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Title: “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.” (Read This )
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Published: Jan 13, 2008
Author: Hersch
Post Date: 2008-01-13 19:48:15 by tom007
Keywords: None
Views: 163
Comments: 10
“There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.” “The planning is enormous,” the former senior intelligence official said, referring to the activity at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, in Florida; the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, in Virginia; and the U.S. Strategic Command, in Nebraska. “Space assets, SLBMs”—submarine-launched ballistic missiles—“tactical air, and sabotage, coöperation from the Turks and the Russians.” He added that the plans include “significant air attacks on their countermeasures and anti-aircraft missiles—a huge takedown.” He depicted the planning as hectic, and far beyond the contingency work that is routinely done. “These are operational plans,” the former official said. Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions—rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing—since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars. Last month, in a paper given at a conference on Middle East security in Berlin, Colonel Sam Gardiner, a military analyst who taught at the National War College before retiring from the Air Force, in 1987, provided an estimate of what would be needed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Working from satellite photographs of the known facilities, Gardiner estimated that at least four hundred targets would have to be hit. He added: I don’t think a U.S. military planner would want to stop there. Iran probably has two chemical-production plants. We would hit those. We would want to hit the medium-range ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer to Iraq. There are fourteen airfields with sheltered aircraft. . . . We’d want to get rid of that threat. We would want to hit the assets that could be used to threaten Gulf shipping. That means targeting the cruise-missile sites and the Iranian diesel submarines. . . . Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target even with penetrating weapons. The U.S. will have to use Special Operations units. One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface. That number of centrifuges could provide enough enriched uranium for about twenty nuclear warheads a year. (Iran has acknowledged that it initially kept the existence of its enrichment program hidden from I.A.E.A. inspectors, but claims that none of its current activity is barred by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.) The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete. * from the issue * cartoon bank * e-mail this There is a Cold War precedent for targeting deep underground bunkers with nuclear weapons. In the early nineteen-eighties, the American intelligence community watched as the Soviet government began digging a huge underground complex outside Moscow. Analysts concluded that the underground facility was designed for “continuity of government”—for the political and military leadership to survive a nuclear war. (There are similar facilities, in Virginia and Pennsylvania, for the American leadership.) The Soviet facility still exists, and much of what the U.S. knows about it remains classified. “The ‘tell’ ”—the giveaway—“was the ventilator shafts, some of which were disguised,” the former senior intelligence official told me. At the time, he said, it was determined that “only nukes” could destroy the bunker. He added that some American intelligence analysts believe that the Russians helped the Iranians design their underground facility. “We see a similarity of design,” specifically in the ventilator shafts, he said. A former high-level Defense Department official told me that, in his view, even limited bombing would allow the U.S. to “go in there and do enough damage to slow down the nuclear infrastructure—it’s feasible.” The former defense official said, “The Iranians don’t have friends, and we can tell them that, if necessary, we’ll keep knocking back their infrastructure. The United States should act like we’re ready to go.” He added, “We don’t have to knock down all of their air defenses. Our stealth bombers and standoff missiles really work, and we can blow fixed things up. We can do things on the ground, too, but it’s difficult and very dangerous—put bad stuff in ventilator shafts and put them to sleep.”
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#1. To: tom007 (#0)
Please please please God save us from these maniacs.
A liberal would rather see a woman raped and strangled with her own pantyhouse than defend herself with a handgun.
When I was a kid, religion meant anti-war. I had an alternative newspaper in high school, and the Methodist Church printed it for me for free. As Grassley has proved, most of these creeps are just money mongers. That's why they are Repukes. Most Christians follow the Bible, which has nothing in it about Bentleys and 20-bathroom mansions. Little wonder these nazi thugs love the Repukes.
Honi soit qui mal y pense
Horse hockey. Is Russia so easily discounted? Where did you find this?
it is part of the posted Iran plan posted her from the New Yorker by Sy Hearsch. A very credible work AFAIK. Important Alert. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417fa_fact?currentPage=3
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Yeh - that is just nonsense.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" The Americans don't have friends. We have burned them all.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" ping
Fox News Channel is the television version of Free Republic
I'm disturbed by tom007's unsourced or vaguely sourced posts. It's not the content I take issue with but the fact that without sourcing it is impossible to separate news or commentary from the poster's opinions. This is a bad practice that should be stopped. The poster has the same opportunity that all have, to post opinion within the thread. These posts appear to me to be a mishmash of cited material and personal opinion. If I'm wrong then it can be made clear by sourcing.
Republicans (Democrats for that matter) ....... HAD ENOUGH?
see #4. This is a page from several postings that had been sourced.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Note that this too is from April 2006. It may well have been overtaken by events, like the Iran NIE.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
#2. To: tom007 (#0)
#3. To: tom007 (#0)
“The Iranians don’t have friends,
#4. To: PSUSA (#3)
#5. To: PSUSA (#3)
orse hockey. Is Russia so easily discounted?
#6. To: PSUSA (#3)
“The Iranians don’t have friends,
#7. To: tom007, *libertarians*, *Ron Paul for President 2008* (#0)
#8. To: PSUSA, christine, tom07 (#3)
Where did you find this?
#9. To: iconoclast (#8)
#10. To: tom007 (#4)
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