War Clouds, Plus -- Worst Idea Ever

Uranium has a fingerprint and it's real persistent. Like the VIN on an engine block. Unless, we've taken to making our bombs from the tiny amount of uranium which Iran has processed, we would be found out.

BTW, go back and edit your post and close that sprawling anchor tag.

Two web things: yeah, close that link. Your entire post is blue. And on Firefox, it's almost impossible to see the input boxes for the comment function. It's like, white on white. I thought that I had to log in or something to post a comment, then accidentally got the cursor in there. Just change the CSS a bit to make the controls a bit gray or blue or something to contrast with the white...

And oh yeah. That's pretty much the Craziest Goddamn Thing I've Heard In a Long Time (CGDTIHIALT?). Every time you think you've sussed out the depths of depravity and lunacy to which Cheney and his minions (and they are minions; every evil genius needs them) will sink, they surprise me by coming up with something even more bat-shit crazy.

As I understand it, our tactical nuclear weapons are all thermonuclear fission / fusion weapons comprised of plutonium and tritium. We're supposedly bombing sites that are enriching uranium, which is a different element. Furthermore, on detonation they create other elements (strontium, I believe) that would also not be found if you just blew up an enrichment facility. Basically, it's the difference between telling if you blew up a dirty bomb or had a nuclear detonation. Now, I know the OVP is not a bunch of nuclear physicists, having had other brilliant thoughts on warfare, but this is pretty fucking dumb.

Jeffrey,

Unless I am mistaken we'd be using plutonium based nukes, I think the U.S. moved past Uranium a while ago. I can't believe I am even thinking this but they might get a few uranium bombs special made to do the job so they can offer the plausible deniability mentioned in the post.

Gods help us all.

Ah, now I see the Sam Gardiner link!

Last night, a comment on the basketball thread pointed us to a statement by the same Sam Gardiner that miltary operations in Iran are already "under way". That statement by Gardiner was in April. I was going to say that this Gardiner sounds as deranged as Sy Hersh, but it turns out he was citing Sy Hersh, at least in part. Way to go Reality-Based Community! Weeeeee!

Let's not let scientific fact get in the way of a good war.

Atrios just linked to this, noting that he doesn't share your optimism about our leadership. What's really, really scary is that his definition actually makes sense, relatively speaking. When optimism is equivalent to "believing our leaders are unlikely to start an unprovoked nuclear war", we, or perhaps I should say the President and the Executive branch beneath him, have rather completely redefined the term.

It's becoming more fashionable to say this, but I'll add my name to the chorus: our leaders are deeply unserious about the practical workings of international relations. They think they are serious, but they are not, and their supporters are enabling them for pure political gain. It's really frightening.

I detect absolutely no reason for optimism here.

If the bushistas think they can get away with it, they'll do it.

Simple as that.

Who's gonna stop 'em? The Press? the People?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha(gasp)hahahahahahahahahahahaha
.

The problem is that the deniability is barely plausible.

I really don't think that plan passes the giggle test; even if the civilian leadership at DoD might go for it, the soldiers would look at them like they had grown an extra head.

Then again, bombing Iran would be a disaster too, and that, sadly, is far more credible.

Actually, a good friend who lives inside the bubble argued for exactly this sort of attack more than two years ago. As he put it "it wouldn't take more than a day or so. Just cancel flights in and of the region. Jam TV signals and phones, deny everything".

The point I think is: that a nuclear first-strike would be the start, not the end of something far grander. And what's the point of this sort of attack if you claim responsibility (if that's the word) as news filters out.

The plutonium signature is a feature, not a bug.

This is insane. And what's even more insane is that as a rational, self-interested American, I hope the Iranians hurry up and get their bomb, to deter our leaders from taking such a monumentally self-destructive path.

At least going to school in the early sixties we used to have nuclear bomb drills where we hid under our desks in case the Ruskies dropped the big one on the Pennsylvania countryside. It's nice to know that maybe the practice wasn't wasted.

> Unless I am mistaken we'd be using plutonium
> based nukes, I think the U.S. moved past
> Uranium a while ago.

It doesn't really matter except to the Clancy-obsessed, but this is one of the more persistent misunderstandings on the reality-based side of the house. Plutonium can only be used for implosion-type devices (of which a thermonuclear trigger is one variety); it cannot be used for gun-type devices.

Uranium, however, can be used for both gun-type devices (the original use) AND implosion devices. The only modern gun-type devices were the artillary shells, which are now believed to be withdrawn from service. However, there are indications that uranium (and uranium/plutonium alloys) is used in various implosion devices when it is advantageous to do so. What those advantages are is of course utterly secret, but that they exist under certain circumstances is mentioned many times in the open literature.

Or to look at it another way, the stuff is still being enriched in quantities greater than needed for civilian purposes, so someone is using the excess.

Cranky

I keep going back to a quote in Suskind's "The One-Percent Doctrine." Bush: "Sometimes the use of force really clarifies things."

That's the attitude of a bully, someone who only knows how to threaten or destroy. Cheney shares it. Neither of them have any patience for statesmanship or governance, and it is folly to count on appeals to reason reaching either of them.

The one thing they've learned from Iraq is that they can destroy the infrastructure of a modern nation and reduce it to near savagery. It's the only thing they've accomplished, and I'd be surprised if they don't try it again.

Where'd you ever get the idea that "...bush dials down the crazy factor..."? He does no such thing. The process is well understood. Bush is 100% in on the planning for the "crazy" action (even if only as a listener). After the lunatic position is decided, AS PART OF THE MARKETING CAMPAIGN, cheney comes out as Mr. Insane so then bush comes out only slightly less insane and looks like the a moderating voice - our 'father knows best who will protect us'.
.

Regarding the Craziest Goddamn Thing I've Heard In a Long Time, I see no reason to doubt it. But I was under the impression that part of the Generals' Revolt was that they more or less got the White House to take the nuclear option off the table, after the White House got the military to detail the hypotheticals of such a thing. I'm just going by memory here, and I think it is based on a Hersh piece, perhaps the very one that the still-annoying Al cites.

We did tornado drills for the same reason, so it was more or less plausibly denied that a school for a SAC facility was doing the drill. As the kids would note: "Dad says if a nuke hit near here you wouldn't want to live through it..."

Now let's look at the wind patterns and weather for neighboring nukular Pakistan and nukular India. The fallout would effect them drastically. Any vetting by true military brass would have to take this into account.

Meanwhile watch out for flight renditions...Paris and London sound like the best places to tag this tactic with the INC/OSP crew merging interest with the ILF of Paris.
Maybe we could blame it on the internets.

The threat of being caught in a lie has never deterred these people from acting. So nuclear weapons have a signature and denying you've used them would ultimately be found out as a lie? So what? Didn't just about every reason for waging the current war turn out to be a lie? Weren't the circumstances of their construction and presentation inherently false and surely to be exposed? Did it stop them from telling their lies, and waging a war based on those lies? No, nor will it factor into war with Iran. They'll lie about the why, where, when and how of everything they're about to do. And once exposed it'll basically be "Too fucking bad, we had good intentions and the Iranians are bad people. And oh by the way we'd do it all again, so there!". Iran needs a few thousand coffins I'd wager, we'll be filling them.

The executive producer sounds off: People just need to think more positively about the idea of nuclear war, and Jericho aims to help them do just that. It's a "high-concept" TV soap featuring a plucky small town with a biblical name surviving nuclear catastrophe while the big cities apparently burn in hellfire and disappear. In the words of executive producer Jon Turteltaub, "A nuclear bomb is not as bad as everybody thinks." Yeah, right. The propaganda drumbeat is starting. CBS, Wednesday night.

As long as people are offering a CSS critique: it's virtually impossible to see cursor highlighting of your body text (highlighting of blockquotes shows up fine).

You're hard to quote these days, Matthew.

