Friday, January 19, 2007

Is the Bush administration planning an all-out war with Iran?

A general view of a uranium processing site in Isfahan, 340 km (211 miles) south of Tehran, in this March 30, 2005 file photo. U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi.

I found this through Americablog, so I went to the original Reuters source:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday.

"I've seen some of the planning ... You're not talking about a surgical strike," said Wayne White, who was a top Middle East analyst for the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research until March 2005.

"You're talking about a war against Iran" that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years, White told the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank.

"We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets" by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that could target commerce or U.S. warships in the Gulf, and maybe even Iran's ballistic missile capability, White said.

"I'm much more worried about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure," which would prompt vigorous Iranian retaliation, he said, than civil war in Iraq, which could be confined to that country.

President George W. Bush has stressed he is seeking a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

But he has not taken the military option off the table and his recent rhetoric, plus tougher financial sanctions and actions against Iranian involvement in Iraq, has revived talk in Washington about a possible U.S. attack on Iran.

I will be honest here. I don't know if President Bush is that certifiably insane enough to start an all-out war with Iran, or not. I certainly can't trust anything the Bush administration says because I've heard so many lies, marketing and PR-spin from this administration. And since the war in Iraq has been a disaster, that events in Iraq and the Middle East have spiraled out of control for the PNAC officials inside this administration, and that George Bush is now worried about his presidential legacy, I can see this Bush White House starting a new war with Iran in order to shift our attention away from the failed disaster of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

That scares me.

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