Nuclear Case Against Iran

By Dafna Linzer

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

Iranian engineers have completed sophisticated drawings of a deep subterranean shaft, according to officials who have examined classified documents in the hands of U.S. intelligence for more than 20 months.

Complete with remote-controlled sensors to measure pressure and heat, the plans for the 400-meter tunnel appear designed for an underground atomic test that might one day announce Tehran's arrival as a nuclear power, the officials said.who have examined classified documents in the hands of U.S. intelligence for more than 20 months.

By the estimates of U.S. and allied intelligence analysts, that day remains as much as a decade away -- assuming that Iran applies the full measure of its scientific and industrial resources to the project and encounters no major technical hurdles. But whether Iran's leaders have reached that decision and what concrete progress the effort has made remain divisive questions among government analysts and U.N. inspectors.

In the three years since Iran was forced to acknowledge having a secret uranium-enrichment program, Western governments and the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, have amassed substantial evidence to test the Tehran government's assertion that it plans to build nothing more than peaceful nuclear power plants. Often circumstantial, usually ambiguous and always incomplete, the

evidence has confounded efforts by policymakers, intelligence officials and U.S. allies to reach a confident judgment about Iran's intentions and a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

more

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Strikes me Bush and his cabel are playing the same old song again!!!

the Islamists, then hit them with a weapon they react to.  Until now every body thought that it had to be a really sophisticated strategy.

But the petty over reactions of the so called President of Iran, by throwing out the Danish Ambassador and banning danish pastries, shows that he is vunerable to really stupid things.

So all that one needs to do, is to use the power of childish humour with precise reference to the Islamists in Iran, to make him cut more ties with other nations, which really mean a lot to him.

He would not dare say anything to a Chinese cartoonist would he?  But what if they did do something.  What would happen?  The chain reaction is harmless, and would explode like a bomb in their heads.  

At least no one would die in a nuclear war.

Ex-U.N. inspector: Iran's next: Ritter warns that another U.S. invasion in Mideast is imminent
February 6

KRT - The former U.N. weapons inspector who said Iraq disarmed long before the U.S. invasion in 2003 is warning Americans to prepare for a war with Iran.  "We just don't know when, but it's going to happen," Scott Ritter said.

Ritter predicts that John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, "will deliver a speech that has already been written. It says America cannot allow Iran to threaten the United States and we must unilaterally defend ourselves."  "How do I know this? I've talked to Bolton's speechwriter," Ritter said.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18066746-1702,00.html?from=rss

Informationclearinghouse

Oh shit. John Pilger weighs in. The ring of truth, and not one I want to hear.

Has Tony Blair, our minuscule Caesar, finally crossed his Rubicon? Having subverted the laws of the civilised world and brought carnage to a defenceless people and bloodshed to his own, having lied and lied and used the death of a hundredth British soldier in Iraq to indulge his profane self-pity, is he about to collude in one more crime before he goes?

Perhaps he is seriously unstable now, as some have suggested. Power does bring a certain madness to its prodigious abusers, especially those of shallow disposition. In The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam, the great American historian Barbara Tuchman described Lyndon B Johnson, the president whose insane policies took him across his Rubicon in Vietnam. "He lacked [John] Kennedy's ambivalence, born of a certain historical sense and at least some capacity for reflective thinking," she wrote. "Forceful and domineering, a man infatuated with himself, Johnson was affected in his conduct of Vietnam policy by three elements in his character: an ego that was insatiable and never secure; a bottomless capacity to use and impose the powers of his office without inhibition; a profound aversion, once fixed upon a course of action, to any contradictions."

That, demonstrably, is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the cabal that has seized power in Washington. But there is a logic to their idiocy - the goal of dominance. It also describes Blair, for whom the only logic is vainglorious. And now he is threatening to take Britain into the nightmare on offer in Iran. His Washington mentors are unlikely to ask for British troops, not yet. At first, they will prefer to bomb from a safe height, as Bill Clinton did in his destruction of Yugoslavia. They are aware that, like the Serbs, the Iranians are a serious people with a history of defending themselves and who are not stricken by the effects of a long siege, as the Iraqis were in 2003. When the Iranian defence minister promises "a crushing response", you sense he means it.