I think it's nonsense that a nuclear strike could be hidden if the targets were ``nuclear facilities''. Gamma spectra of the fallout would reveal fission products unlikely to be present in a facility just doing uranium enrichment. Furthermore, fission products tend to be hot to very hot radioactivity, while unexploded uranium and radionuclides in the uranium decay series have much lower activity. I suppose they could hit reactor waste somewhere too, but that would be be a major crime...

One thing about using nukes is that it would poison our troops. That's the kind of thing that pisses people off.

Any fission nuclear detonation, whether plutonium or uranium based, is going to leave by-products that are the unique signatures of a nuclear detonation, and cannot be ascribed to a destroyed nuclear program. Iran would have to let in outsiders to verify it, though the Bushies can just claim they are lying or salted the evidence. That creates an interesting internal political dilemma in which Bush is lying about the first use of a nuclear weapon -- what will McCain do (snark)?

An underground blast by a penetrating weapon with a small yield would produce very little fallout.

These lunatics are crazy enough to try this. They are certainly foaming at the mouth to try it.

It's interesting that in this election cycle, the war is being postponed apparently because it is believed it won't sell well.

But in 2007, and even if Congress has changed hands at least in part, what checks crazy man Bush from completing his war legacy in this manner? He is gone in two years and apparently thinks dealing with Iran is the most important thing he must do before leaving. So much for being a lame duck.

If Iran removed all the valuable stuff from its facilities and then blew them up themselves, and claimed the US had bombed them, who would the world believe at this point? When you have two coutries pointing guns at each other, all kinds of bad shit can happen.

There was a time - such happy days - when I would have seen the mere suggestion that an American administration would be capable of this action as typical and stupid knee jerk anti-Americanism of the anti-war movement. Now I don't see this kind of speculation as anti-war at all as such, it is completely rational to wonder about these scenarios: one would actually naturally suppose that they would do it if they thought that they would get away with it (and botch it horribly in the process though amidst such ethical horrors it would probably escape notice). Hell, maybe they would get away with it: they have been selling such amazing things to the American public (and the mainstream media) that this would not be at all impossible to imagine. Accountability died some years ago - RIP.

i think you all make the analysis far too easy by assuming individuals in the administration are crazy (which seems like a fairly silly assumption -- it's generally hard to work in a couple administrations, be the CEO of a major corporation, if you're actually a lunatic). further, you have no chance of affecting the debate (if there is any) if you treat them as crazy, rather than attempting to parse what they might be thinking, why someone in good faith would consider such a course of action, what consideration might dissuade them from taking what you consider to be reckless action, etc. otherwise, you're just preaching to fellow believers on the message board.

No, not crazy - simultaneously incredibly unscrupulous (they have made cynicism into an art form) and unimaginably incompetent (the Iraqi occupation is something straight out of Keystone Kops - well, if you don't take into account the thousands and tens of thousands of lives it is costing - then it's markedly less funny).

"The problem is that the deniability is barely plausible"

and that is a problem how? who cares if its plausible or believable? The admin just has to say it and that's good enough for FOX! and the rest of the MSM chorus.

I can see it now .. The president refuted claims that the US used nucklar weapons today. He said '@What the hell do you f88king expect .. it was a WMD lab and that's what you get..'

dj superfalt, I think the reason many of us like blogs is precisely that we don't have to ignore the obvious in order to be accepted into polite conversation.

Perhaps we can regain control of our government by offering Cheney ransom: say 1 milllliyon dollars!!

Bush, Cheney, etc. would obviously be found out by the international community were they to follow through with this plan.

But here in the USofA they have enough power with big media and enough skill at confusing even the simplest questions, that most of the citizenry would eventually just throw up their hands and say, "Well, maybe we did, maybe we didn't." And when the rest of the world is understandably reluctant to have anything to do with any American, the parts of America that revel in us versus them will have another excuse to hate the French, or whoever Bill O'Reilly tells them to hate.

They've done it time and time again for issues big (Katrina, Iraq) and small ("Mission Accomplished" sign, Coretta King funeral).

"I was under the impression that part of the Generals' Revolt was that they more or less got the White House to take the nuclear option off the table."

Hersh's take was that the military planners, who are paid to be completely amoral, had originally put the nuclear option in. There were some at the JCS who wanted to take it back out, but the White House (read: Shotgun Dick) refused. Then, after Sy's story appeared, someone leaked word that the nuke strike HAD been removed.

But we already know how this works. In the end, Cheney and company will make sure the nukes stay in. They're going all -- so that there can be no turning back.

dj superflat,
Either that's incredibly ironic snark or delusional on your part, particularly your lines about being able to "affect the debate." Considering that this administration didn't even listen to their own experts on Iraq and the Mideast (see Maj. Gen. Anthony Zinni and many others), the idea that they would come out of their bubble to listen to any voice of reason is absurd.

> why someone in good faith would consider
> such a course of action

Please name 6 actions of Dick Cheney since November 4th 2000 that were taken in "good faith".

Cranky

Revelevant W quote: I won't leave office with Iran a nuclear threat.

Why?

Seriously, why?

The cover story will be that the Iranians released radiation on themselves - on purpose - to make the United States look bad.

Anyone want in on the betting pool?

Debate?

Talking part is done. Bubble boy didn't even bother to try to make his case at the UN just now. IDF resupplies. US troops pull out of Anwar, get them ditches dug and get ready for the 'next crisis'. Generals are mostly careerists, and they'll want to play their part in history.

The only question is before or after November.

"As I understand it, our tactical nuclear weapons are all thermonuclear fission / fusion weapons comprised of plutonium and tritium. We're supposedly bombing sites that are enriching uranium, which is a different element"

BWAHAHAHAHA. That's just stupid science stuff no one pays attention to. Let me close the sale:

1) Iran must have had more going on than we ever realized - in fact, those elements indicate Iran was just days away from having a weapon.

2) They violated security council resolutions and got what they deserved. They have no one to blame but themselves.

3) It is just crazy to suggest the United States would perform a nuclear first strike. Crazy. Next Question.

4) The US reserves the right to pre-emptively use our nuclear deterent on rogue states that threaten us. We have repeatedly pointed out the US will take nothing off the table with regards to nation defense.

5) Those reports show just how anti-American the press is - they are aiding and abetting a terrorist nation.

6) This show of power will cause the good people of Iran to rise up and throw off their tyranical government and form a democracy.

Some of those are seemingly contradictory. Nevertheless, youw ill hear them in the same day's soundbites, perhaps in the same news conference. If you think that will affect their credibility, you have not been paying attention.

Then there's the possibility that this nuclear option is being floated simiply to make everybody appreciate how restrained and judicious we are in only starting an unprovoked conventional air war on Iran.

Anyone want in on the betting pool?

Nope. That looks like a sucker bet to me.

Ever hear that Confucian curse? "May you live in interesting times." That'd be us.

There are visible, circular craters in New Mexico from the atomic tests in the 40s and 50s. Conventional weapons do not create blast craters like that.

If we nuked a site in Iran and claimed it was a conventional bombing, all kinds of satellites would peer at the target and be able to tell what really happened. They'd have to claim that our conventional bombing somehow caused an Iranian bomb to go off, and that does NOT pass the giggle test.

It's not only the Craziest Goddamn Thing I've Heard, it's also the Stupidest. Masking a nuclear attack will just not work. Period. That's not to say these idiots won't try it...

"Anyone want in on the betting pool?"

... Talk about a "Dead Pool!"

Ed

I've long been worried about the kind of thing Col. Gardiner is talking about. Specifically, I don't see ANY kind of check on "probes" of Iranian territory with our own real-life superheroes, SEAL's and Deltas and such. I think that this is just setting up another Tonkin Gulf episode. There is no issue, not one, that more urgently requires a vocal, effective opposition -- where the hell are the Dems? We like to think that Bush and Cheney have no credibility any more, but I see nothing to indicate that Herman Goering's maxims about governing through crisis are less true than they've ever been.

