WTF? President George W Bush may back Israeli plan for strike on Iran

[malaise]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article4322508.ece
<snip>
President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.

Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.

“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.

Nor is it certain that Bush’s amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran’s test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets.

[spanone]

1. may? i suspect our government is well entrenched in the plans.

[graywarrior]

2. Just like the mob hiring hit men to do their dirty deeds.

[williesgirl]

3. Yes & LIEberman will get all Jews fired up to vote for McSame immediately following the attack.

Sucks like hell. And no Dems will stop them. rec'd

[Lady-Damai]

4. Attack them before they attack us?

What right does Israel have to attack Iran's nuclear sites? Has Iran in the recent months threaten to attack Israel? If so why haven't they done it yet?


Is Iran the only Arab country that has issues with Israel?

[Tutonic]

5. He's just a wooden distraction.

[Douglas Carpenter]

6. it is flat out physically impossible for Israel to carry out a successful attack on Iran

that would significantly degrade the Iranian nuclear program or Iranian military capabilities. It absolutely, positively cannot be done...unless they launched an overwhelming nuclear strike and no one is predicting that.

Israel's military capabilities simply do not include enough long range bombers and fighters to attack a country approximately 1000 miles away..that has protected much of its nuclear program and much of their military resources under North Korean style deep-earth shelters with heavily fortified bunkers. Much of Iranian retaliatory mechanism includes an absolutely vast array of basic missiles deeply embedded in hostile and unapproachable terrain.

Israel only has the capability of a massive sustained attack for countries in their near vicinity.

ONLY the United States has the military capability for a sustained massive attack on Iran. And EVERYONE knows that such an attack by the United States would come at the cost of the destruction of much of the world's oil infrastructure and thus the destruction of the American economy and most of the global economy.

Iran does have a massive array of basic missiles more than capable of raining down real destruction on the oil tankers on the Gulf and the oil refineries and desalinization plants in the Gulf states thus crippling the world's oil supply and sending oil prices up to $300 to $400 per barrel thus collapsing the American economy and most of the world economy. Of course the damage inflicted by such weaponry on the U.S. Fleet in the Gulf would be enormous. The technology simply does not exist capable of stopping a massive retaliation from Iran.

I think of war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world. Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Vanity Fair, 2006.

[ladjf]

7. Nothing is too crazy, stupid, greedy or mean for Bush. He is void

of scruples.