Listen to Blair in the House of Commons: "It's important we send a signal of strength" against a regime that has "forsaken diplomacy" and is "exporting terrorism" and "flouting its international obligations". Coming from one who has exported terrorism to Iran's neighbour, scandalously reneged on Britain's most sacred international obligations and forsaken diplomacy for brute force, these are Alice-through-the-looking-glass words.

However, they begin to make sense when you read Blair's Commons speeches on Iraq of 25 February and 18 March 2003. In both crucial debates - the latter leading to the disastrous vote on the invasion - he used the same or similar expressions to lie that he remained committed to a peaceful resolution. "Even now, today, we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntary disarmament . . ." he said. From the revelations in Philippe Sands's book Lawless World, the scale of his deception is clear. On 31 January 2003, Bush and Blair confirmed their earlier secret decision to attack Iraq.

Like the invasion of Iraq, an attack on Iran has a secret agenda that has nothing to do with the Tehran regime's imaginary weapons of mass destruction. That Washington has managed to coerce enough members of the International Atomic Energy Agency into participating in a diplomatic charade is no more than reminiscent of the way it intimidated and bribed the "international community" into attacking Iraq in 1991.

Iran offers no "nuclear threat". There is not the slightest evidence that it has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has repeatedly said his inspectors have found nothing to support American and Israeli claims. Iran has done nothing illegal; it has demonstrated no territorial ambitions nor has it engaged in the occupation of a foreign country - unlike the United States, Britain and Israel. It has complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to allow inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything" - unlike the US and Israel. The latter has refused to recognise the NPT, and has between 200 and 500 thermonuclear weapons targeted at Iran and other Middle Eastern states.

Those who flout the rules of the NPT are America's and Britain's anointed friends. Both India and Pakistan have developed their nuclear weapons secretly and in defiance of the treaty. The Pakistani military dictatorship has openly exported its nuclear technology. In Iran's case, the excuse that the Bush regime has seized upon is the suspension of purely voluntary "confidence-building" measures that Iran agreed with Britain, France and Germany in order to placate the US and show that it was "above suspicion". Seals were placed on nuclear equipment following a concession given, some say foolishly, by Iranian negotiators and which had nothing to do with Iran's obligations under the NPT.

Iran has since claimed back its "inalienable right" under the terms of the NPT to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. There is no doubt this decision reflects the ferment of political life in Tehran and the tension between radical and conciliatory forces, of which the bellicose new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is but one voice. As European governments seemed to grasp for a while, this demands true diplomacy, especially given the history.

For more than half a century, Britain and the US have menaced Iran. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 overthrew the democratic government of Muhammed Mossadeq, an inspired nationalist who believed that Iranian oil belonged to Iran. They installed the venal shah and, through a monstrous creation called Savak, built one of the most vicious police states of the modern era. The Islamic revolution in 1979 was inevitable and very nasty, yet it was not monolithic and, through popular pressure and movement from within the elite, Iran has begun to open to the outside world - in spite of having sustained an invasion by Saddam Hussein, who was encouraged and backed by the US and Britain.

At the same time, Iran has lived with the real threat of an Israeli attack, possibly with nuclear weapons, about which the "international community" has remained silent. Recently, one of Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote: "Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don't know if they're developing them, but if they're not developing them, they're crazy."

It is hardly surprising that the Tehran regime has drawn the "lesson" of how North Korea, which has nuclear weapons, has successfully seen off the American predator without firing a shot. During the cold war, British "nuclear deterrent" strategists argued the same justification for arming the nation with nuclear weapons; the Russians were coming, they said. As we are aware from declassified files, this was fiction, unlike the prospect of an American attack on Iran, which is very real and probably imminent.

Blair knows this. He also knows the real reasons for an attack and the part Britain is likely to play. Next month, Iran is scheduled to shift its petrodollars into a euro-based bourse. The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn. America's military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China.

That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.

While the Pentagon has no plans to occupy all of Iran, it has in its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home to 90 per cent of Iran's oil. "The first step taken by an invading force," reported Beirut's Daily Star, "would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's oil supply." On 28 January the Iranian government said that it had evidence of British undercover attacks in Khuzestan, including bombings, over the past year. Will the newly emboldened Labour MPs pursue this? Will they ask what the British army based in nearby Basra - notably the SAS - will do if or when Bush begins bombing Iran? With control of the oil of Khuzestan and Iraq and, by proxy, Saudi Arabia, the US will have what Richard Nixon called "the greatest prize of all".

But what of Iran's promise of "a crushing response"? Last year, the Pentagon delivered 500 "bunker-busting" bombs to Israel. Will the Israelis use them against a desperate Iran? Bush's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review cites "pre-emptive" attack with so-called low-yield nuclear weapons as an option. Will the militarists in Washington use them, if only to demonstrate to the rest of us that, regardless of their problems with Iraq, they are able to "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-theatre wars", as they have boasted? That a British prime minister should collude with even a modicum of this insanity is cause for urgent action on this side of the Atlantic.

With thanks to Mike Whitney. John Pilger's new book, Freedom Next Time, will be published by Bantam Press in June

First published in the New Statesman

scary...America has money to invest in a whole new breed of nuclear weapons, but not enough for Medicare and drugs to keep the population it has alive.  

Which comes first, the people of America or the bombs?  It doesn't seem there is money for both.  

for something quietly started nearby here.....

http://www.insidebayarea.com/timesstar/localnews/ci_3480733

(Sorry, but I don't know how to do links like many here....)

This scares me worse than Iran's project (which most experts agree wouldn't produce anything of note before 2010)

... that after Iraq, the current admin had it's sites set on another target. Imho, it was either Syria or Iran. After the initial Iraq invasion, with all the talk of Saddam passing his WMD's to Syria, I was pretty sure it would be Syria. The past year or so has made it clear Iran is the next beast. This should come as no suprise. Take special note that North Korea is no longer a blip on the map at the current moment.

Before anyone gets too worked up about spreading "freedom" to Iran (e.g., alimostofi.com), let's remember that Iran's secular democratic government was overthrown by a CIA coup in the 50s in order to prevent Iran from nationalizing its oil.

Before anyone gets too worked up about stopping proliferation of nuclear weapons, let's remember that Pakistan and India, both U.S. allies in the war against non-U.S. sponsored terror (contras, anyone?), ignored their NPT obligations in their nuclear arms race. And Israel, who never signed on to the NPT, is thought to possess several nukes.

If we're going to get into a war with Iran, let's at least be honest. It'll be about 3 things: control of oil production, control of oil distribution, and control of the oil markets. Just like the war with Iraq. All this talk is deja vu (gulf of Tonkin, WMDs, Lusitania, etc.) all over again.

America with its short-sighted policy has removed the safeguard that Iraq posed on Iran.  Despite what they do, increase/decrease troop strengths, precision bombing and/or anything else they dream up cannot have an effect on Iran's ability to raise the price of oil and disrupt shipping in a very important part of the world.  And they do sell their oil to China with Russia supporting them.

What effect it will have on how the world evolves will have to be left to posterity.  The one bright light I can see for the world is that freedom of spirit is universal and has been struggling to have its voice heard since ancient times.  

There may be dark days ahead, but I'm confident that eventually what it is that struggles in every man regardless of religion, and present country, will eventually prevail.

Mahan Abedin | February 18

Asia Times - As the Iranian revolution enters its 28th year this month, the Islamic Republic stands at the most critical stage of its history. While power is being transferred to second-generation revolutionaries, the country is on a collision course with the United States over its controversial nuclear program.

At the center of this unfolding drama is the perplexing figure of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who has managed to isolate, enrage and frighten important domestic and external constituencies in the space of only six months.

Left to their own devices, Ahmadinejad and the second-generation revolutionaries who stand behind him are likely to change the Islamic Republic beyond recognition in the years ahead. But the complicating factor in all this is the increasing possibility of some form of military confrontation between Iran and the United States within two years. The key question is whether Ahmadinejad and his inner circle believe that military confrontation serves their long-term political and socio-economic agenda.

Yikes.  Take the time to read Abedin's analysis

of this hornet's nest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4722498.stm

February 17

- Pam O'Toole

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has continued her diplomatic offensive against Iran.

