Bush Inc. Ready to Attack Iran

 
The Nuclear Option
Senior Bush administration officials are considering plans for a massive bombing campaign in Iran to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons, according to several recent accounts, including two this weekend by the Washington Post and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh. Current U.S. plans also call for the use of nuclear weapons to destroy suspected underground weapons facilities, which would mark the first use of such weapons in 61 years. Former intelligence officials quoted by Hersh describe the planning as "enormous," "hectic" and "operational," though U.S. officials sought yesterday to play down the activities as "normal defense and intelligence planning." The truth is, there is no good military solution to the Iranian nuclear impasse. And while there are military options, each carries with it grave risks that threaten to undermine U.S. national security interests at home and abroad while actually speeding up Iran's development of nuclear weapons.

 
COSTS OF WAR: 'WHAT WILL 1.2 BILLION MUSLIMS THINK THE DAY WE BOMB IRAN?': A report published in February by the Oxford Research Group determined "that attacks on Iranian facilities, most of which are in densely populated areas, would be surprise ones, allowing no time for such evacuations or other precautions," and thus leading to hundreds or thousands of civilian casualties. Moreover, planners also currently debating launching attacks from Iraq or using Iraqi airspace, which could "exacerbate the political cost in the Muslim world." Analysts fear a military strike would "rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq." As one former Pentagon advisor asked Seymour Hersh, "What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?" [MORE]

BUSH ADMINISTRATION CREATES SECRETIVE IRAN GROUP: According to Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor at The New Republic, the State Department's ramped-up campaign for regime change in Iran -- is a "campaign that intensifies by the day." According to Kaplan, the administration has formed what it calls the Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG), a body headed by Vice President Cheney's daughter, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Liz Cheney, and whose purpose is to encourage regime change in Iran. Cheney is operating with more than $75 million at her disposal to ostensibly promote democracy in Iran. [MORE]