Frankly, I think liberals need to take the discussion back to the basics. Even if the Iranians are attempting to acquire nuclear weapons (which is almost certainly true), we need to ask the real question, which is, So what? Sadly, the nuclear proliferation cat got out of the bag forever when Pakistan got its bomb. We can't reverse that, any more than we can fix Iran's unfortunate proximity to the world's biggest oil fields. Otherwise, sane people who want to avoid a 1914-style crisis are going to be forever in a sucker's position, forced to quibble over just what balance of carrots 'n' stix Bush ought to use -- while he goes on his merry, oblivious way....

There is no more truth. So what if the Iranians cry, "hey, you attacked us with nuclear weapons without provocation! that's a war crime!"

In this climate, it'll just be neutralized, and my fellow citizens will hear, "U.S. rendered and tortured a Cadanian citizen who was found completely innocent, that's a war crime;" "U.S. operating CIA black sights in foreign countries. That a war crime;" "U.S. proven to have used white phosphorous as a weapon against Iraqis. That's a war crime."

The media will begin the spin, the "he said, she said," yadda yadda yadda.

Just Gimme Some Truth - John Lennon
Im sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
Ive had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Money for dope
Money for rope

Im sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mamas little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now

Ive had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Its money for dope
Money for rope

Ah, Im sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

Ive had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

Besides craters, the seismic signature of a nuke would be easily recognizable by both the Russians and the non-US geologic community. The fallout would be diagnostic within a few days, and India and China clearly would be able to test that.
My question is, after the nuclear strike, would proposing impeachment be prima facie evidence of treason, or would Congress simply be adjourned sine die?

The point about air power is an excellent one ... but note that there is an exception that provide an excellent test of the rule. Air power advocates tend to downplay the effectiveness of air power in close support of ground forces.

I do not have a reference to this, but I recall reading a decade ago that when war game developers were trying to develop war games for the Italian campaign in WWII, with official assessments of force effectiveness as the starting point, they could not get the scenarios to play realistically until they downgraded the effectiveness of "strategic" bombing and upgraded the effectiveness of air power in close support of ground forces.

``An underground blast by a penetrating weapon with a small yield would produce very little fallout.''

Low-yield earth-penetrating "bunker buster" nukes, like the B61-11 would produce large, deadly fallout fields. A persistent myth in the Congressional debates over the last couple years was that bunker buster nukes could limit ``collateral damage''. If used in populated areas, they won't.

See http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm

If true, Dick Cheney = history's greatest monster.

my point is, if you make the reasonable assumption they're not lunatics, then you can better analyze what's likely going on (e.g., all the people correctly pointing out that there would be no way to hide strikes with tactical nukes, so the administration almost certainly will not strike with tactical nukes and then try to hide it). as for liking blogs because you get to assume counterproductive things, godspeed, but it makes much of the "discussion" a joke (because you start drifting into conspiracy theory land where you're as lunatic as the people you're identifying as lunatics).

The comments here on the domestic and media response to a nuclear war are all good, and probably accurate. My real concern is not the shock and concern of this country, or of the international community; my concern is the very real possibility of retaliation, especially from Russia and China, both of which have vested interests in Iran and its oil.

I just can't imagine that they would do nothing if Cheney dropped nukes on Tehran. Let's see, China holds our IOUs, Russia controls the pipeline...and both have their own nukes, as well as armies and navies.

The part about denying it and getting away with that is just ridiculous. We have seven year olds running our government.

Whatever. The world won't tolerate a nuclear attack. No one wants a global recession; but at that point, the rest of the world would have no choice besides pulling the plug on our economy. Poof, no more American century.

An interesting sidebar in this is just how we know where the nuclear plants are so we can bomb them. I've worked in WMD detection, so I know how easy it is to locate nuclear refineries (and how they can be obfuscated). But we didn't know where they were in Iraq -- that's why we invaded.

If they say that they can accurately bomb nuclear refineries in Iran, aren't they admitting that they knew there were no nuclear refineries in Iraq? If they claim they didn't know exactly where the sites in Iraq were, how are we supposed to believe they can bomb the ones in Iran accurately?

In both cases we should either know where the refineries are or we don't. It's nearly the same terrain and nearly the same culture.

Matt,

I don't know if you are aware of this but this blog entry is now #31 on the reddit hot 100, and rising. You think maybe you could put a reddit submission tag into your blog already?

http://reddit.com/buttons

djsuperflat said, "my point is, if you make the reasonable assumption they're not lunatics, then you can better analyze what's likely going on"

My post yesterday referenced Saul Bellow's examples of how mistaken it is to presume that world actors are rational. And yet, reasonable people apparently always discuss events that way. There are all manner of consequences that we (non-world-actors) have on our decisions that make verifying our assumptions a worthwhile thing to do. If we're wrong, we go hungry or our children hate us or our spouses leave us or diseases debillitate us. Etc. People at the top really don't. Hungarians might picket their PM over malfeasance. We don't. There's no torches and pitchforks left in our imaginations.

Collecting jaw from floor. No, I wouldn't put it past them. And a year later, as photos of crippled and maimed Iranian children dominate the newspapers, and environmental teams testing the Iranian countryside shake their heads in disbelief, and the UN debates putting sanctions on the US for a nuclear first strike, someone will ask Cheney why they did it. He'll growl, "Well, we didn't nuke Iran on Sept 11, 2001. And the terrorists hit us anyway."

All you people pointing out that the radiation signature would reveal that we'd done the bombing in the CGTIHILT scenario are probably right.

Which is why you're all under arrest.

We'll come back to the details of the charges later, but right now, I'm thinking we'll just tell the press you had child pornography on your computers.

Thank you for your attention.

Signed,

The "Administration"

Seismic/fallout activity aside, a nuclear explosion generates a very unique burst of radiation visible in space. We (among others) already have satellites in space to detect such explosions (Do a search on "Vela satellite" to see what I'm talking about, although these days Vela is replaced by the GPS system). They could lie all they want about it, but multiple nations will have evidence if this has happened, and this is the kind of issue where they'd be lying in front of Congress, because that is who would be asking about such an attack. I don't even think refusing to answer would cut it when you're talking about a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

> my point is, if you make the reasonable
> assumption they're not lunatics, then
> you can better analyze what's likely
> going on

Uh, dj, have you ever dealt over a long period of time with a person who is actually, doctor-certified insane? In particular, clinically paranoid? I have, and I can assure you that all the rational analysis and discussion in the world will get you exactly nowhere with the person or the situation.

Let me put it this way: suppose you are taking a game theory class as part of your competitive MBA program. Nice, neat, Game Theory World(tm) where all the rules are known and the process will be 100% rational. The professor tells you that over the next three weeks you will be running trials of various games to understand the concept and learn how different strategies work. Quite normal; happens every semester in poli sci and business departments all over the world.

While you are at the library researching your strategy, you learn that one of your classmates is a made man who uses his organization's enforcers to kidnap and torture any classmates who look to be holding him back from a coveted grade of A.

Bit of a problem, eh? And one that you aren't likely to resolve through any clean, open, rational process you can imagine. Not the classroom, not the university grievance process, not the police. You are screwed.

That is the position the average US citizen is in at the moment.

But tell me, if Dick Cheney has rational motives, what ARE they /exactly/?

Cranky

In response to this, persons inside the Office of the Vice President took the view that we could use the nukes -- in other words, launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Iran -- and then simply deny that we'd done so.

It certainly raises all sorts of questions about what OVP has already had done in the Middle East.

Minesweepers, guided missile cruisers, subs ... no, it doesn't sound like war. Sounds as if we want to be sure shipping remains open in the Persian Gulf, where the Iranians have great capability to disrupt shipping.

I think Bush and crew are a bag of nuts. But this action is prudent.

Actual war with Iran, of course, would be an act of criminal madness.

There have long been elements within the Pentagon's military-industrial complex establishment that promote periodically starting minor wars for the primary purpose of "testing" (and consuming so they can manufacture and sell more) the latest generation of military hardware. Since it has lately become politically unfashionable to openly test nuclear weapons, it is conceivable that nuclear weapons proponents and manufacturers would adopt this tried and true method as a logical alternative.