She has accused Tehran of being the central banker for terrorism around the world and working with Syria to destabilise the Middle East.

Ms Rice was testifying before the Senate Budget Committee in Washington.

On Wednesday, she announced that the US administration would request an extra $75m from Congress to promote democratic change inside Iran.

Condoleezza Rice said Washington had worked very hard to build an international coalition to confront what she described as Iran's aggressive policies, particularly its nuclear programme.

However, she stressed it was not just Tehran's nuclear policies which were concerning, but also what she described as its support for terrorism.

Iran, she alleged, was the central banker for terrorism around the world and was working with Syria to destabilise the Middle East.

Washington has long accused Tehran of trying to undermine the Middle East peace process and of interfering in countries like Iraq, charges Iran denies.

Ms Rice also again criticised Tehran's record on human rights and democracy.

At another Senate Committee hearing on Wednesday, she said the administration would ask Congress for an extra $75m to try to promote democratic change inside Iran, a policy which Iranian state radio dismissed as an outmoded diplomatic manoeuvre belonging to the Cold War era.

Nevertheless, it is Iran's nuclear programme which is currently attracting most international attention, ahead of a crucial meeting of the UN's nuclear watchdog on that issue early next month.

Iranian atom work

Sun Feb 19, 2006

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - The crisis over Iran's atomic agenda is deepening, but the world's nuclear watchdog chief has warned there may be no choice but to accept limited uranium enrichment by Tehran, diplomats say.

For a mistrustful West, the quid pro quo would be to give U.N. inspectors more intrusive powers via a Security Council resolution to prevent suspected atomic bomb projects.

Tehran in turn would have to pledge no industrial-scale enrichment of uranium.

Countries on the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have called for the Iranian controversy to be referred to the U.N. Security Council by March 6.

Iran hit back by breaking a moratorium on enrichment, the process of making fuel for atomic plants or, potentially, bombs.

The board vote has driven Iran into a corner under a banner of national pride and risks paralyzing the Council given that veto-holding Russia and China reject sanctions on Tehran mooted by Washington, IAEA veterans say.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei will make no recommendations in a broad report on three years of probes in Iran he is to give to board members on February 27, a week before they convene to weigh whether to urge a course of action by the Security Council.

But he has already suggested in diplomatic circles that a compromise may lie in accepting small-scale enrichment in Iran in exchange for guarantees of no full nuclear fuel production that could enable diversions into bomb-making, diplomats say.

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said ElBaradei was still advocating publicly and privately that Iran take steps to earn international confidence by shelving enrichment-related work and cooperating fully with agency investigations.

"He has also told diplomats that Natanz (pilot enrichment plant) is Iran's bottom line, a sovereignty issue, a reality we may have to deal with," a diplomat close to the IAEA, who asked for anonymity due to the subject's sensitivity, said.

"Nothing of consequence will happen in the Security Council because the Russians and Chinese will block sanctions," the diplomat said of the two non-Western big powers determined to protect massive energy investments and trade with Iran.

more from Reuters

... on Reuters.

"President George W. Bush asked the U.S. Congress on Monday for $250 million in research funds to restart a controversial program that would reprocess spent nuclear fuel.

The United States abandoned the technology in the 1970s because it was too expensive and there was fear terrorist groups or rogue nations could get access to the plutonium and make nuclear bombs.

[Snip]

"Under the recycling program, the administration said the United States would partner with other countries, such as Russia, France and the United Kingdom, to establish the infrastructure necessary to supply nuclear fuel to other nations."

[Snip]

"The administration said its plan would eliminate the need for foreign countries to build their own uranium enrichment and recycling facilities, because the United States and its partners could send those countries the nuclear fuel they need to run plants for electricity generation."

So now there's going to be a new entity basically becoming the nuclear gas station for the globe? No UN or IAEA? Is this a step to call out Iran on their claims of only developing nuclear technology for energy needs?

thnx!

some iran trouncing free speech linkage...

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=CultureAndMedia&loid=8.0.261252316&par=0

"Foroutan has been accused of insulting the founder of the Islamic Republic, an act that is punishable by death."

