that publicity would force the administration to reconsider.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Actually, I hope old Seymour is correct. Poor guy's just trying to make a scoop out of the obvious.
We have contingency plans for just about everything. It wouldn't be prudent if we didn't. One doesn't know where the next hotspot will be, and you can't wait for it to happen and then start working up all the details needed to get your forces in place.
Plans for these contingencies are at various levels of preparedness, very detailed for foreseeable trouble spots (Israel, Korea), very general for less obvious areas (Bolivia, Timor). Three years before it happened, could you foresee us going into Panama, Grenada, Libya, Kuwait? No, but we still had some kind of plan in place for all of them - staging bases, supply lines, targeting.
Instaed of getting mad at old Seymour, we should be saying "Well, Doh!"
I agree with you.
Seymour Hersh is the pre-internet precursor of DEBKA.
If true .. how did he find this infomation out
Wasn't Hersh the one who first reported on the prison mess?
So who is leaking this stuff to him?
Shy should he change now? He's made a career of sedition.
Hersh-is-at-it-again ping.
Make it so!
First let me stipulate that Hersh is a leftie dumbsquat.
On the other hand, he may be serving a useful purpose for the Bush administration in throwing a scare into the mullahs in Iran.
Yep an attack is a high possibility; anyone looking at the situation with their illegal clandestine nuclear development can't possibly help but think that either the Israelis or the US will, sooner or later, take care of business.
So why leak bluff and bluster? Perhaps this is timed to help increase the anti-theocratic students and population in Iran that want a democratic revolution. We are told on several Iranian websites that the population is fed up sith the mullahs and is ripe for revolution. Indeed, pitched battles between the government and students with democracy seeking citizens at their side have taken place.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Hersh is unwittingly helping bring about a democratic Iran.
I'm not placing bets, but Seymore Hersh could be a useful idiot. It's not a big step from being an idiot to start with!
I agree.
If someone on the inside blabbed this (for whatever their motivation was), they should absolutely be hung out to dry.
Useful idiot?
Heck, let's celebrate the big promotion, then.
He was always a useless idiot before. About time he paid his share of the freight.
Syria first, THEN Iran.
Leftovers from clinton administration - a lot of do-nothings like their leader was which is why we got 9/11. They know it and so do we. Their spider holes are being revealed - they are cornered rats.
so?
does anybody do something about these traitors?
no....
I really cannot conceive of invasion or occupation. Remember Reagan and Khadafi? Khadafi refused to heed warnings and just got h@## bombed out of his palace. The Israelis took out Saddam's nearly competed nuclear facilities twenty-something years ago. Even Clinton used the bombing facilities of hostile areas without UN permission or warning. If Iran keeps messing around, surely all that would be considered would be a strategic bomb run or two or three.
As per some other posts, I, too, am past ready to see some retribution for peope giving out security info.
vaudine
Imagine now that this report is NOT true, and considering all the usual "unnamed" sources, I won't be surprised if that is the case. All it will achieve is more anti-american resentment over yet another rumour, a big nothing. Somehow though, I think that anti-American sentiment is exactly what Seymour Hersch is after.
Iran is almost as bad as Iraq, I say a clean nuclear strike against the barbarian regime using what we know from Iraq to make the post war occupation much easier. Keep the military in place and declare martial law until democratic elections.
I like journalists that know everything there is to know about military operations. Where's Geraldo Rivera when you need him?
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