Definitely a stupid idea, and can be dismissed quickly. As other commenters point out, US weapons would have a pretty recognizable isotope signature (although I suspect we could drag out a uranium weapon or three if we needed them).

The dead giveaway would be the explosion/crater itself. If we nuked above ground level (or pretty near it), there would be an unmistakeable gamma-ray signal. I'm no space expert, but the Chinese & Russians must have a few satellites pointed at the ground looking for gamma-ray events. (Not to mention high-energy astronomers!) If the nuke event is pretty deep underground, it will leave quite a crater, which would be pretty clear as well... (It's pretty easy to calculate the energy required to make a crater of a given size, and there are other supporting data, such as seismic traces.)

This is probably too stupid even for this bunch of assclowns, but then again...

I made a bet in early January that the U.S. would use such weapons in Iran prior to 11/7/06. Simple equation: the greater the likelihood the repugs will lose in November, the greater the likelihood of a military strike on Iran.

In the earliest posts on this discussion, the question of the radiation "signature" was considered (i.e., it would be possible to detect US-made nukes vs. Iranian uranium).

I would add: are there other countries in the region whose nuclear weapons use uranium? Could countries with cozy ties to the Bush Administration - like Pakistan and India . . . or Israel - be willing to lob a uranium-based nuke at Iran?

Thanks for thank Bellow quote, Jeffrey.

Logic may be a trap, but I think it's also a security blanket for "smart" people.

Let's face it...if Bush is truly crazy, he'll drop a nuke on D.C. while Congress is in session and he, Cheney and Rummy are outta town.

Wouldn't hurt to designate an alternate capital and let every Congressman designate a replacement who would take over for them in the event that, say, 50% or more of Congress is killed in a terrorist atttack.

Not a bad idea even if you don't think Bush is crazy.

One "rational" motive would be to commit this country to a course of action from which there would be no turning back.

Sort of like our invasion of Iraq.

Lots of good points about the nuclear strikes. I want to comment on his other bit of administration insanity: "there are administration figures who've convinced themselves that a sufficiently wide air target set will prompt regime change in Iran."

Can someone give me an example of a country that when bombed turned against its rulers and overthrew them in favor of someone more favorable to the people doing the bombing? Seems to me that bombing naturally turns people against the bombers and if anything makes them rally around their own government even if they weren't too fond of it before. The British didn't exactly turn pro-Hitler during the Blitz. Hell, Americans didn't get more sympathetic to Al Qaida, or anyone Muslim, after 9/11 -- they rallied around Bush, even most of those who disliked him before, and gave him a 90% approval rating. Are the folks in the administration really too stupid to understand that, even after having it demonstrated in Iraq and Lebanon, or is something else going on?

another rational motive: someone honestly believes (perhaps mistakenly) that iran will obtain nukes and (i) itself use said nukes against israel and/or the US or (ii) provide them to terrorists who will, etc. so to the extent there's evidence iran is not close to nuclear capability, there's no imminent threat and thus no justification for attack under what presumably is the administration's standard. or to the extent there's evidence that a first strike is unlikely to take out any or all iranian nuclear capability -- and i think there is, from things read when the same issues were hashed over wrt n. korea -- there's far less justification for a strike, which would seemingly give iran good reason to continue to try to obtain nukes and/or use them against those who did the attacking. focusing on either aspect of the issue that's likely to dissuade the administration seems more productive than just assuming they're paranoid schizophrenics (pretty much absent evidence they are such) and throwing up your hands.

it's a variant of pascal's wager: if the administration isn't composed of rational actors, all bets are off regardless; but if the actors are rational -- and if we're willing to assume that about (e.g.) the mullahs in iran, why not the administration -- then assuming they're not and attacking them as lunatics seemingly undermines the very result you want to reach (a change in their alleged plans, based on your legit concerns, etc.). thought it's admittedly more fun to villify your opponent.

The rational explanation is easy: money and power.

An attack on Iran would send oil prices through the roof. A lot of people Bush genuinely cares about would make a lot of money. It would put us into an even more serious war that contractors could make a lot of money on. It would be a great way to turn the debate one more time to "do you think its safe to give Democrats power in the middle of a new war?"

Oh yes, it would be insane in terms of regular people, but Bush doesn't care about regular people beyond getting them to vote within theft margins in a few states. Fear does that.

Would it matter if the world was thrown into a global recession? No. The people Bush cares about would still have plenty of money - in fact, the rich would end up with an even higher percentage of wealth than they do now. Wealth can protect itself, it will be fine. Suckers working for a living might have to make some sacrifices, but what are they going to do about it?

Does anyone on this thread think here would be a possibility of a "7 Days in May" type overthrow of the current spaced out madmen? Is there no possibility that some of the top military either on active duty or retired (read Powell, Zanni, etc.) to lets say surround the capital on the night of the State of the Union & just lead both Bush & Cheney off in strait jackets. They could appoint an "Interim President" such as Powell who promises to leave office when the next administration is elected in 2 years and then start by replacing the lunatic support staff that have crap for brains?

Why not a coup? It couldn't be any worse so why not roll the dice??

As far as Pascal's Wager goes: I don't know that anyone's saying that Bush/Cheney are clinically demented. I know that I don't think so. However, there's no reason to have faith in their best, "rational" judgement any more, and damn little evidence that they can actually respond intelligently when their pet axioms prove badly flawed. In addition, I think they have ample reason to viscerally fear the results of this next election: My suspicion is that many or most of the people in the upper 2-3 tiers of the executive branch could face, substantial legal bills at least, and possibly imprisonment. I think they're fighting for their lives. Doesn't help them fit into that "rational actor" mode you're talking about, does it?

I can neither believe nor disbelieve that the OVP is seriously considering this idea. All I can do is say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Your anonymous source needs to give someone pointers to where corroboration can be discovered.

File that under: holy cow. There were reports about tactical nuke plans last year, I think.

Free,

The U.S. military can't even control Iraq, a country with 1/12th the population of America.

They could, however, enforce martial law in the U.S. with the backing of a large chunk of the population (the well-armed chunk) of their side.

If you really think Bush is crazy, your main focus should be to ensure he and his pals step down when their term expires in a couple of years...

Anything else we can fix once he's gone.

Does anyone know how many Iranian troops would be available to be deployed in Iraq against our forces there?

I'm only surprised that the neocon lunatics are talking about keeping it secret if they use nukes. I thought the whole point was to show the world what happens when you defy American authoritah. They were talking that way about preemptive nuke attacks even before the Iraq war proved the weakness of their militarist approach. But what else are you going to do if your only dream is to rule the world by force?

Gee, I never realized W's favorite Randy Newman song was "Political Science" ("Let's drop the big one, and see what happens..."). I always figured it was "Rednecks" or "Yellow Man," which Newman once described as "a pinhead's view of China."

Monkeyboy:

Just for the sake of argument (& unfortuanately it could prove to be true) let's suppose that George does take a swan dive into paranoia land or falls hard off the wagon. Is there any possibility of a quicker fix than "wait two + years" for a hopefully saner successor?

If Bush has to be fitted for a suit that ties in the back, would we be any better off with Cheney? Not likely.

That's why I would think a "package deal" would be best for the country. Just to be clear here (so the S.S. will not come knocking at my door), I am not speaking of removal via violent means.

What I do not understand is what is the country's recourse if this should occur (some sort of off the wall breakdown)? With a republican controlled congress, how would any path short of a coup be feasible?

How bout a little spectulation?

I have another scenario: Blame Israel.

"In order to protect itself, the state of Israel today launched a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran. An outraged middle east muslim community vows join action to drive the Israelis into the sea."

