John Byrne
Published: Sunday September 23, 2007
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The US Air Force has reestablished the elite fighting force which planned the 1991 Gulf War's air campaign and tasked them with "fighting the next war" as US-Iran tensions bloom, the London Sunday Times reports Sunday.
The news came on the heels of another Sunday report in Newsweek, which confirmed a quotation from a Cheney advisor who said that the Vice President "had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz - and perhaps other sites - in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out."
Such a strike would then give the US the ability to launch a strike in response.
Democratic foreign policy expert Steve Clemons, who said this week that President George W. Bush had ruled out a first-strike on Iran, voiced concern that the Cheney team might seek use an "accident" as a casus belli.
"I'm not saying there won't be any war but nothing in Bush�s posture suggests he's really with the Cheney gang yet," Clemons told RAW STORY. "But I do worry about the Cheney gang and the
/Ahmadinejad crowd in Iran trying to precipitate a spark that produces a very fast escalation that circumvents most of Bush�s national security decisionmaking structure -- and that kind of war is something we should worry about. That's what I think could happen."
The London Sunday Times, meanwhile, reports that an elite Air Force unit called "Project Checkmate" was resurrected in June. The unit reports directly to US Air Force chief Gen. Michael Moesely and "consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defence and cyberspace experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence agencies."
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Link: http://rawstory.com//news/2007/Cheney_seeks_pretext_for_war_as_0923.html
The beating of the drums continues.
:mad: