Not "new-news" but another, updated take on a developing, serious story. DISCLAIMER : sourced from Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker Magazine, and the New York Daily News -- READ AT YOUR OWN RISK:
I love the smell of napalm in the morning ...
Major R.L. "Lucky" Chapman, to our Midshipman class fall, 1968.
Yank commandos already in place, mag says
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU January 17, 2005
WASHINGTON - U.S. commandos are hunting for secret nuclear and chemical weapons sites and other targets in Iran, and have a plan to turn the hard-line Islamic country into the next front in the war on terrorism."It's not as if we're going to do anything against Iran. They're doing it," an ex-intelligence official tells this week's issue of The New Yorker. Since at least last summer, the U.S. teams have penetrated eastern Iran, reportedly with Pakistan's help, the magazine said.
"Iraq is just one campaign," the official told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign." The aim is to rid America and its allies of a major state sponsor of terrorism, Hersh writes.
Hersh told CNN that if targets are lined up by this summer, U.S. attacks could soon follow. They "want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible," a Pentagon consultant told Hersh. "It's a global free-fire zone," said one Pentagon adviser.
"We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy," the official tells Hersh. "This is the last hurrah - we've got four years and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom President Bush has asked to stay on in his second term, has been jockeying for more power to conduct covert ops without nagging congressional oversight. Pentagon neoconservatives - hard-liners who include Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz - believe that surgical strikes on a small list of military targets will minimize civilian casualties and may spark an uprising by reformers against the ruling fundamentalist mullahs, current and ex-officials said.
Bush aides are "compulsively optimistic" that the mullahs have a fragile hold on power, and they are sure to strike soon, predicted defense analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "I think they're going to do it," he told The News. "I'm skeptical that diplomacy will succeed."
I love the smell of napalm in the morning ...
Major R.L. "Lucky" Chapman, to our Midshipman class fall, 1968.Yank commandos already in place, mag says
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU January 17, 2005
WASHINGTON - U.S. commandos are hunting for secret nuclear and chemical weapons sites and other targets in Iran, and have a plan to turn the hard-line Islamic country into the next front in the war on terrorism."It's not as if we're going to do anything against Iran. They're doing it," an ex-intelligence official tells this week's issue of The New Yorker. Since at least last summer, the U.S. teams have penetrated eastern Iran, reportedly with Pakistan's help, the magazine said.
"Iraq is just one campaign," the official told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign." The aim is to rid America and its allies of a major state sponsor of terrorism, Hersh writes.
Hersh told CNN that if targets are lined up by this summer, U.S. attacks could soon follow. They "want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible," a Pentagon consultant told Hersh. "It's a global free-fire zone," said one Pentagon adviser.
"We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy," the official tells Hersh. "This is the last hurrah - we've got four years and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom President Bush has asked to stay on in his second term, has been jockeying for more power to conduct covert ops without nagging congressional oversight. Pentagon neoconservatives - hard-liners who include Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz - believe that surgical strikes on a small list of military targets will minimize civilian casualties and may spark an uprising by reformers against the ruling fundamentalist mullahs, current and ex-officials said.
Bush aides are "compulsively optimistic" that the mullahs have a fragile hold on power, and they are sure to strike soon, predicted defense analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "I think they're going to do it," he told The News. "I'm skeptical that diplomacy will succeed."