The US gets to condone Israel, but then will jump to defend it against the inevitable backlash from islamic countries.
And so the great judeo-islam war starts. Israel and the US proceed to wipe out all islamic nations in the name of 'national security' and break islamic power in the region forever, leaving a few large craters in the process. It's mostly desert anyway, right? Plus is secures all the oil for the rest of time and shows that we're just as crazy as the islamic militants, only better armed.

TCGTIHHIALT! Definitely. Boy, I am sure glad I made my peace with living in a target city a while back. Work halfway between WH and Capitol, and live in the neighborhood of the Pentagon. It's good to be in that inner-ring circle of annihilation.

I pray this is simply disinformation buttressing a madman strategy.

a) I think you underestimating the "fog of war". How long did it take to definitively say there no WMD's in Iraq? And the various forms of chaos will delay indefinitely a determination that would allow Katie Couric or Britt Hume to say it on-air.

b)I think you also underestimating the consequences. The "torture" bills are being passed in part to protect the President from War Crimes. After the Iranian War and Great Depression #2 are in full bloom, would Democratic Senators really want to confront the sitting unimpeachable President on the use of nukes? Watcha gonna do about it?

3) The consequences from a conventional attack would not be so much easier than from a nuclear attack. So I think Bush has less to lose by going nuclear than you think. It is only marginally more crazy.

3)An isolated despised America is good for Republicans.

I still really have no clue about Iran.

As a serious wargamer myself, I will say that the neocons want to bomb Iraq so bad they can taste it. I suspect the lesson they have learned from the recent Lebanese war is that no one in the United States media cares if you destroy all the bridges, airports, pipelines, ports, powerplants, etc. in a county while pursuing your "limited military objectives." Even if they can only damage less than 50% of Iran's nuclear facilities, the economic damage to Iran by attacking its economic infrastructure provides its own justification. What are the odds that Iran's new international oil market in Euros will be closed by collateral damage or its designation as a legitimate target?

Free,

Attacking Iran without Congressional approval seems like a rather large and obvious violation of the Constitution to me.

If Bush does it, then he should be impeached and convicted by Congress.

If Congress is unwilling to do this...we don't have any other option but to wait until his term expires and hope he steps down.

If he doesn't step down, well...we won't be the first democracy that voted in a dictator...

Considering they all know this attack will only set back Iran for 2 to 3 years do they serious think Iran won't be looking for a payback after they've been nukes?

Dick Cheney, before he dicks you!

Actually, as citizens, I believe we really need to think long and hard about what we WILL do in the event of a war with Iran. At that point, I don't think that sitting back and waiting for the next election will be sufficient. Not in a moral sense, anyway. I think it will be time to go to the streets -- to do what, I don't know. Despair and lose our jobs, most likely. But if that war breaks out, we can say goodbye to pretty much every decent American tradition.

Accepting as axiomatic that the Regime doesn't care what happens to the citizenry of the US as long as itself and its buddies come out ahead of the game, doesn't that assume that the rest of the world doesn't target the US if we nuke Iran, Iraq, or anyone else?

See, here's my nightmare scenario:

Bush nukes Iran. Maybe he tries to lie and say it was someone else; maybe he tries to lie and say we only used conventional bombs and the fallout is from Iran's nuclear material. And, as has been pointed out, his lies are quickly discovered to be lies - by the rest of the world, even if the US media decide to keep their heads down and their mouths shut.

So, here's where we'd be: the US has nuked a country without cause. The US has lied about it. And maybe Bush gets on TV and makes a speech about how the rest of the world better not so much as look at us funny, because hey! we still have one hell of a nuclear arsenal, and we've already shown we're not too particular about using it.

It doesn't matter at that point what Bush's wingnuts think, or whether Americans can be frightened into voting as the GOP wants, or even whether Bush suspends elections altogether.

What matters at that point is how the rest of the world deals with an obviously insane, rogue, murderous regime willing to use nuclear weapons just for the randy hell of it.

My guess is there won't be a "USA" for very long after that happens. And my further guess is that even Bush and his buddies won't be able to fit fat and happy in the aftermath.

The chicken littles need to calm down. If there really was a strike against Iran in the offing you can damn well bet the farm that there would be nothing about it in the news ahead of time. This smells like a planned leak, which probably has two purposes in mind.
1) Reassure the increasingly angry War on Terror hawks that the Bush Bunch hasn't gone squishy soft with all that fancy- shmancy Euro-diplomacy stuff and we are taking some sort of military action too
2) Bluff the Iranians into thinking that we are preapred to strike if they don't negotiate meaningfully

For sure there will be no Iran War before the election. Gas prices are just going down to where the GOP imagines they won't get creamed by the voters. They would let the Mullahs get away with anything short of an actual strike on Saudi Arabia or Israel before they would risk anything that might sink the GOP at the polls. Remember, these guys are all about politics. Iran, Iraq, even Osama bin Laden are just useful props for their Theater of the Absurd.

Bush & co. aren't crazy - they're sociopaths. They don't care how many people they kill as long as repiglicans (or is it rebiblicans?) get elected, and Halliburton gets to loot the treasury. What will help them elect R's? Terror. I doubt they would nuke Iran before the election, wouldn't garner votes, IMHO. But there is an extreme risk of a major terror attack, a suitcase nuke even, inside the US between now and the election.

While we're conjecturing wildly, I've been wondering what the odds are if the pushed the button and nothing happened. Given the extent to which the military already seems in quiet revolt and the degree to which the CIA has been screwed over and the situation it would create in Iraq, the brass would have to be fairly mindless not to throw some major monkey wrenches in the whole scheme.

I agree, Jonf.

But considering the Saddam and Iraq propaganda prior to our invasion was just scary talk designed to draw attention away from our failure to catch Osama and mission creep in Afghanistan...

The Bushies are gonna have to pay off on all this scary Iran talk or lose the support of the Kill 'em all! crowd.

A U.N. brokered deal with Iran isn't going to satisfy them.

Re: But considering the Saddam and Iraq propaganda prior to our invasion was just scary talk designed to draw attention away from our failure to catch Osama and mission creep in Afghanistan...

Ah, but the Bush Administration did delay the Iraq invasion until well after the 2002 election, despite the hoots and howls of the neo-con warmongers at the time, lest any missteps in such a war cost them control of Congress. The risks of invading Iran are far greater. I should have mentioned in my post that once the electiosn are safely behind us all bets are off: Bush & Co may well decide to go after Iran with all guns blazing. In fact having the Democrats in control of Congress (by a small, non-impeachable margin) may even make them more likley to do so as a way of asserting executive power against such a Congress.
There's also another possibility in this: that they are deliberately trying to provoke the Iranians into doing something stupid, something that would provide them with a causus belli that few people, either at home or abroad, would quibble over. The Iranian president is certainly stupid and arrogant enough to take that sort of bait. Or another possibility still: they are trying to provoke President A (I can never spell that guy's name!) into such feckless behavior that the alarmed Mullahs depose him instead, as Krushchev was desposed by the Soviet powers-that-be after too many stupid and risky moves (e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis.) That would be the game I would play if I were in charge of the business given the severe limitations we face; though I rather doubt the Bush Bunch is capable of that sort of subtlety.

Sending the minesweepers and minehunters to the Strait of Hormuz confirms that Dubya and Cheney have decided to attack Iran. They need the anti-mine warfare ships there to make sure Iranian retaliation for the attacks doesn't shut down the Strait. The Iranians have no vested interest in trying to block the Strait if they can continue to make export shipments to their customers - Europe and China. If their infrastructure has been savaged while Europe, Russia and China sat by, then they'll just be dumping mines into the Strait as fast as they can. They won't care if their Arab neighbors can't ship oil and their erstwhile friends' economies tank. Our economy will tank as well because Chavez will be diverting Venezuelan crude to Europe rather than allow shipments to go to the US.

Timing is becoming the critical issue here. A rushed sailing of these ships by October 1st hints at a desire to have them deployed in the Strait by the last week in October. Political consideration dictates that any attack not occur too far from Election Day in the US, lest blowback cripple the propaganda. Dubya's speech today in the UN is the real marketing roll-out for the new and improved Gulf War product line. I think we have the making of a franchise here for the Bush family.

