Okay, now I am genuinely frightened.
He was trying to prevent an Iran-Iraq nuclear arms race that would destabilize the region?
I do believe that's a new one.
Is it time to think about impeaching Bush and Cheney both? Six months ago I thought that was crazy, but this is getting uglier by the day.
I'm sure it's all just big joke. Lighten up apo'!
3: "The bombing will begin in five minutes."
Not just a few bloggers talking about this any longer.
Really, Marshall and Clemons are more credible than anyone on TV.
I suppose it could be argued that Bush's talk to these people amunted to a semi-formal announcement, whereas the stuff Marshall and Clemons wrote was more behind-the-scenes reporting and putting the pieces together.
See, that's the spirit! The fact that this time there will be actual just makes the joke that much more funny!
Sure, there might be mass civilian casualties, great danger to our troops in Iraq, skyrocketing oil prices, chaos in the Middle East and a worldwide depression, but if you can't laugh at those things, what can you laugh at?
"not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing"?!
At times like this I comfort myself by saying "Remember, we are not *all* going to die. Many people will die, and many more will suffer, most of them poor. But not everyone will die. Some people will even get rich. History will go as it always has."
7: Yeah: since when does the President of the U.S. speak off-the-record?
and in 6 it should be "actual bombing"
Also, there's this:
US military intelligence sources tell ABC News that large shipments of weapons have been smuggled to Iraqi militia over the past five weeks, including dozens of Iranian supplied EFP's , or Explosive Form Projectiles, highly effective against armored vehicles.
The weapons were sent to Moqtada al Sadr's Shi'a militia, known as "Mahdi's Army" who control Sadr City, a slum in northern Baghdad with a population of 2 million.
God help us.
And yet, at the end of the day, I'm still more upset about things in my personal life.
I haven't had a personal life since the mid-90s. Makes things easier, and frees up time for political ranting.
11. If that shipment is to be a casus belli, I want some schmuck to make a powerpoint presentation about it to the American public. Unnamed "military intelligence sources" ain't gonna fucking cut it.
Don't hold your breath, JM. They aren't going to open it up for discussion.
14: Yep, but don't count on it. Unlike Iraq, when Powell and Blair could convince Bush to go to the UN and get on TV and at least make a show of trying to do other things, Iran is going to be a Gulf of Tonkin sort of thing.
I think all politicians should be required to stand in front of PowerPoint slides and explain themselves with bullet points and diagrams, like the rest of the world has to.
Normally, I am not a big fan of PowerPoint rationality. I spend a lot of time discussing its limitations compared to other forms of reasoning in my reasoning classes. Nevertheless, PowerPoint rationality would be a major step forward for our political discourse.
Great. Now, if someone could kick me in the shins and then evict me, it would be the actual worst day ever.
For whatever reason, my brain has refused to cough up the phrase for some months; it was there, lurking but it didn't occur to me to say it... since it was obvious. But I got it now:
'The Surge' (along with the 'The Nuking' and 'The 4000 Sorties Against WMD') is a deception operation. Much like the First United States Army Group (Gen. Patton, Commander), the 'planned invasion' of Hokkaido, and of course, Hitler piling up his entire army next to the USSR and explaining that it was a deception operation aimed at the British.
You don't need extra carriers to fight in Baghdad. But you do need extra ground forces to fight the Iranians.
m, now, where are the plane movements?
I am not a big fan of PowerPoint rationality.
Neither than I, but it's a somewhat effective tool of abasement for demogogues. Perhaps the only Powerpoint presentation I've seen that didn't made the presenter look like a total tool was the movie version of "An Inconvenient Truth."
If that shipment is to be a casus belli
There's a month or two yet to go. They have to create the impression of a Vast Iranian-wing Conspiwacy. For that you need lots of small incidents and some helpfully 'impartial' reporting.
m, 'see, Marge, I told you Iran was going to attack!'
Is bush just trying to ruin america? sure seams like that is his goal. nothing he is doing is going to help america in any way. all it is doing is making america hated by the rest of the world for all of eternity. bombing iran? are you crazy? you don't just bomb nations for the hell of it unless they attack you first. maybe the iraqi's should have strung up bush instead of saddam. which of them is responsible for more iraqi deaths? the numbers don't even compare.
He was trying to prevent an Iran-Iraq nuclear arms race that would destabilize the region?
He is saying whatever shit they write for him to say. It's like the WMD thing, but without even pretending to have facts on their side.
22 - Forget the global hatred. That's tomorrow's problem. Think about the fun when the bombing leads to $85 a barrel oil, driving us into the sharpest economic turndown since the late '70s.
