Posted on 01/17/2005 1:40:31 AM PST by kattracks
WASHINGTON - U.S. commandos are hunting for secret nuclear and chemical weapons sites and other targets in Iran, and have a plan to turn the hard-line Islamic country into the next front in the war on terrorism."It's not if we're going to do anything against Iran. They're doing it," an ex-intelligence official tells this week's issue of The New Yorker.
Since at least last summer, the U.S. teams have penetrated eastern Iran, reportedly with Pakistan's help, the magazine said.
"Iraq is just one campaign," the official told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."
The aim is to rid America and its allies of a major state sponsor of terrorism, Hersh writes.
"We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy," the official tells Hersh. "This is the last hurrah - we've got four years and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom President Bush has asked to stay on in his second term, has been jockeying for more power to conduct covert ops without nagging congressional oversight.
"It's a global free-fire zone," said one Pentagon adviser.
Iran has fought tooth and nail demands that it open its nuclear energy program for inspection, fueling suspicion that the charter member of President Bush's "axis of evil" is up to no good.
That same secrecy also has heightened tensions with another axis member with nuclear ambitions, North Korea.
Pentagon neoconservatives - hard-liners who include Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz - believe that surgical strikes on a small list of military targets will minimize civilian casualties and may spark an uprising by reformers against the ruling fundamentalist mullahs, current and ex-officials said.
Hersh told CNN that if targets are lined up by this summer, U.S. attacks could soon follow.
They "want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible," a Pentagon consultant told Hersh.
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believe that, just as with some Soviet-bloc countries, "the minute the aura of invincibility the mullahs enjoy is shattered ... the Iranian regime will collapse," the consultant said.
Yet Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.) of the House International Relations Committee said, "I wouldn't assume the Iranian regime will just collapse."
With combat operations still raging in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the hunt for weapons of mass destruction came up empty, Bush would have to explain fully a new call for military action against Iran, King said.
"He'd have to get the people behind it," King told the Daily News. "But you'd have to factor in that the American public would be somewhat suspicious."
But Bush aides are "compulsively optimistic" that the mullahs have a fragile hold on power, and they are sure to strike soon, predicted defense analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.
"I think they're going to do it," he told The News. "I'm skeptical that diplomacy will succeed."
While presidential counselor Dan Bartlett complained that Hersh's story was "riddled with inaccuracies," he notably did not outright deny any of it.
"No President at any juncture in history has ever taken military options off the table," Bartlett told CNN's "Late Edition." "What President Bush has shown [is] that he believes we can emphasize the diplomatic initiatives that are under way right now."
Originally published on January 17, 2005
I want to know who is leaking this information?????
I don't know, but I think they should have a couple of square feet of skin removed before they are rolled in salt. (No anesthetic). If this is true, they have really increased the teams' risk.
Ping!
"If this is true, they have really increased the teams' risk."
I was thinking the same thing. That's one of the prices we pay for freedom of the press. But I'm sure fired up about the thought of liberating Iran from those millionaire mullahs! Yeah, baby!
These leaks are not funny and go way beyond partisan politics .. they are putting lives in danger
Yes!
"The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone.
We couldn't have defeated Germany just by going into the Rhine. We have to tame the entire region.
I question the validity of this "leak"
Its more likely to be either a total fabrication, or a piece of mis-information indented to send a message to the Iranians "we are watching"
Or misinformation........
If there are teams right now in Iran, and these idiots are flapping their gums about it, am I alone in wishing they were prosecuted for treason?
possible .. but this reporting is coming from Hersh
He is a slimey SOB for the left
If it's a genuine story, I'd like to know what the hell the New Yorker gang thinks they're doing revealing it.
"We couldn't have defeated Germany just by going into the Rhine. We have to tame the entire region."
The Iranian military is divided. The old Iranian Republican Guard is still loyal to the Shah. And a large number of the soldiers loyal to the mullahs are mercenaries from outside Iran. Even some of the police in Iran speak languages different than the locals they are policing.
In short, the mullahs don't trust their own people to be loyal. Why would that be?
"And yet I have had this thought today that this is disinformation..."
There have also been Debka [the longshot paper] rumblings about Syria. One could be a red herring for the other, perhaps. I've thought of another machination I will not post.
I'm hoping it's a sting operation to ferret out some of the leftist remnants in the CIA, Pentagon, and the State Department. Judging from the descriptions of the sources, though, they sound like they are way off on the fringe of things, i.e. not in the position to know if there are SF in Iran or not.
"This is the last hurrah - we've got four years and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."
We will always see skirmishing, even when the major regimes are toppled. But it can reach the point where they are so decimated and forced into hiding that we can declare victory in the World War against Terror, either called World War III or possibly World War IV, depending on one's definition of a war. FReegards....
Man, I'll be SOOOOOO glad to see global terrorism's next leg kicked out from under it. Time's a wastin'. Iran or N. Korea would be perfect, logical choices, imo, Iran being perhaps a more urgent target for us. Thank God Dubya won! :-)
"He'd have to get the people behind it," King told the Daily News."
Like the American people really love the Iranian regime, right? Ha!
You thought maybe I was kidding about skinning the loose lipped? No, I wasn't. Anyone doing infiltration work has to have stones to go there in the first place, but this adds serious complications that did not need to be there--and for what? A story? They are not only hampering the intelligence gathering, but further endangering the gatherers.
My bet has always been on the Senate Intelligence committee and their staff. I'd bet the 'CIA' leaks came from there, too.
There is a group on the hill who hate our military and all affiliates enough to do anything to make our armed forces look bad, from the Commander in Chief down.
Oh, I hate when people do that. Now you've got me scared. :( Can't you email me with your thought? My imagination is too wild, now I'm thinking all kinds of scenarios...
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