Part of the reprocessing equation is to reduce the amount of nuclear waste sent to end facilites, such ass Yucca mountain.  Most of the spent fuel rods contain a large amount of useful nuclear fuel that is otherwise wasted.

Mad Dog

... I'm more concerned with the establishment of another global governing body, especially one that appears to be side stepping existing bodies that could handle this. A new tool for waging political leverage? A new outlet for friendly gov't contracts? A new department to appoint your best bud?

Other countries Recycle Nuclear "Waste" to Produce Electricity

THE EVOLUTION OF CANDUÒ  FUEL CYCLES

AND THEIR POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD PEACE

Scroll down and read: CANDU Fuel-Cycle Flexibility

The footnote that referencex MOX fuels is:

"Cox, D.S., Gadsby, R.D., Chan, P.S.W. and Dimayuga, F.C., "Disposition of Excess-Weapons Plutonium as MOX Fuel in CANDU Reactors", Proc. IAEA Tech. Comm. Mtg. on Fuel Cycle Options for LWRs and HWRs, Victoria, Canada, 1998."

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TEN REASONS TO SUPPORT CANADA'S WEAPONS PLUTONIUM MOX INITIATIVE

by Dr. Jeremy J. Whitlock

The Jyllands-Posten has promised to publish the winners at the same day as The Hamshahri.

A Finnish web site published the Danish cartoons too. President and prime minister apologized immediately and the police started a crime investigation. Foreign minister wrote a letter to the main newspapers of Arabic countries. (I assume that they exercise the time-tested Finnish foreign policy; simultaneously assuring Danes that freedom of speech in Denmark is a good thing while robbing Danes' market share in islamic countries.)

Danes have been loners in the EU politics thus they have no allies. In Iraqi alliance Britons are stabbing them because Britons see Danes as competitors. The USA sees only its own interests in Syria.

I don't doubt he's sincere, and I wouldn't put it past Amb. Bolton to give such a speech...  But Scott Ridder has said similar things before and been wrong.

Originally Ritter predicted Iran would be attacked in '07. Now he says he doesn't know when, but he has been consistent with his message.

Leave it to the government to take longer to get something done then they plan.

The earlier article only speaks of "signing off" on "plans", and that the US manipulated Iraqi elections - which is not implausible...

I happen to think that the most likely timetable for an aggressive response to Iran is in the runup to the 2006 elections.  While I don't intend to trivialize the issue of nuclear proliferation, the current administration is likely treat this more as a political issue than a genuine threat.

its terrifying how quickly we forget, how quickly they can re-sell WMDs to a gullible public and compliant media. I guess the equivalent of Shredders and Gold Taps is next in the spin.

Pilger is right, as he usually is, its not if, its simply when

...on this one. I'm not seeing much new data in there at all - a lot of spin and potential in there, rather than specific information on intent. Looks more like someone doing a copy of Scott Ritter's assessment to a UK audience. As well, there's a number of errors that seem to me to be indicative of a pretty significant bias as to how what evidence the guy has is being interpreted.

It's pretty tough, for example, to say that there's no evidence that Iran has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium. The IAEA has placed under seal centrifuge components and has assessed that Iran has actually enriched uranium using centrifuges. It's a much more accurate description of the situation to say that, so far as we know, they do not have the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to weapons grade in any timeframe not measured in geological epochs, though they clearly would like to develop such technology, irregardless of what their actual intent might be (which we also have little concrete insight into).

The 500 "bunker-busters" that he's talking about are BLU-109s. Based on the descriptions that I've seen of the hardening of these production facilities in Iran, BLU-109s aren't going to be anywhere close to enough. There's a couple of other advanced weapons that might have a better shot at defeating these structures, but they're not mentioned as being part of the sale to Israel.

As to what the SAS will do - it's easy to talk about direct action on the ground in Iran but it's a different matter entirely to actually do it. Pat Lang, who has the redeeming virtue of actually having been an SF officer, thinks the notion of direct action on this type of target is the sheerist lunacy and I agree with him. If you thought that the pissed-offedness at the plan to make an opposed landing on an enemy held airstrip during the Falklands conflict was something, this'd result in straight out rebellion.

