U.S. had better be ready to raze Iran’s nuclear sites (Charles Krauthammer)

Boston Herald ^ | Sept 15, 2006 | Charles Krauthammer

[Doofer]

Pretty bleak assessment but probable accurate.

[TheLion]

Should we go after them, it should be with such overwhelming force, that they have nothing left to close the straits with.

[Humidston]

Amen.

[308MBR]

I'm quite afraid, yet sure it will take a mushroom cloud over DC for that to happen. I just hope it's not a Federal Holiday when it happens.

I know that's bad, but it will be the only hope for us to actually do it. This country had the will to do what was needed for all of 30 minutes after 9-11. Then, advisors from Foggy Bottom helped the President get up and talk about how islam is a Religion of Peace.

[Brad from Tennessee]

The U.S. should be waging the same type of asymmetric warfare on Iran that Iran has waged against the U.S. and the West for the last 25 years. The U.S. should exploit some or all of Iran's dissident groups by providing whatever resources they require to fight the Mullahs. This may not solve the nuclear issue but it could bring the Iranian religious dictatorship to its knees and take some pressure off Iraq and Israel.

[FastCoyote]

"Pretty bleak assessment but probable accurate."

I think it is overly bleak, though I agree this is the path we must need be on. We hold more cards than many think:
1) If we hit the Iranian gas refineries, it will cripple Iran's defenses within weeks.
2) No need for ground invasion , we only need to bottle them up.
3) We would need to eliminate the Iranian air force, and navy if we took on the nuclear sites. But this is fairly conventional warfare and it would be hard for Iran to recover its military infrastructure. The Straits of Hormuz could be taken out of the equation.

Of course, this requires total conventional warfare, more in the WWII tradition. Think of the bombing of Germany without an invasion.

[zipper]

If I know President Bush's character, he won't leave office without arriving at a solution-- diplomatic or otherwise, and I'm leaning toward a military solution. The U.N. is much too weak and fractionalized to deal a decisive blow to the Iranians.

[zipper]

http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/aw091106p1.xml

[excerpt:]

The Iranians purposefully have not followed Iraq's 1981 model of concentrating their nuclear development in a single area. They have distributed their nuclear development over numerous sites, including Bushehr, where a nuclear power plant is being built. Natanz is the site of a pilot fuel enrichment plant, and where a full-scale facility is under construction. Arak is the site of a research reactor and a heavy water production plant inaugurated in August.

While the multiplicity of sites makes drawing up a comprehensive target list more challenging, U.S. and Israel officials also suggest there are positive aspects to this. Not every nuclear-related site need be struck to hobble any nascent nuclear weapons program. The goal would be to select a few choke points.

"There are lots of links in the chain you can attack," says a former senior Israeli diplomat. "So how you define the mission is important. There may be 40 facilities [the total may be considerably higher], but you select only four. You don't have to attack all of them. For example, some targets are vulnerable to movement, like centrifuges. They need stability, so if you create enough [vibration or Earth tremors], their alignment can be distorted."

As the system expands or changes over time, additional small-scale attacks could further delay the effort, whenever it approaches a critical stage of development. While Israeli officials do not believe an Iranian nuclear weapons program can be stopped, they are convinced it could be slowed by years with the idea that time, negotiations, sanctions and perhaps changes in government could alter the desire to arm.

[Uncle Miltie]

"If I know President Bush's character, he won't leave office without arriving at a solution"

I suspect he'll launch an attack, everyone will condemn him, including his successor, who will privately thank his lucky stars Bush had 'nads.

[river rat]

You guys thinking these scenarios are bleak --- should consider how bleak doing nothing would be.

To date -- the U.S. has "fought" this war with handcuffs and a tight leash being held by the same assholes in Washington that lost the war in Vietnam......POLITICIANS and LAWYERS.

In a sane world ---- the American warrior should stay home until two conditions are met:
1. The enemy and his supporters are identified.
2. Congressional authorization to destroy by any means necessary, a sufficient number of both to secure unconditional surrender or extinction of the enemy. Whichever comes first..

This bullshit we're calling "war" now -- is a criminal deception that plays directly into our enemy's strength.

Fight like WWII, end like WWII.
Fight like Vietnam, end like Vietnam...

Semper Fi

[1COUNTER-MORTER-68]

To take out Iran ?? ,,Bomb Their Desalination and
Water Filtration Plants FIRST .

[Williams]

Exactly. The real solution is to move into Iran and take the place with decisive force. After that, most of the things in the article won't happen. You don't want to attack Iran and then let it cause trouble in Iraq, close the Straits, fund more terrorism, etc. This stuff is not for the light hearted.

[endthematrix]

"As the system expands or changes over time"

And there is an immense difficulty in assessing that in a closed political systems. Saddam offered little, Pajamaman won't either. Don't bet on the IAEA...

