An offensive Iranian nuclear weapons arsenal will quickly become fact - unless prevented.
If we want to compel Iran, the country will have to be invaded, conquered, and occupied for fifty years.
I happen to think that's a good idea, and that we should.
But I'm quite sure Congress does not.
Dont forget to attack Ahmadinejhad's house and that of Mullah Khameini. Without these two we wouldnt be attacking anyone.
Bush is weak.
He will not get Nancy's permission.
This info hasn't been on the front of the nyt yet? I'm shocked!
We need to do something there, the sooner the better, the bigger the better. Call me crazy but I'm for targeted nukes at their nulear sites, major cities and any place their leader may be. We'll sort out the damage later.
He's threatened to wipe away Israel and the U.S. Do we choose to believe him or take our chances? I would like to leave chance out of it since I'm sure he would share technology with any and all of our enemies.
The destruction of Iran would send the wake up call that the radicals need, wait until President Hillary in 2008 and the progress they would make in her administration would really put us behind the eight ball.
We can't risk doing nothing and hoping a Republican wins in 2008. If the democrats win you know they'll do nothing, we're at a critical junction and it may be up to Bush and Bush only to cut the threat off at the knees before it grows too great that we're unable to defend ourselves.
Four Words.
eye
see
be
em
Speculation is great, but let's see some action before Iran gets and uses nukes on Israel.
However, any military action against Iran would result in Bush's immediate impeachment by Queen Nancy and her flying monkey army. We will unfortunately have to live with a nuclear armed Iran with a madman's finger on the trigger and I'm sorry to say a possible nuclear Pearl Harbor before the US will do anything.
Naaaaah, lets just wait another 10 years ir so, until they have better defences or have the bomb!
We don't have the guts to do anything about Iran *or* North Korea.If Iran is to be denied nukes it will be because their government changed course or because Israel took them out.
An offensive Iranian nuclear weapons arsenal will quickly become fact - unless prevented.
The one theory I've been waiting to hear about or read about is how FDR and Ike would have prosecuted WW-II while they were having to buy oil from Adolf Hitler. The US should be exporting oil and not importing it and I'm starting to get the impression that the only possible way to get from here to there is the same way you stop smoking, i.e. just stop. The idea would be to ban all oil imports. That would mess us up as badly as we were messed up during WW-II for about a year and a half and, after that, we'd be better off than we are now, and Ahmadinajad and every other clown in the world like him would be living in tents and riding on camels, and terrorism would be the furthese thing from their minds since they'd not have the financial wherewithal for it.
The Iranians are correct in their belief that air strikes alone will just slow them down. That they will be able to regenerate their nuclear program.
That being said, what must be done is to partition Iran so that it cannot reconstitute what has been destroyed.
While this is not easy, it is far easier than invading Persia. This is because the outlying regions of Iran are filled with several kinds of non-integrated, powerless, and despised minorities, who have far more in common with adjacent nations then they do with Persians.
The divisions are obvious, and it would be easy for these adjacent nations to absorb their kin, and defend them with their armies, assuming the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard had been reduced.
Iranian Kurdistan would join with Iraqi Kurdistan to make a greater Kurdistan. Perhaps this would be too much for them to remain a part of Iraq and a de jure Kurdistan would be created as a new nation.
For its part, Arabic Iraq could take Iranian Khuzestan, which likewise has a Shiite/Sunni split, and much of Iran's oil reserves. This would soothe Iraq's Arabs on their loss of Kurdistan.
Iranian Baluchistan would join with Pakistani Baluchistan, its twin, under the authority of Pakistan. It has far too much mineral wealth, and a new deep-water port, for Pakistan to be willing to part with it.
Finally, the Iranian Azeri lands would become part of Azerbaijan. This is the trickiest part, as Azerbaijan is militarily weak, so would require a contingent of Americans there for a while.
So there is the strategy: use air power to destroy their nuclear program; then partition Iran, leaving Persia alone, but taking away their mineral, oil and money resources.
And their military and Revolutionary Guard would be forfeit.
I don't know if we will actually attack, but moving a second carrier into the region makes it much more likely, especially when additional carriers are scheduled to deploy to replace the first two carriers. The change-over period is when an attack would take place. Given that vaq-137 and vaq-139 are the EW squadrons with the new ICAP-III EA-6b aircraft, and since these are stationed on the Enterprise and Ronald Reagan, which were in the gulf area this past year, any movement of these two carriers to replace the Stennis and the Eisenhower would be the ideal time to strike.
Alternatively, it would be a good time for _Israel_ to strike. That way plenty of US assets would be in place when the inevitable Iranian counter-strike against US bases in the Mideast took place. The Iranians have stated many times that they would attack the US forces if the Israelis attacked their nuke plants. Thus by international law the US would be in an ideal position to crush the Iranian military.
The first strike must be designed to take out the NY Times. Once this propoganda tool is silenced our men and women in the military will be safer.
Finally, ignore the arm chair generals who don't have a clue on strategy and tactics. The Viet Nam war was a mega circle jertk since a jerk tried to manage the field from afar. As a Viet Era Air Force Officer I/we argued at Sqaudron Officer's School for an Air Force oriented attack venue. We bombed the jungle into a lunar waste land and defoliated triple canopy jungle but in two weeks of Christmas bombing when we sent the B52s to Hanoi we accomplised in 14 days what we didn't do in 8 plus years and 50,000 plus dead.
Perhaps two dozen? In other words he doesn't really know. There could be three dozen or four dozen. The fact is that air strikes can't be 100 percent effective, and if we launch them we have no idea what real effect they have had. Air strikes alone won't do it. Air strikes alone have never done it. It'll take boots on the ground and unfortunately all ours are already committed.