This may sound like pedantic bullshit on my part, but in the absence of concrete evidence, this one comes down to a gut assessment and I don't think that this guy's gut is real objective.

tells me something different.

That Scott Ritter is probably right, just like he was with Iraq.

Why people like Saddam and this new asshole from Iran sell wolf tickets, I don't know.

But then why bush does what he does also leaves me baffled. It'd make you think they want to hasten a full blown world war.

I suspect they'll get their wish.

...don't see it happening soon (i.e., in the next year or two or so). Everything realistic and data based that I see is that the Iranians are a few years out from having a device at the absolute minimum, and that it's more realistically like a decade out. Seems pretty stupid to me to be hitting stuff at this stage. From a weaponeering perspective, if nothing else. Hell, I'd let 'em fill the cascade halls at Nantaz with equipment and hit it while it's up and running - then you maximize the damage.

Seems pretty stupid to me to be hitting stuff at this stage.

remains a valid predictor of the Administration's actions. Rumsfeld wanted to go into Iraq with 50,000 troops, not 140,000.

From PBS' "Rumsfeld's War":

<snip>

NARRATOR: Colonel Douglas MacGregor was a tank commander in desert storm. His specialty is thinking outside the box about military tactics. He's a well known maverick in the military establishment. After Rumsfeld's early exposure to Tommy Franks, he went looking for fresh ideas. He came across Colonel MacGregor. In early December, MacGregor was invited to the Pentagon.

Col. DOUGLAS MacGREGOR: Brought me in and asked, "We're looking at Iraq. By the way, the chief of staff of the Army says it will take at least 560,000 troops to deal with Iraq." Well, of course, I burst out laughing immediately. And the representative said "That's interesting because that was Secretary Rumsfeld's reaction."

NARRATOR: MacGregor had a powerful ally helping him again access to the secretary. He showed us an email. It was from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to Secretary Rumsfeld. As a member of the Defense Policy Review Board, Gingrich had become a close adviser to Secretary Rumsfeld. He had championed Colonel MacGregor's work. "Newt, I looked at this piece you sent from MacGregor. I don't know anyone who is thinking that way. Thanks, D.H. Rumsfeld."

THOMAS WHITE, Secretary of the Army, 2001-'03: This whole thing with Gingrich, with MacGregor feeding him ideas, became a very, very contentious aspect of our relationship, I think, that polluted the well.

NARRATOR: General Shinseki's position was Army doctrine: large numbers of forces were necessary to secure a country immediately after a conflict. But he couldn't get through the Rumsfeld, who had Newt Gingrich talking to less traditional planners like Colonel MacGregor.

Col. DOUGLAS MacGREGOR: He said, "What do you think?" And I said, "50,000 troops. Real emphasis has to be on getting rapidly to Baghdad on a couple of axes and using mobile armored forces for that purpose. And once we get there, we remove the government." I said, "The bottom line is, the secretary's right. The enemy's very weak. This will not take very long," at which point in time, I was told, "Well, great. Can you put together a plan?"

NARRATOR: This is Colonel MacGregor's war plan: 50,000 troops rapidly deployed, striking at the heart of Baghdad.

Col. DOUGLAS MacGREGOR: I received a call from CENTCOM, from General Franks's staff group director, who is a full colonel, who said, "The secretary of defense has directed the boss to bring you down to CENTCOM for three days."

NARRATOR: If you're a war-fighting general, CENTCOM is where you want to be. Norman Schwarzkopf was the boss here during Desert Storm. Then Marine general Joe Hoar took over.

Gen. JOSEPH P. HOAR, Commander, CENTCOM, 1994-'94: Fifty thousand people? I know what my answer would have been. I can't say it on public television. This is a labor-intensive business, and if you're going to go in and change a country of 25 million people, you've got to have boots on the ground. The people that are making decisions in the military, the guys that are in uniform, think very seriously about having one American soldier or Marine killed.

And the way you minimize casualties is you fight aggressively and with overwhelming strength. And so when you start up the road to Baghdad, you have enough people to flood that city, that city that's second only in size to New York City, in terms of how big it is. Also, six-and-a-half million people. Fifty thousand people- where would they go in Baghdad? What would they secure? Even if they were successful, how would you manage all of that? What would be the next step? I think it's absolutely impractical.