[1COUNTER-MORTER-68]

They Non Gratum Anus Rodentum ,,,FO'SHO.

[Cobra64]

I'm quite afraid, yet sure it will take a mushroom cloud over DC for that to happen. I just hope it's not a Federal Holiday when it happens.

I know that's bad, but it will be the only hope for us to actually do it. This country had the will to do what was needed for all of 30 minutes after 9-11. Then, advisors from Foggy Bottom helped the President get up and talk about how islam is a Religion of Peace.

Bingo!

This action:

on DC will have no impact on the American will to fight.

Gore The Dunce will blame it on global warming.

Kerry, Kennedy, Pelosi, and Murtha will say that we should have talked more instead of making Iran unhapppy.

The rest of America will shrug it off and sing kum-bay-ya; and only whine about gasoline prices going up 10 cents in East Bumfukc.

[1COUNTER-MORTER-68]

Outstanding.

[Cobra64]

Think of the bombing of Germany...

We did. But no one seems to remember.

http://www.rense.com/general19/flame.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

[Cobra64]

You guys have it right. Can I be on your team? That will make three of us that get it.

[nathanbedford]

Kudos to Krauthammer for once again coming to grips with the essential question of our age: how to stop Iran getting the bomb.

This is a question the left will not face but it will stick in our faces as long as we remain in power. The left will shout for a solution and then act to stop every step calculated to bring one about.

Kudos again to Krauthammer for having starkly stated the existential threat posed by a nuclearized Iran:

The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

A nuclear Iran means an entire change in the balance of power around the world. It means the loss of American influence everywhere particularly in the Persian Gulf. It means China and Russia perhaps in league with Iran, Venezuela, and God knows who else, will be emboldened to act against American interests. Terrorism will be very difficult to stop and the whole of the Middle East will be cast into the maelstrom. Europe will act precisely as it did in the 1930s.

That's the easy part. Consider how long our republic can last as a democracy after the first terrorist nuclear bomb goes off in Pittsburgh followed by demands to accede to sharia law. Sons of liberty, we will surely resist after the destruction of one city but then Oakland will be turned into glass, followed by another demand anonymously delivered over the Internet. We know not where to retaliate. The left in America forces us to capitulate and we are now essentially a fascist Muslim state.

It must be the live or die policy aim of the United States to prevent Iran getting the bomb.

No parallel in history is perfect, but one cannot forget the parallels with the course of history in Europe in the 1930s. Krauthammer, although an admirable man in so many respects is not Churchill, but his message must not go unheeded as Churchill's did.

Zipper has posted an important insight: George Bush will not leave office without having dealt with this problem.

I have often railed against George Bush on domestic matters and I have posted what follows concerning who he is:

"The problem with George Bush is that he is not primarily a conservative, he is primarily a Christian, and he does not have a calculus that is congruent with yours or mine, even though both of us might be Christians.

George Bush sees partisan politics as petty and ultimately meaningless. We see partisanship as the indispensable stuff of freedom. At election time the Bushes will hold their nose and dip into partisanship. But it is not in their essential nature to wage war for tactical political advantage.

George Bush wants what Bill Clinton wanted: To fashion a legacy. He does not want to be remembered as the man who cut a few percentage points from an appropriation bill but as the man who reshaped Social Security. I've come to the conclusion that the Bushes see politics as squirmy, fetid. It must be indulged in if one is to practice statesmanship but it is statesmanship alone that that is worthy as a calling.

They are honest, they are loyal, they are patrician. There would've been admired and respected if had lived among the founding fathers. But it is Laura Bush and Momma Bush who really and truly speak for the family and who tell us what they are thinking and who they are. There's not a Bush woman who does not believe in abortion. They believe in family, they live in loyalty, they believe in the tribe, but they do not believe in partisan politics.

I believe it is time for us to decide no longer to be used by the Bush family as useful idiots and instead to begin to use the Bushes as our useful idiots . I say this with the utmost admiration and respect for everything the Bushes stand for. Who would not be proud beyond description to have a father or an uncle who was among the first and youngest of naval aviators to fight in the Pacific and to be twice shot down. Not a stain or blemish of corruption or personal peccadillo has touched the family(except for the brother whom I believe was cleared of bank charges). They are the living embodiment of all that is good and noble in the American tradition.

But they are not conservative."

We must see this coming conflict and Bush's view of it with the understanding that he essentially is a Christian. All of the factors which work against Bush on an everyday level work in favor of Bush on this transcendental question. He will rise to this occasion because he is above politics. This is the very nestle for his greatness and I believe with Zipper that he will rise up from it and stand alone against his own Congress and the rest of the world to do the right thing as he sees it in his Christian soul.

If he does not, we had better look to saving our asses individually.