9: At times like this I comfort myself by reading Greil Marcus' obituary for George W. Bush. Especially the penultimate paragraph.
24: Yeah, a lot of people are watching the oil futures, waiting for a spike. Course, the world-wide depression of WWIV would prevent a spike, so not too clear an indicator. But wait a minute, fighter planes need fuel...
Lucky I don't have a couple a billion to gamble. I would just lose it all.
mcmanus, did I miss WWIII? Weren't you supposed to CALL me and REMIND me so that I didn't miss it?
Tim it lasted 50 years with proxy wars and nuclear confrontations and much other spooky shit.
Don't feel bad, I was stoned too.
Speaking of which, the Doomsday Clock is about to move again. But surely in a good way, right?
Fuckin atomic scientists...
I just can't believe, despite the talking going on, that Bush is gearing up to attack Iran. With what soldiers? They don't have enough for the stay-the-course "surge" in Iraq. Will we soon hear, "Well the good news is we're pulling out of Iraq" with the bad news to follow, that they're being redeployed to Iran?
Unless of course he's just going to bomb them, that would be "easier" and in the tradition of no-US casualities.
Hey, we haven't had a good naval war in a while. Let's see how that goes! It's not like there's anything else passing through the Persian Gulf in ships that we need to worry about. And of course there's nothing more that Iran could do to make life difficult for our ground forces in Iraq.
32: Yeah, I'm pretty sure no ground troops would be involved in our first strikes against Iran.
Hasn't it been conceded that naval wars have been made obsolete by missile technology? I forgot where I read that.
Hard to say it's been conceded when we keep spending bazillions on warships. More good news: we might just get a really fine opportunity to find out just how good those missiles and U.S. countermeasures really are!
re: 35
Afaik, the British have largely scrapped or mothballed all their battleships. It's only aircraft carriers and small frigates and destroyers these days,
Will we soon hear, "Well the good news is we're pulling out of Iraq" with the bad news to follow, that they're being redeployed to Iran?
That would work! It ain't the invadin' we're bad at, it's the occupyin'.
Hasn't it been conceded that naval wars have been made obsolete by missile technology? I forgot where I read that.
Enh. If you mean, say, war between Russia and the US. It's not exactly obsolete. It's just that both surface navies would be sunk in a day or two.
Thus, the Aegis cruiser, which is just a big floating missle platform. Same with the destroyers.
We're going to try and destroy the Iranian airforce, and send the Iranian navy to Davy Jones locker (with missles) and we'll try and destroy their ground-based missle installations. If we bring in enough planes, we will probably succeed at that. If we don't, oopsie.
Beyond that, it depends on whether Bush intends to invade, or just bomb. No way to tell, really.
If the services get their way about how the war should be fought, the US will likely win, depending on how you want to define 'win'. (Destroy the Iranian armed forces, basically.)
m, on the other hand...
It's just that both surface navies would be sunk in a day or two.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
Well here's a depressing thought, the administration proposes attacking Iran with nukes, the Joint Chiefs threaten to resign en masse if ordered to do so, the compromise? Attack Iran with conventional weapons!
We're going to try and destroy the Iranian airforce
Isn't the airforce not exactly that impressive as it is? I had thought that sanctions had made parts very scarce indeed--but that they'd been spending a nice amount of money on anti-aircraft installations.
and send the Iranian navy to Davy Jones locker (with missles)
They've never had much of a navy, have they? My understanding was that the US-attempted blockade of Iran in the 1980s ended when Iranian dinghies, basically, laid enough mines to fuck up our bigger ships. If we sink their navy, I am *positive* we'll see suicide-dinghy attacks. (Or cigarette boats or fucking canoes or whatever floats.)
and we'll try and destroy their ground-based missle installations.
This, yes.
Tim it lasted 50 years with proxy wars and nuclear confrontations and much other spooky shit.
I was stoned as well, but I couldn't help noticing that the Cold War (TM) was actually a triumph of diplomacy on both sides, and not a fucking world war. Otherwise, I'm going to claim that it was WW II, preceded by the Franco-German War of 1869 - 1945, which featured shooting matches in 1869-71, 1914-18 and 1939-45, with long intervalsof tension and minor incidents such as Agadir (1905) and Ruhr (1924). Get a grip, Bob.
Indeed. Somehow, not slaughtering millions and not bombing cities and not dropping nuclear bombs is exactly not like doing all of those things.
Isn't the airforce not exactly that impressive as it is? I had thought that sanctions had made parts very scarce indeed--but that they'd been spending a nice amount of money on anti-aircraft installations.
"Anti-aircraft weapons didn't prevent air attacks, it just made them expensive."
