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January 17, 2005
Ready for more?
Seymour Hersh, who has seen shit that would turn you white, writes in the New Yorker,
The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible," the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.
Precision strikes on nuclear targets are fine if Iran is defenseless. But they're not. A couple of decades of sharing a border with Iraq, and now with U.S.-controlled Iraq, has them as ready as they're going to be. Tell me, what do the 100,000 battered U.S. troops in Iraq do when 1,000,000 Shiites come streaming across the border. And from where are the troops to replace and reinforce those soldiers to come? Don't say the "D" word.
The short-term outlook of the Bush Administration (four more years is all we need to secure our legacy) is even more pronounced in this operation than it was in Iraq.
The official added that the government of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has won a high price for its coöperation—American assurance that Pakistan will not have to hand over A. Q. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, to the I.A.E.A. or to any other international authorities for questioning. For two decades, Khan has been linked to a vast consortium of nuclear-black-market activities. Last year, Musharraf professed to be shocked when Khan, in the face of overwhelming evidence, “confessed” to his activities. A few days later, Musharraf pardoned him, and so far he has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. or American intelligence to interview him. Khan is now said to be living under house arrest in a villa in Islamabad. "It’s a deal—a trade-off," the former high-level intelligence official explained. "‘Tell us what you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.’ It’s the neoconservatives’ version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They want to prove that Bush is the anti-terrorism guy who can handle Iran and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the black market for nuclear proliferation."
The agreement comes at a time when Musharraf, according to a former high-level Pakistani diplomat, has authorized the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons arsenal. "Pakistan still needs parts and supplies, and needs to buy them in the clandestine market," the former diplomat said. "The U.S. has done nothing to stop it."
I guess Governor Bush thinks the American people will swallow this since,
"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Mr. Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post for Sunday's editions. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."
Uh, no. To the extent that the decision to invade Iraq was even discussed during the election (it wasn't, the discussion was how to deal with the shithole you have our soldiers in) more than 50% of Americans didn't think it was the right thing to do given what we know after wading through all the lies and bullshit. What was discussed during the election were the lies of men who never served with John Kerry and the veracity of memos that didn't change the bare facts that you went AWOL during Vietnam.
But what else are we going to do when there are so many freedom haters in the world? "I know it’s hard, but it’s hard for a reason," Bush said. "And the reason it’s hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom." It looks to me like the rebels in Iraq are enjoying their freedom quite well.
Posted by Half-Cocked at January 17, 2005 03:14 PM