NARRATOR: But the more the generals dug in, the harder Rumsfeld pushed.

<snip>

Gen. JOSEPH P. HOAR: I'd like to think I would have stood up and said no. I'd like to think I would. But I can't say that I would have. I don't think it's at all easy to go and tell the secretary of defense that he's wrong when the secretary of defense and the undersecretary and the assistant secretaries are all there in the room, and they're telling you, "This is the way the plan ought to go, this is the way the plan ought to go." That's the difficult part of it.

NARRATOR: But Rumsfeld had also modified his position in the back-and-forth. So after 10 months in development, the new Iraq war plan called for 140,000 men, a rolling start in Kuwait, rapid deployment to Baghdad. It was neither Rumsfeld's plan nor the Army's.

link to full script

"I don't know anyone else that's thinking that way".

Perhaps nobody else was thinking of invading Iraq with 50,000 troops because the plan was tactically brilliant, a gifted and audacious cavalry charge - but in the strategic picture was cosmic stupidity for its complete omission of consideration for the day after?

Then they went with it anyway, just adjusting the numbers up.

I'm not remotely confident that the Administration won't hunt around until they find another "gifted maverick" who will come up with an idea to execute that "nobody is thinking about simply because it's a stupid idea."

...than "they were that stupid last time". Not having been asleep for the past two and three-quarter years, I'm intimately familiar with precisely how stupid they were last time (and the time before that, and the time before that, and...) - I'd like some actual insight to how they might be being stupid this time. Given that folks have been giving voice to their fears about this scenario or the closely related Syrian scenario since about, what, late 2003 and it keeps not happening on the timeline(s) predicted, what's different now such that one should give it credence?

I can think of lots of things that the administration is dumb enough to do, my question is, what specific evidence is there that they are dumb enough to do this, now?

Okay, that gave me laugh.

Chalk it up to a difference in worldviews. You'd like proof that a mechanism that keeps breaking will break again; I'd like proof that a mechanism that keeps breaking has been repaired so it won't break this time. Time will let us know.

My question isn't "what's different this time?". It's "what's the same this time?"

As a martial arts instructor, I and my peers were often more wary about sparring with newbs than sparring with experienced guys. It wasn't about control, although that played a part. The newbs also had a much wider range of options than the experienced guys, mainly because they didn't have enough experience to rule what the experienced knew were patently stupid choices out of their option set. They were the ones that could either be taken down in one move - or on a rare occasion surprise you with a "WTF?" move and give you a nasty clack and put a hurt on you, so we watched them warily.

which is applicable across many fields of study...  love it.  please say more about it if youve the chance...

the consequennces of Bush's aggressive war policies.  Like Whittington, they got in the way of Cheney's birdshot.

They exhausted all their negotiation power in the EU to gain useless exemptions. The cost was that they became outliers in the EU politics.

'Making trouble'-politics works better with a larger country, like Poland, for a while. It didn't work for Margaret Thatcher.

By the way, Jyllands-Posten goes Arabic:

http://62.242.178.124/jp_brev_arabisk.pdf

are margainlized by the 4 larger countries:

EU Shift Power

Only 3 nations out of 4 are needed to veto policy.   The movers and shakers are Germany, Britain, France and Italy.  The smaller countries just pick up the bills.    

marginalized itself before double majority principle in voting (majority of countries and population). (Tax issues require still unanimous decisions. Poland used that successfully to cause trouble a couple of weeks ago.)

With the current voting system, Denmark could not have hurt itself as much as it did.

· Bolton says nuclear plant can be 'taken out'
· UN agency meets to send report to security council

Julian Borger Washington
Monday March 6, 2006
The Guardian

The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has told British MPs that military action could bring Iran's nuclear programme to a halt if all diplomatic efforts fail. The warning came ahead of a meeting today of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which will forward a report on Iran's nuclear activities to the UN security council.
The council will have to decide whether to impose sanctions, an issue that could split the international community as policy towards Iraq did before the invasion.

Yesterday the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said: "Nobody has said that we have to rush immediately to sanctions of some kind."