So the OVP wants the smoking gun to be a mushroom clound?

Au Contraire! The Craziest Thing Ever--nuclear weapons or not--is the bombing of Iran itself. Oil will fly over $100 a barrel. And that's just for starters. You simply cannot remove Iran's 4 million barrels a day of production from the world's 84 mbd without causing havoc throughout the world. The 70's oil crises will pale by comparison. Not to mention the likely disruption of millions more barrels of Saudi oil that flows only through the Iranian-controlled Strait of Hormuz. Yes, the US military is planning to keep the Strait open, but can they? Iran has modern torpedoes that our navy has no defense against, also lots of missiles and explosive-filled speed boats manned by crews seeking martyrdom.

The world economy is at Peak Oil - supply can barely cover demand for the first time in history. CheneyBush are mad as hares to even consider smashing the delicate equilibrium that now exists.
And longer term, chaos will be unleashed in the Mid East where 2/3 of the world's remaining oil is pooled. Do we then just move in and take it? With whose army? Michael Klare says Target Iran is really all about controlling the region to keep the Chinese and Russians at bay. Will they sit by while the US takes over the Gulf? We are careening down a steep slope to hell.

What makes any of you think Iran does not already have nukes? Seriously.

What makes any of you think Iran does not already have nukes? Seriously.

What makes you think that your asshole isn't a portal to another dimension? Seriously.

George,

I thought the worst thing about us bombing Iran would be that innocents would die, the economy would be smashed and irreplaceable relics would be destroyed.

Oil is sold on the open market...people can pay as much as they want for it.

China and Russia already control Asia, but they are happy to watch us piss away our power by trying to hold on to a couple tiny nations on that continent.

We can't even control a few poorly armed Asian peasant groups.

Do you really think they couldn't boot us off their continent if they wanted to?

The Bushies are gonna have to pay off on all this scary Iran talk or lose the support of the Kill 'em all! crowd.

Agreed. Once they started mimicking the 2002 rollout (and Wolf Blitzer eagerly started talking over computer simulations of bombing raids) they placed themselves in a position where anything other than a re-run will be perceived a climbdown.

In short: we are fucked.

If Congress is unwilling to do this...we don't have any other option but to wait until his term expires and hope he steps down.

Really?

I stand by what I said previously: the Bushies are running the exact same play they used in 1990 and 2002. You attack after the midterms in case something goes wrong - but you build up BEFORE the midterms to win the election. Although they might have a backup attack plan in place in case the elections really look to be going south for the R's. (That is, if you think you might be restrained from attacking by a loss in November, attack in October.) But so far, there is no reason to do that. More likely a new offensive in Iraq will be started in mid-October. They have lots of options.

Hersh's take was that the military planners, who are paid to be completely amoral

Define "amoral". The use of nuclear weapons is not a de jure war crime. The use of any unbanned weapon is not a war crime. Committing an unprovoked act of aggression or deliberately targeting civilians (not incidently hitting civilians) are generally war crimes. Using nukes when attacking Iran would not be a war crime - the war crime would be committing an unprovoked act of aggression. If you guys are going to yell war crime, try to confine that to things that are actually prohibited by treaty, not things that you think should be prohibited by treaty, lest you become the boy that cried wolf.

That said, using small nukes in either airbursts or as ground penetrators against isolated Iranian weapons sites is just about the ideal usage of such weapons. There are few civilians nearby, the fallout pattern can be minimized, and the bulk of the fallout that you do get will fall on sparsely-populated areas (Afghanistan, I expect). The nukes are just about guaranteed to work ("Strategic bombing works...if you use nukes") unlike repeated attacks with conventional bombs, and they would work in one go. So the attack would be over in one day instead of potentially dragging on for weeks (with the requisite increase in the number of dead civilians). Oh, and you could do it with five to ten planes instead of hundreds or even thousands. (That is, I agree with McManus.)

The downside is obvious: we would be committing an unprovoked act of aggression, and breaking the taboo on the use of nuclear weapons. Twin Planets is correct; it would be instantly detected unless we used ground penetrators and even then it would depend on the depth of the penetration and size of the bomb.

Any nuclear explosion is going to release radiation all across the spectrum, including tons of long-wave radiation (X-rays, radio waves, etc.) and it will be powerful enough to be detected by satellites even if those satellites are facing away from the earth. (Might even incidently fry some chips on a few, depending on how far away they are, how hardened they are, the strength of the explosion and luck of the draw.) The visible light and infared released will be picked up instantaneously by every geo and weather sat. on that side of the earth. The seismic signature will be unique and obvious (especially with five or more used), and the fallout signature will also be ridiculously obvious. At a minimum, the Russians and Chinese will know.

Of course, all they have to claim is that a conventional air raid 'accidently' set off the already existing Iranian nukes and thus they will have have "saved us all from the Mullahs". Or something. And Bush may WANT to establish a precedent for the use of nuclear weapons against people attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. So they aren't neccessarily inhibited by the drawbacks listed above.

Cracking a working reactor (do they have one? I mean, is it working already and we don't know it?) with a nuke, on the other hand, should have some interesting consequences, and nuking nuclear materials should be interesting too. It could negate the advantage of using an airburst or ground-penetrator to reduce fallout and instead rather drastically increase it, depending on what materials the Iranians actually have at those sites. In particular fires generate lots of fallout since they are great at elevating already radioactive materials high into the sky, and reactor fires are the same except much more intense.

That's all I have to say about that, but I will add that I disagree Gardiner. The Iranians could close the Persian Gulf to sea traffic AND put some divisions into southern Iraq, and our army would be in real bad trouble, since their supply lines would be cut. No supply, no army, no bang bang, happy happy insurgents. Whether that constitutes 'defeating the United States militarily' if the Iranians were to succeed at such an action I leave as an exercise for anybody reading this. I will say that he doesn't even list it as a possibility when it is the painfully obvious thing to do.

max
['Somebody remind me why we even care about Iran.']

Max, I would agree that the Bushistas are rerunning the 2002 product launch, except that they know their future depends on the results of the November midterms. Just scaring the electorate might not work this time, it having become jaded to the lies and mendacity pouring out of this White House. So, Dubya and the posse need to be prepared to actually pull the trigger before the election, but not too long before the election. If they attacked now, for example, by Election Day the world would know that the Iranians didn't have any nuclear weapons and that the global economy had foundered just as bad as some of those tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. That would be bad for the Congressional Republicans and disastrous for Dubya and Cheney. So, the attack must come just close enough to Election Day to keep the electorate scared without enabling them to learn just how reckless the policy has been. Ideally, you would also want to minimize the time available to the Iranians to go to the UN to build their case for against the US and to test their allies, Russia and China. Rushing the sailing of the anti-mine warfare ships to the Strait so they can arrive on station by the fourth week in October says that the balloon goes up around the beginning of November. Should I just ignore the coincidence? Some people say that folks who lie on a regular basis might be telling the truth now. Of course, some people are fools too.

in other words, launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Iran -- and then simply deny that we'd done so.

Except that the Russians have seismic instruments which would confirm that nukes had been used.

I think the obvious conclusion of all of this has to be that since the move -- that we'd attack Iran and deny it -- is so nuts that it isn't in the cards. The germ of the idea was probably in too many beers of a political writer somewhere and not the White House or environs. Which isn't to say that an attack on Iran isn't being considered. Or hasn't even been decided. And that the decision making process which decided it was simply endorsing the idea as it was in the process of emerging from the slough of their foul imaginations into words. It's just that if, say, half the internet could immediately come up with adamantine reasons why the idea is stupid that these same reasons would (or did) occur to the 6th rate academics who advise Bush on these matters. Yes, they're perversely stupid. Yes, they're irrational. (Not nuts, btw. "Irrational" doesn't mean "insane".) But they're not completely stupid. Yet.

