Posted on 01/14/2007 5:55:11 PM PST by maquiladora
The evidence is building up that President Bush plans to add war on Iran to his triumphs in Iraq and Afghanistan - and there is every sign, to judge by his extraordinary warmongering speech in Plymouth on Friday, that Tony Blair would be keen to join him if he were still in a position to commit British forces to the field.
"There's a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue - in the country and the world - in a very acute way," said NBC TV's Tim Russert after meeting the president. This is borne out by the fact that Bush has sent forces to the Gulf that are irrelevant to fighting the Iraqi insurgents. These include Patriot anti-missile missiles, an aircraft carrier, and cruise-missile-firing ships.
Many military analysts see these deployments as signals of impending war with Iran. The Patriot missiles are intended to shoot down Iranian missiles. The naval forces, including British ships, train to pre-empt Iranian interference with oil shipments through the straits of Hormuz.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
The longer we wait, the worse it's going to be.
Ahh,...the Guardian.
I hope the Bush stated re-emphasis on crime-fighting and crowd control in Iraq is a mask for more properly focused designs in Iran. The New Strategy and the speeches would show Bush as utterly hopeless in figuring out that this a real existential war, not a little border fight in a picayune country in the desert. If we don't deal massively with Iran, all the effort and treasure and lives in Iraq are truly for naught.
I don't know if Russia is going to just sit back and take it. They have been buttbuddies with Iran for a long time.
I don't. Iran is no Iraq. If we go in, it's going to be 100 times worse than Iraq. And it could be nuclear war.
Iran has no delivery system, so if it's a nuclear war, it will be in Iran proper.
They are ready, and extremely motivated.
Am sick of all of this kowtowing to the rest of sandland.
All the more reason NOT to invade.
No it won't. How are they going to deliver a nuke? And if they do use a nuke on us the rest of the war will take a bout 45 minutes as we FLATTEN that country.
bttt
Great attitude. If we invade and nuke Iran, we're toast. Russia won't put up with it.
I amazed at how many FReepers seem to WISH for a war with Iran.
Until they hit us, we need to leave them alone.
New York Post
EYEING IRAN By RALPH PETERS
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01062007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/eyeing_iran_opedcolumnists_ralph_peters.htm?page=1
January 6, 2007 -- WORD that Adm. William Fallon will move laterally from our Pacific Command to take charge of Central Command - responsible for the Middle East - while two ground wars rage in the region baffled the media.
Why put a swabbie in charge of grunt operations?
There's a one-word answer: Iran.
ASSIGNING a Navy avia tor and combat veteran to oversee our military operations in the Persian Gulf makes perfect sense when seen as a preparatory step for striking Iran's nuclear-weapons facilities - if that becomes necessary.
While the Air Force would deliver the heaviest tonnage of ordnance in a campaign to frustrate Tehran's quest for nukes, the toughest strategic missions would fall to our Navy. Iran would seek to retaliate asymmetrically by attacking oil platforms and tankers, closing the Strait of Hormuz - and trying to hit oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates.
Only the U.S. Navy - hopefully, with Royal Navy and Aussie vessels underway beside us - could keep the oil flowing to a thirsty world.
In short, the toughest side of an offensive operation against Iran would be the defensive aspects - requiring virtually every air and sea capability we could muster. (Incidentally, an additional U.S. carrier battle group is now headed for the Gulf; Britain and Australia are also strengthening their naval forces in the region.)
Not only did Adm. Fallon command a carrier air wing during Operation Desert Storm, he also did shore duty at a joint headquarters in Saudi Arabia. He knows the complexity and treacherousness of the Middle East first-hand.
STRENGTHENING his qualifications, numer ous blue-water assignments and his duties at PACOM schooled him on the intricacies of the greater Indian Ocean - the key strategic region for the 21st-century and the one that would be affected immediately by a U.S. conflict with Iran.
The admiral also understands China's junkie-frantic oil dependency and its consequent taste for geopolitical street-crime: During a U.S. operation against Iran, Beijing would need its fix guaranteed.
While Congress obsesses on Iraq and Iraq alone, the administration's thinking about the future. And it looks as if the White House is preparing options to mitigate a failure in Iraq and contain Iran. Bush continues to have a much-underrated strategic vision - the administration's consistent problems have been in the abysmal execution of its policies, not in the over-arching purpose.
Now, pressed by strategic dilemmas and humiliating reverses, Bush is doing what FDR had to do in the dark, early months of 1942: He's turning to the Navy.
AS a retired Army officer, I remain proud of and loyal to my service. I realize that the Army's leaders are disappointed to see the CentCom slot go to an admiral in the midst of multiple ground wars. But, beyond the need for a Navy man at the helm should we have to take on Iran, there's yet another reason for sending Fallon to his new assignment: The Army's leadership has failed us at the strategic level.
After Gen. Eric Shinseki was sidelined for insisting on a professional approach to Iraq, Army generals did plenty of fine tactical and operational work - but they never produced a strategic vision for the greater Middle East.
Our Army is deployed globally, but our generals never seem to acquire the knack of thinking beyond the threat hypnotizing them at the moment (the Marines, with their step-brother ties to the Navy, do a better job of acting locally while thinking globally). Perhaps the Army's Gen. Dave Petraeus will emerge as an incisive strategic thinker after he takes command in Baghdad, but his predecessors routinely got mired in tactical details and relied - fatally - on other arms of government to do the strategic thinking.
The reasons are complex, ranging from service culture to educational traditions, but it's incontestable that the Navy long has produced our military's best strategic thinkers - captains and admirals able to transcend parochial interests to see the global security environment as a whole. Adm. Fallon's job is to avoid the tyranny of the moment, to see past the jumble of operational pieces and visualize how those pieces ultimately might fit together.
NOR is the Iran problem the only Navy-first issue facing CENTCOM. As you read this, our ships are patrolling the coast of Somalia to intercept fleeing terrorists - and have been hunting pirates in the same waters for years. China's future development (and internal peace) is tied to dependable supplies of Middle-Eastern and African oil transiting Indian-Ocean sea lanes, as well as to shipping goods along the same routes. In a future confrontation with China, our ability to shut down the very routes we're now challenged to protect would be vital.
Not least because of the botch-up in Iraq, there's a growing sense of the limitations of U.S. ground-force involvement in the Middle East. That doesn't mean we won't see further necessity-driven interventions and even other occupations, only that our strategic planners have begun to grasp that positive change in the region - if it comes at all - is going to take far longer than many of us hoped and won't always be amenable to boots-on-the-ground prodding.
If we can't determine everything that happens in the Big Sandbox, we need to be able to control access to and from the playground - a classic Navy mission.
And in the end the United States remains primarily a maritime power. As Sir Walter Raleigh pointed out 400 years ago, he who controls the waters controls the world.
Gen. Petraeus is going to Baghdad to deal with our present problems. Adm. Fallon is going to the U.S. Central Command to deal with the future.
Ralph Peters' latest book is "Never Quit the Fight."
bttt
"All it takes is a nice yacht ..."
If we don't take out Iran, that might even happen.
Tell a lie often enough ...
9/11 was an act of international Islamoterrorism.
yitbos
I agree that there will be a blockade. Do you think we'll preemptively bomb Iranian nuclear facilities and military assets, too? Or, will we simply blockade (unless the Iranians start shooting, in which case we obviously shoot back)?
Open up a great big ole can of whoopass and poor it all over Mr. Ahmadinayabbadabbadoo.
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