However the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, visiting Washington last week, encountered sharply different views within the Bush administration. The most hawkish came from Mr Bolton. According to Eric Illsley, a Labour committee member, the envoy told the MPs: "They must know everything is on the table and they must understand what that means. We can hit different points along the line. You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."

It is unusual for an administration official to go into detail about possible military action against Iran. To produce significant amounts of enriched uranium, Iran would have to set up a self-sustaining cycle of processes. Mr Bolton appeared to be suggesting that cycle could be hit at its most vulnerable point.

The CIA appears to be the most sceptical about a military solution and shares the state department's position, say British MPs, in suggesting gradually stepping up pressure on the Iranians.

The Pentagon position was described, by the committee chairman, Mike Gapes, as throwing a demand for a militarily enforced embargo into the security council "like a hand grenade - and see what happens".

Yesterday Mr Bolton reiterated his hardline stance. In a speech to the annual convention of the American-Israel public affairs committee, the leading pro-Israel US lobbyists, he said: "The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to solve ... we must be prepared to rely on comprehensive solutions and use all the tools at our disposal to stop the threat that the Iranian regime poses."

The IAEA referred Iran to the security council on February 4, but a month's grace was left for diplomatic initiatives. By yesterday, those appeared exhausted. A meeting of European and Iranian negotiators broke down on Friday over Tehran's insistence that even if Russia was allowed to enrich Iran's uranium, Iran would enrich small amounts for research. Iran says that it needs enrichment for electricity.

According to Time magazine, the US plans to present the security council with evidence that Iran is designing a crude nuclear bomb, like the one dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. The evidence will be in the form of blueprints that the US said were found on a laptop belonging to an Iranian nuclear engineer, and obtained by the CIA in 2004. However, any such presentation will bring back memories of a similar briefing in February 2003 in which Colin Powell, then US secretary of state, laid out evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which proved not to exist.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1724473,00.html

By ELAINE SHANNON

Posted Sunday, Mar. 05, 2006

Time Magazine

As the U.N. Security Council prepares to debate Iran's nuclear ambitions--perhaps as early as next week--Bush Administration officials are readying a new intelligence briefing for council members on Tehran's weapons programs. It will rely mainly on circumstantial evidence, much of it from documents found on a laptop purportedly purloined from an Iranian nuclear engineer and obtained by the CIA in 2004. U.S. officials insist the material is strong but concede they have no smoking gun.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1169919,00.html

AP
ROBERT BURNS

March 8

WASHINGTON — Raising a new complaint about Iran, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on yesterday accused Tehran of dispatching elements of its Revolutionary Guard to stir trouble inside Iraq.
At the same time, he rejected the idea that Iraq has slipped into civil war, asserting that media reports have overstated recent violence there.
Rumsfeld offered few details concerning his allegation of interference by Iran, which fought a nearly decade-long war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s and shares a largely unguarded border.
"They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq," he told a Pentagon news conference. "And it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment."
He did not elaborate except to say the infiltrators were members of the Al Quds Division of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the network of soldiers and vigilantes whose mandate is to defeat threats to the 1979 Islamic revolution. The Al Quds Division is responsible for operations outside Iranian territory.
Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have previously complained of Iranian complicity in the movement of explosives and bomb-making material across the border into Iraq, but Rumsfeld had not mentioned Iranian forces before.
He initially said the infiltrators were doing "things that are harmful to the future of Iraq," but later when asked specifically whether they were gathering intelligence or fomenting violence, Rumsfeld said he did not know what their mission was.
Appearing with Rumsfeld, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that although there have been indications of Iranian-manufactured weapons coming into Iraq, "the most recent reports have to do with individuals crossing the border." He said he had an estimate of the number but declined to reveal it.
Pace said he did not know whether the Iranians were sent by their government. Asked the same question, Rumsfeld replied, "Of course. Quds force, the Revolutionary Guard, doesn't go milling around willy-nilly, one would think."
In the unclassified portion of its report to Congress last month on Iraq, the Pentagon made no mention of interference from Iran. It noted, however, that progress in building an Iraqi border police force has lagged behind expectations and said it suffers from corruption, "ghost" employees, and absenteeism among employees.