"Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact," said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively. They are also reluctant for Israel to carry out any strikes because the US would get the blame in the region anyway.
"The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the US will have to take decisive action," Mr Cronin said. "The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself."
So, if Cheney thinks Israel is "adamant," our guys go in?
Splendid. Outsource our war and peace decision making to another country--one that, needless to say, has its own interests at heart, and not ours.
I suppose the other, equally splendid alternative is that Cheney, as usual, wants a plausible cover story. A false flag operation against Israel might be fun.
And the hopeful alternative is that it's all bluff. Like hopeful alternative has ever worked with these guys. They want their war and they will have it. And if Isreal wants war, they've just been sent a signal, through this story, that they've better get their war on by, say, March 2008, in time for the Presidential election.
In any case, I have no doubt that the administration is busily fixing the facts and the ntelligence around the policy again.
Almost half of the US's 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, including two aircraft carrier groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise left Virginia last week for the Gulf. A Pentagon spokesman said it was to replace the USS Nimitz and there would be no overlap that would mean three carriers in Gulf at the same time.
If you don't know, maybe Prince Namor would know. How long would it take the Enterprise to get to the Gulf? Two weeks (7000 miles/20mph/24 ?) So that would make the ETA August 1. So, if the Nimitz is still hanging around, oh, in this "September" we keep hearing about...
Because three carriers in the Gulf would be a definite sign of prophetic end time activity.
NOTE Remarkable, isn't it, that because of the war in Iraq, we have hard data that the international inspection regime works to control nuclear weapons and other so-called WMDs. Funny how we don't hear anybody in our own political establishment advocating them.
UPDATE The Bra-ed One, as usual, has the essentials. Quoting Arthur Silber:
This past week, the United States Senate passed unanimously -- 97 to 0 -- what amounted to a declaration of war against Iran. A few weeks ago, the House passed a resolution -- 411 to 2 -- that similarly provided an alleged rationale for war against Iran. In this manner, Congress, nominally controlled by the opposition party, has granted the Bush administration advance approval for the commencement of hostilities against Iran.
And asks the pertinent question:
The truth appears to be still worse. In looking over some of the major liberal and progressive blogs last evening and this morning, I see that several of them have not even mentioned the Senate resolution from several days ago. Are these bloggers truly so unintelligent that they fail to see the significance of this action? I don't think so. So what explains this silence? Is it simply that they refuse to criticize the Democrats on a matter of such grave significance? Is their tribal loyalty the value of greatest importance to them?
Absolutely not. Avedon answers for me:
I'm not sure everyone realized it, to tell the truth; I didn't. The fact is that so much happened over the last week - as usual - that it was easy to miss the usual dozen or so other outrages that were going on, no matter how egregious they were. It happens every day: 90% of what I post about is absolutely, terrifyingly urgent, and the rest is mostly there in an attempt to retain my battered sanity - and, I hope, help you do the same.
But the realization that Senate Democrats, now, after all that has happened, could do something like this, well, it leaves me a bit dumb-struck. I can only echo Arthur, who reminds us that when Bush was pushing that immigration bill, right-wing radio told its listeners to make those calls, and they did, and the bill failed. We don't have anything near as powerful a broadcast network as the right does, but I can't say I picked up on this issue on Air America, either. Now would be a good time to phone anyone you can think of and make it known that you really, really can't stand the idea of attacking Iran. Post on candidates blogs if they have 'em, hammer legislators with phone calls, fire off faxes to the press - whatever you can think of.
Life is such a whirl, isn't it?
We're DFH types here; I could give a rat's ass about tribal loyalty. Avedon is right to point out how well the right's phone tree works for them. (Note to CS types: The right is a tree. The left is a graph. Trees are more efficient to navigate. So part of our problem is structural. OTOH, graphs are more resilient, especially when you move off the hugs; with a tree, you just have to hack off the single root....)
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Israel is our hand puppet.
The government of Israel has always been the hand puppet of the Corporate State of 'Merika.
Oh, sure, the Israelis have their own fronts with strings that lead to the gullible and easily bought here in the CS'M, they have their Mossad, they take extreme offense if you suggest they're totally dependent on Uncle Sugar, but basically it's a dog and pony show.
It always has been. Appearances are cosmetic. They always will be. After all, there is oil under all that sand to the East and the South and the North of Israel, which itself is a lovely base of Company operations with an easily controlled paramilitary population.
Plant this into your database: the Company owns the Congress. We are going to expand the War on Terra into Iran. Chaos is the plan.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
kelley beats me to it again.
i really am starting to see not the outer political theatre, but at the inner core. corps? heh. a small group of uberwealthy types who control variously sized private armies, who have no concern for nationality, morals, other ideological concepts we share. utterly beyond any law, any accountability, except in the game between their own kind. owning politicians is the least of their expenses. trillions are in play.
Kelly’s right. This is
Kelly's right. This is very similar to last summer when Cheney shoved Israel into an inflated conflict w/ Hezbollah--in the hopes of drawing in Syria and Iran. The pressure of the Israeli public and the free Israeli press (as opposed to our own pathetic MSM) brought that disaster to an end.
Kelly B, CD, and Linda, You're Wrong
Israel is not shoved into anything it doesn't want to do.