Max, your comments are probably the most well thought out I have read about this so far, which leads me to wonder why we have heard so little about Divine Strake since the testing was cancelled (yes, I know, there was an injunction, but DOD usually announces a workaround).

Bushehr reactor and the Natanz Enrichment facility both have their valuable stuff underground, especially Natanz. If there is an attack using nuclear weapons, it will be carried out by moderate yield penetrators, possibly launched from Submarines in the Indian Ocean. Subterranean explosions avoid the nasty diplomatic problems of fallout while destroying the cascades, the heavy water, and melting down the reactor core. Dead scientists, too. From a purely politico-military point of view, you can see the attractiveness of it. The high craziness aspect of it hasn't quite hit people yet. The only reason why it's being considered at all is because Dinner Jacket can't shut his damn mouth. If he was a reasonable guy, he could have nukes just like the Pakistanis or the Maldive Islands.

But noooo! It's exterminate the Jews this, and exterminate the Jews that. Have any of you given some thought to the reasons why we might be concerned with this particular regime, aside from the fact that you despise Bushhitler so much over Iraq and that fact that he's from Texas and a recovering alcoholic?

Oh, the vaunted Iranian Army that people are mentioning invading southern Iraq? Okay, do you know what happens to that Army without air cover, people? I mean, I know you are all liberals but even liberals should know what happens to a massed Persian Army, without air cover, once the B-52's have been called in to deal with the supply lines. The Persians will have a supply line going across the Shatt al-Arab into Persia; they will have to support armored formations, field artillery, infantry, the whole works. And they will have to do so without theater air superiority AGAINST a sky full of B-52 bombers. Think, Democrats, think! This isn't hard.

No, this will be a No Nukes in Greenham Common conflict, but there will be a conflict, simply because Iran wants nuclear weapons to dominate the Arab League states and rebuild the old Persian Empire that Alexander destroyed. To do that, Israel must be eliminated and America driven from the region. I mean, Bush, Cheney, and Condi want to do something about Ahmadhi-Nejad and the Ayatollahs, right? Meantime, President Dinner-Jacket and the Ayatollahs swear up and down that the Jews of Israel will be wiped out and Israel will cease to exist "soon". And they just happend to be working on uranium enrichment and a rocket delivery program, to boot! Yet Bush, Cheney, and Rice are the bad guys around here, not the Persian Fascists who threaten to exterminate the Jooos in a Second Holocaust. Okay, and you guys are wondering why Republicans have pulled even in generics with over a month to go before the election?

Reality Based Community my ass.

Anyhoo, work with me here. Riddle Me This, said the Joker: why are four plus divisions of American troops, who are in much better fighting condition that most Democrats realize, still in Iraq long past their sell-by date? Well, nukes would solve the problem in a day, but there would be a HUGE political price for that. But what if the story to Seymour Hersh was leaked intentionally. What if we want the Iranians to think "air strike" when we're actually planning something quite different. I mean, the politically smart thing for Bush to have done is to do a Nixon and bump up his polls by pulling troops out, starting last spring. Peace with honor and all that.

Yet we didn't? Why would Bush and Rumsfeld leave our troops there just to be a punching bag for an inevitable Iranian assault. That's four plus divisions. Those are trained, battle hardened U.S. Infantry, Airborne, and U.S. Marines, plus combat engineers and logistics troops. That's a strike force, people. With the right logistics, those units can be used in ways the Iranians don't expect.

With all this talk about military options, I wonder what people think of the political and international aftermath of using nukes in Iran? Does this increase the likelihood other countries will attack us and our interests, even if Bush is out of office, on the premise that we (voters and non-voters, Republicans and Democrats and independents) tacitly approve of this because we're not protesting in the streets?

The mechanics aside, it seems the political aftermath is even worse. We become a target for at least a generation, if not longer.

section9 = Section 8.

Conversely, Iranian resources can be used in ways we don't expect. If I was the Iranians, I sure wouldn't stand toe to toe with the US. It would be stupid to do that. The US has plenty of weaknesses to exploit. For instance, All that high tech stuff needs to be maintained, and airplanes need runways.
The Green zone is the big enchilada. Degrade the defensive resources that would be brought to bear on a Green Zone attack, then when the time is right, overrun it with the guerilla forces that spent months slipping into Bagdad as quietly as possible. There would be no plan to hold the Green Zone, because it's not necessary for the POLITICAL Victory. Hell, even if they were only able to get into part of the Green Zone, it would STILL be a victory....

The question is, how many high-level Republican advisors are people like Section 9 above -- drooling war groupies, lacking knowledge and experience, who want the U.S. military to play out some of the war game fantasies dancing in their heads? The problem isn't that those types exist, but that this kind of fantasy-based war-game decisionmaking has infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government. So far, what we have to show for it in Iraq is the worst strategic decision in U.S. geopolitical history. But expanding the war to Iran could make that look minor. Let's all hope the adults remaining in the DC military establishment have succeeded in taking the toys away from that particular set of boys.

section9 = Section 8.

Nah: Section 4

I dunno if he's clinical or not, but section9 is plainly pretty goddam dumb. He's of a type -- the War Nerd without the sense of humor.

It's a cinch that the Iranian gambit will involve mobilizing irregulars and partisans against American supply lines in Iraq. It's reckless to assume that they haven't been training and equipping Shi'a sympathizers for just such a thing. Maybe the air force will enjoy the opportunity to demonstrate that it can supply the gargantuan logistical demands of a mechanized army with well over 100,000 soldiers. I don't think the soldiers themselves will have a very good time of it. But fuck them, as long as we can wear the "Support Our Troops" decals, eh?

In any case, the thing to keep in mind is, an Iranian bomb will be no more a threat to America than the already existing Pakistani one. There is no sense in launching this war. I'd really like to see some national Democrats speak up about this.

So much of this discussion has been spent using terms like, insane, crazy, idiots and all the rest. If you do a quick search for psychopathic narcissism you will find the answers to why W and Dick the Dick are able to do the things they do. They forever baffle and stride right past almost anyone's ability to believe what they are seeing.

[Aside: By 'Somebody remind me why we even care about Iran.', I mean, why are we bothering messing with them? The entire Iranian scare campaign is as ridiculous as the scare campaign about Iraq. Even if they had a nuke, who gives a shit? The Pakistanis have a hundred by now. What's the fuckin' difference?]

Praha:
Max, I would agree that the Bushistas are rerunning the 2002 product launch, except that they know their future depends on the results of the November midterms.

Except their future does NOT depend on the midterms. The future of the GOP majority depends on the midterms. The future of Bush is assured: he's going to be president until 2009. It's just a question of how difficult it will be to do the things he wants to do.

Just scaring the electorate might not work this time, it having become jaded to the lies and mendacity pouring out of this White House.

His approval ratings have gradually returned to 50%. And the D's committed a critical operational mistake by siding with Bush on immigration.

So, Dubya and the posse need to be prepared to actually pull the trigger before the election, but not too long before the election.

They probably ARE prepared to pull the tirgger if need be, just like they were with Iraq, but that doesn't mean they will WANT to pull the trigger by that time. I'm sure they would prefer UN cover. It's a war crime, ya know, to attack a country without declaring war.

If they attacked now, for example, by Election Day the world would know that the Iranians didn't have any nuclear weapons and that the global economy had foundered just as bad as some of those tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. That would be bad for the Congressional Republicans and disastrous for Dubya and Cheney. So, the attack must come just close enough to Election Day to keep the electorate scared without enabling them to learn just how reckless the policy has been. Ideally, you would also want to minimize the time available to the Iranians to go to the UN to build their case for against the US and to test their allies, Russia and China. Rushing the sailing of the anti-mine warfare ships to the Strait so they can arrive on station by the fourth week in October says that the balloon goes up around the beginning of November.

Or they might be preparing for an Iranian surprise.

Should I just ignore the coincidence? Some people say that folks who lie on a regular basis might be telling the truth now. Of course, some people are fools too.

