From the American Conservative's Deep Background (Philip Geraldi, former CIA officer):
In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.
Ah, humans. Such a noble species.
Indeed, deep background isn't needed to see the mushroom cloud on the wall:
WASHINGTON - Amid increasing tension between the United States and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, and growing concern about overstretched US ground forces, the George W Bush administration is moving steadily toward adopting the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states as an integral part of its global military strategy.
According to a March document by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that was recently posted to the Pentagon's website, Washington will not necessarily wait for potential adversaries to use what it calls "weapons of mass destruction" before resorting to a nuclear strike against them. The document, entitled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations", has yet to be approved by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, according to an account published in Sunday's Washington Post. However, it is largely consistent with the administration's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was widely assailed by arms control advocates for lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons by the US.
"What we see as significant is that they are considering using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear powers in preemptive first strikes," Ivan Oelrich, of the Federation for American Scientists (FAS), said about the NPR and the new doctrine. The doctrine would also appear to contradict the administration's oft-stated claim that it is significantly reducing the role of nuclear weapons in its global military strategy.
"The new doctrine reaffirms an aggressive nuclear posture of modernized nuclear weapons maintained on high alert," Hans Kristensen, of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), wrote last week in Arms Control Today magazine. "The new doctrine's approach grants regional nuclear-strike planning an increasingly expeditionary aura that threatens to make nuclear weapons just another tool in the toolbox.
"The result is nuclear preemption, which the new doctrine enshrines into official US joint nuclear doctrine for the first time, where the objective no longer is deterrence through threatened retaliation but battlefield destruction of targets."
Confirmation: the spin has already begun.
-- Jessica Wilson
Recent Comments