Well, yeah, the Iranian is not terribly impressive compared to the AFs of rich nations. It will probably be destroyed. However, they probably aren't going to get caught on the ground, and depending on how effectively it is used, they may stage effective attacks. A pawn CAN take a queen, even if it usually doesn't.
They've never had much of a navy, have they? My understanding was that the US-attempted blockade of Iran in the 1980s ended when Iranian dinghies, basically, laid enough mines to fuck up our bigger ships. If we sink their navy, I am *positive* we'll see suicide-dinghy attacks. (Or cigarette boats or fucking canoes or whatever floats.)
The minelayers are the Iranian Navy, basically. We'll sink their surface vessels and their shipping, and they'll lay shitloads of mines, and we'll clean up the mines and bomb their ports. USN only gets in trouble if they close up to the coast. Or they get attacked by terrorists operating out of friendly states. And yes, they will try and attack the USN with anything that floats. I would. That's never particularly effective. (See kamikazees.)
This, yes.
The Silkworms are where they have the most pookie. I know that if they don't get cleared by ground troops, they will continue to be effective for the duration of the fighting. Which is probably why we sent the Patriot missle battery to Iraq. Their continued existance will effectively keep the Gulf closed.
Well here's a depressing thought, the administration proposes attacking Iran with nukes, the Joint Chiefs threaten to resign en masse if ordered to do so, the compromise? Attack Iran with conventional weapons!
Dude! They were never going to attack with nuclear weapons! I'm 90% sure that was a planned leak. They send some uniform over to Gardiner and tell him the administration has proposed using nukes. (Alternatively they produce a bogus proposal involving nukes.) This gets leaked, the Iranians notice (and get nervous), the D's get upset and distracted from the election season at hand, and the administration gets a measure of exactly how much support they have. Bonus: it makes the actual intention (attack Iran with conventional weapons) seem not so bad. That's a win for them!
The same thing applies to the 'leak' to Wes Clarke.
Everything you hear about leaks is just sand being thrown in your eyes. They declared a policy; they're following the policy. What they actually do is what matters. The rest is just noise.
m, I'll bet the buzz calms down for a week or two after this, and then suddenly ramps up again
The kamikaze plains were ineffective because they didn't steer. Since they couldn't land, they'd never been test flown, and since no pilot ever came back, no one ever got the word.
I'm confident that a lot of what we hear is deliberate deception, but I'm much less confident that Max's read on the situation is reliable.
He seems to be assuming that Bush has thought things out, for example.
The kamikaze plains were ineffective because they didn't steer. Since they couldn't land, they'd never been test flown, and since no pilot ever came back, no one ever got the word
Utter nonsense, John. Try harder.
a) a lot of the kamikaze were using standard fighter aircraft types, such as the Zero - of course they were airworthy;
b) the idea that no kamikaze pilots ever returned is wrong; pilots were frequently unable to find their targets and returned to base, although landing in an aircraft packed with explosive was difficult;
c) the purpose-built kamikaze aircraft shed their undercarriage after takeoff, but were in fact never used in combat.
Ajay, I may be wrong, but it's not nonsense, much less utter nonsense.
landing in an aircraft packed with explosive was difficult
Ya think?
No, really, it is nonsense. "Kamikaze planes were ineffective because they couldn't steer, but no one knew this because they never came back?"
It's utter drivel. First, they sank or damaged 70 ships - which is fairly effective; second, they could steer; third, they often came back. Reality 3 Emerson 0 (3 o.g. Emerson).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1989397,00.html
[Inside Baghdad's civil war]
Really worthwhile reading. Gaith Abdul-Ahad manages to get incredible access to insurgent meetings.
"Steered very badly". "Could have been much more effective". Sloppy writing, I suppose.
Based on what you've said, my original source was factually wrong. I shouldn't have relied on it, and I am thankful for having been corrected, with some reservations about your manner of delivery. ("Nonsense"? I supposed that next you'll say that I'm "profoundly unserious").
I was responding to max's:
That's never particularly effective. (See kamikazees.)
giving an alternative reason (which turned out to be wrong) why the kamikazes weren't effective (other than the pure essence of kamikaziness).
But now you claim that they were effective. Talk to max.
31: I still don't really believe in my bones that we're going to war with Iran, if only because it would be so self-evidently balls-to-the-wall bonkers. That said, I have long believed that if we do go to war with Iran with a full-scale* ground invasion, it will primarily be as an excuse to get the fuck out of Iraq. Apostropher has pointed out here and at his own blog that we will all very likely one day slap our foreheads and say, "Duh, we invaded the countries on each side, why didn't we see this one coming?" and I think he's got a point.
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* For the Bush Administration's adjusted value of "full-scale," of course.