Yes, you should ignore the 'coincidence'. They don't need to just sweep the strait of Hormuz, they also have to protect the entire length of the Persian Gulf. (If tankers aren't moving from Saudi/Kuwait/Iraq, who cares about the Straits?) They also need to stockpile fuel and supplies for aircraft operations. And they haven't moved in the shipping to accomplish this yet, that I can see. So moving the minesweepers up means they're prepared for something, but they aren't yet prepared for the BIG something. Hitler was planning on attacking Belgium in November & December 1939 plus January, March and April 1939, but he didn't actually attack until May when the Germans were a lot better prepared. The US, for one thing, is going to need a lot more minesweepers.

Section something or other:
Max, your comments are probably the most well thought out I have read about this so far, which leads me to wonder why we have heard so little about Divine Strake since the testing was cancelled (yes, I know, there was an injunction, but DOD usually announces a workaround).

Because it doesn't work yet? Strike, I think.

Bushehr reactor and the Natanz Enrichment facility both have their valuable stuff underground, especially Natanz. If there is an attack using nuclear weapons, it will be carried out by moderate yield penetrators, possibly launched from Submarines in the Indian Ocean.

Huh? With what missles? Destroyers would be actually equipped to carry the missles.

Subterranean explosions avoid the nasty diplomatic problems of fallout while destroying the cascades, the heavy water, and melting down the reactor core.

IF they penetrate, IF they work, IF they penetrate deeply enough. So far as I know of, we have no penetrators that penetrate deeply enough to prevent even a low-yield detonation from chunneling out to the surface. And the sites in question are not that far below ground. Success in destroying them with penetrators would like allow some fallout. You can put a nuke far enough below ground to prevent surface exposure, but it needs to be way down there.

It's exterminate the Jews this, and exterminate the Jews that. Have any of you given some thought to the reasons why we might be concerned with this particular regime,

Because Victor Davis Fuckhead is still crying in his beer over the hostage crisis of 1979? Have you given any thought to why we should worry about somebody with a big, loud mouth and not much to show for it? I mean, besides the President's big, loud mouth.

aside from the fact that you despise Bushhitler so much over Iraq and that fact that he's from Texas and a recovering alcoholic?

Seems overly kind.

Oh, the vaunted Iranian Army that people are mentioning invading southern Iraq?

That would be me.

Okay, do you know what happens to that Army without air cover, people? I mean, I know you are all liberals but even liberals should know what happens to a massed Persian Army, without air cover, once the B-52's have been called in to deal with the supply lines.

Ah, so. The B-52's that are busy bombing Northeastern Iraq? Will they be bombing Southern Iraq and the partisan supply there? Will the be bombing the American air bases that get overrun in the south? How long does it take to a series of B-52 strikes to reduce a large army? Hrmm. If'n I recall correctly Saddam Hussein was kind enough to concentrate the bulk of his army in one place and then sit around with his thumb up his ass while we bombed him for thirty days. Of course, it still took a ground invasion to make him quit.

The Persians will have a supply line going across the Shatt al-Arab into Persia; they will have to support armored formations, field artillery, infantry, the whole works.

And? So will we.

And they will have to do so without theater air superiority AGAINST a sky full of B-52 bombers. Think, Democrats, think! This isn't hard.

What is a skyfull, anyways? Is it bigger than a breadbasket? Recall, the US only has theatre air superiority due to bases in southern Iraq and Kuwait, plus carriers, and the carriers will be out of range. Interestingly enough, it's only 150 miles from Ahvaz to Kuwait city, and only about 80-90 miles from the border to Kuwait city. Most tanks can make it that far on one tank of gas, and as a bonus, they will be driving right into...a bunch of oil fields! WOO HOO! If they they capture an intact bridge, it should only be about a leisurely two hour drive.

Now all they have to move is extra ammo. Did I mention the 140,000 partisans available?

Yet Bush, Cheney, and Rice are the bad guys around here, not the Persian Fascists who threaten to exterminate the Jooos in a Second Holocaust.

If'n I recall, the US has threatened Iran with regime change since January 2002. Some people react poorly to that sort of thing.

Reality Based Community my ass.

You're not a member either.

Anyhoo, work with me here. Riddle Me This, said the Joker: why are four plus divisions of American troops, who are in much better fighting condition that most Democrats realize, still in Iraq long past their sell-by date?

'Combat brigades'. Which sell-by date? Why are they in 'much better condition'?

What if we want the Iranians to think "air strike" when we're actually planning something quite different.

We might well be. Hopefully it will be a ground invasion and not an idiot air bombardment.

I mean, the politically smart thing for Bush to have done is to do a Nixon and bump up his polls by pulling troops out, starting last spring. Peace with honor and all that.

The politically smart thing to do would have been never to have done it at all.

Why would Bush and Rumsfeld leave our troops there just to be a punching bag for an inevitable Iranian assault.

Because they don't want to leave Iraq, and because they want to invade Syria and Iran? Duh.

That's four plus divisions. Those are trained, battle hardened U.S. Infantry, Airborne, and U.S. Marines, plus combat engineers and logistics troops. That's a strike force, people.

We're past 'Battle-hardened' and getting into 'Really tired'.

With the right logistics, those units can be used in ways the Iranians don't expect.

And our logistics are exactly the fucking problem, as in they suck.

With all this talk about military options, I wonder what people think of the political and international aftermath of using nukes in Iran? Does this increase the likelihood other countries will attack us and our interests, even if Bush is out of office, on the premise that we (voters and non-voters, Republicans and Democrats and independents) tacitly approve of this because we're not protesting in the streets?

That would be problem. Breaking the taboo. Actually tho, the thing is, is if the other Great Powers see the crazy Americans using nukes, they will likely start giving away nukes to Third World countries like they were sausage samples at the grocery store. So much for Pax Americana.

If I was the Iranians, I sure wouldn't stand toe to toe with the US. It would be stupid to do that. The US has plenty of weaknesses to exploit.

It isn't about going toe to toe. The Americans are strung out all over Iraq. This affords the Iranians the opportunity to concentrate, particularly since an American bombing campaign will cost them their military assets anyways. Use 'em or lose 'em.

If they can cut the American supply lines through the Gulf, all the other vulnerabilities become much more vulnerable.

And they don't have to do any of this sequentially. They can do it all at once: attack everywhere in Iraq with Partisans, attack with the army in the south, use the stingers to shut down Gulf traffic and mines along the Strait. And what the hell, throw in the Air Force after a coupla days just for fun.

Our front stretches from the Arabian Sea through the straits all the way to Kurdistan, and we're oriented North-South. They can operated perpendicular to that front at any point the choose since they don't have to hold Iran. They don't have to hold Iran because we can't attack. They can (and will, if they have any brains + guts) take the initiative away from us.

max
['Isn't this fun?']

I suck, because I forgot. Last March the 'leak' was about flying 4000 sorties against Iran to put their nukes out of bidness. Assuming about 40,000 lbs. of conventional weapons per plane (which I believe is the correct payload for the B-1B - the B-52 carries more, the B2 less) that's 4000 x 40,000. 160,000,000 lbs of bombs. 160,000,000 / 2000 (a ton) gives me 80000 tons. Or 80 kilotons.

5 Hiroshima-sized detonations would work to be around 75 to 100 kilotons.

I don't see a big moral distinction on the battlefield there, excepting possibly potential fallout.

On the other, the political problems caused by that would be immense, especially if all the other countries in the world panic.

max
['This should be BIG BIG FUN!']

> Subterranean explosions avoid the nasty
> diplomatic problems of fallout while
> destroying the cascades, the heavy water,
> and melting down the reactor core.

Actually, the evidence of the 1950s was that a nuclear "bunker buster" would produce very _high_ levels of fallout. The shot has to be quite deep before isn't powerful enough to eject irradiated material, and in the scheme of things the penetrating weapons aren't that deep.

Cranky

We forget that China and Rus