Next stop, Iran

The Yalu River. How do you say that in Farsi?

Report: U.S. Conducting Secret Missions Inside Iran

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.

The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites.

Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon (news - web sites) as saying, "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible."

One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq (news - web sites) is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."

The White House said Iran is a concern and a threat that needs to be taken seriously. But it disputed the report by Hersh, who last year exposed the extent of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"We obviously have a concern about Iran. The whole world has a concern about Iran," Dan Bartlett, a top aide to President Bush (news - web sites), told CNN's "Late Edition."

Of The New Yorker report, he said: "I think it's riddled with inaccuracies, and I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact."

Bartlett said the administration "will continue to work through the diplomatic initiatives" to convince Iran -- which Bush once called part of an "axis of evil" -- not to pursue nuclear weapons.
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Hersh reported that Bush has already "signed a series of top-secret findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia."

Defining these as military rather than intelligence operations, Hersh reported, will enable the Bush administration to evade legal restrictions imposed on the CIA (news - web sites)'s covert activities overseas

If I was a solider in Iraq, I would shit my pants when I read this. Because the Iranians can only turn the screws a little to make my life hell.

What happens if 100,000 Iranians cross during bad weather, bearing straight for Baghdad? You know, battlefield nukes, or more likely Fuel Air munitions won't stop them. They'll come with armor and artillery and we're spread out across the country. And all our allies, they'll be home on the next boat.

Bush and DOD act like the Army could stop them. We can't stop the guerillas now. The Iranians, can, well short of crossing the border, make it impossible for the US to stay in Iraq. The US acts like we can fight any war, any where and thge Army is falling apart. You know the Iraqi resistance reads our newspapers and websites. They know all about hillbilly armor and low morale.

Iranian campaign? With what Army? You think social security theft is shaky, try introducing a draft? Reality is like gravity, it eventually reminds you that it exists.

posted by Steve @ 2:58:00 PM