The attack on Lebanon last summer, and their dealings with Iran, and with the Palestinians are of their own making. Their are fully in charge of their own malignancies.
Israeli attitudes toward their place in the world share many similarities with neo-con notions; undoubtedly the Likud party and the increasingly right-wing Republicans influenced and reinforced one another. That doesn't mean that the Labour Party didn't share many attitudes with Likud on matters of defense and Israel's place among its neighbors. Nor does it mean that the Democratic Party has not played the patsy for Israel far too often and for far too long.
In some ways, the Likud ethos influenced and inspired our own neocons; Israel often acts in ways that Kristol and Cheney can only dream of America acting; they finally got their chance to put an Israeli style foreign policy in action in Iraq.
I agree that chaos is the plan, but Israelis realized the efficacy of surrounding themselves with failing states starting back in 1948. It's true that Israel gets a lot of aid from us, it's also true that their own economy is increasingly globalized, but the notion that they are our puppets doesn't get us very far in figuring out how to deal with what I perceive to be their increasingly malignant impact on our own view of the world.
Don't think I'm minimizing the problem; it's real and it's dangerous, all the more so since it's become a way of thinking for a majority of Israelis who have drunk the kool-aid, but that kool-aid was home brewed in Israel; what I want to figure out is how to limit their ability to import it here - that the American importers are corporate, rightwing, and believe in American empire is undeniable.
As my rusty blogging skills come back to me, I intend to write many more posts on Israel, and especially the Palestinians.
Lambert, Like that "Israel To Make the call on war w Iran" meme
That the way to present it; sure we all love Israel, and we won't stand for it being pushed into the sea, but nobody but Americans decide when this country goes to war. (It may not be true, but it should be)
Good way to work around that special place in our hearts we're constantly told Israel is supposed to occupy.
Carrier group transit time
Prince Namor sez Hampton Roads to Persian Gulf travel time is 2-3 weeks absolute minimum (with the caveat that his knowledge of such things is based on data from 30 years ago and that technology may have improved this.) However he also notes that the Enterprise is itself possibly the oldest nuclear carrier in the fleet, therefore probably not the fastest.
Further addenda: Carriers do not travel alone, as that "Pentagon news releae" rather glibly implied. The vessels that make up a carrier group have to be assembled, freed up from other duties in some cases, or picked up along the way (unlikely.) These include battleships, destroyers, submarines, tenders and support craft for all of those. AWACS and other intelligence craft go along. Most of these serve the Queen at the heart of the hive rather than carry out aggressive missions of their own.
Further complicating any timeline can be weather, route chosen, sightseeing stops along the way, mechanical breakdowns on any of the ships or boats listed above, and Unfortunate Incidents like the case we noted a few months ago involving the unfortunate collision of the USS Newport News and the Japanese oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz. Oopsie.
And I'm sure it's sheer coincidence they just finished repositioning the MILSTAR satellites into new orbits, right? Just a routine thing (involving delta-V changes on items intended to provide global coverage from a very-high-but-not-geosynchronous orbit mind you) they do all the time. Yup. Uh-huh.
New "Reaper" hunter-killer drones have nothing to do with Iran
Nothing, nothing at all.
Even if they are based in Iraq, there's simply no reason to think we'd use Iraq air bases to launch an attack on Iran from.
Hell, we've got enough to do dodging mortar fire in the green zone!
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Ich bin ein Israeli
...it’s become a way of thinking for a majority of Israelis who have drunk the kool-aid, but that kool-aid was home brewed in Israel; what I want to figure out is how to limit their ability to import it here...
The key with this, as it seems to be with many other things in the region, is to limit the economic and political elites' ability to use religion to sway US public opinion on the matter.
For example: I was arguing with a Christianist co-worker about Israel policy once. He said, "As a Christian, I have to support Israel".
"Why is that?", I asked.
"Because that's what I believe the Bible tells me. As a Christian, Israel is my spiritual home. Jesus will return there one day. Also, the Jews are God's chosen people, and as a Christian nation, it is our duty to protect them."
I'd say that's a common attitude among the thirty-percenters. The key, once again, is in keeping that minority from bossing the rest of us around, which all comes back to outnumbering them at the ballot box.
...for the rest of us
...for the rest of us
And somehow nobbling AIPAC
That would be a help, right?
To me, Israel is a country like any other. Better than many, worse than some.
Nice to see the Christianist putting his putatively Biblically-based beliefs--since when was Jesus about a patch of land--above his country, right?
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Kool-Aid Brewery
Yes, Leah, the people serving up the Kool-Aid to Israeli and 'Merikan jews are indeed in Israel.
They work industriously to make it and distribute it to consumers world-wide.
But it's a Company recipe, dreamed up by Langley, and a formula that the fourth branch of government started playing with here over 75 years ago.
Just the facts, m'am. The Company has roots as an Anglo-'Merikan hybrid. It's what She Who Wears Bras calls a real Triffid: it gets around on its own, it has no central brain, and will eat you alive if you can't see it.
But it has its own bugs.
Why would an 'Merikan spy outfit use the Israelis- or the Moonies, or the Kurds, or any other nationality to pursue its own global ends? Are you familiar with how a pulley works, and why you can lift much heavier loads with one than you ever could carry on your own?
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky