[janeseymore09092]

Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush As I've seen pointed out elsewhere, think about this sentence for a moment. A "top official" claimed that a "senior member of Bush's entourage" said that Chimpy and Dick said military action was "warranted."

Sort through all of that and there ain't much there.

-Arrian

[gunhijala]

You obviously can't trust backstabbers like the Israelis. I mean, our Glorious Leader gives this speech denouncing appeasers who would actually engage in dialogue with the likes of Iran or Syria without the other side first giving in to pre-conditions, and today we learn those "allies" have been holding secret peace talks with Syria!!!! For shame on them!!

This is just more propaganda to defame our Glorious Leader

[avappyboalt]

I was thinking an "Israeli appeasement" thread would be fun to start, and then realized I can't do it from work (many of the buttons on these forums no longer work for me from the office. Dunno why.)

-Arrian

[u8MmZFmF]

You think the Jerusalem Post is unreliable?

[JulieSmithXIV]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
You think the Jerusalem Post is unreliable? Worse even than the Brit publications.

[Soulofpostar]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
You think the Jerusalem Post is unreliable? I've read it, and its editorial bent strikes me as comparable to the NY Post. That is to say that it's militant, extremely right-wing, and of dubious integrity.

So yeah, I think it's unrealiable when it describes its source as a "an official" who heard "a member of the entourage" claim that the Prez said military action against Iran was "warranted."

Even if Chimpy thinks it's "warranted" (for whatever reason), that doesn't mean he's gonna do it. Lots of things in this world can be thought of as warranted (say, for instance, impeaching Bush), but aren't feasible.

-Arrian

EDIT: actually it's even more tenuous than I originally said. The JP is reporting that Army Radio is reporting that some guy claimed that some other guy heard that the President thinks military action is warranted.

[Bgfbukpf]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV
I'm still waiting for the Israeli government to apologize for 9/11. What about Israeli Army Radio, then?

[grudabor]

The real hawks have left Bush's administration, so perhaps it'll all play out calmly. I'm not too sure of it though.

[Corryikilelet]

No way is this happening. Not even W is that stupid.










Wait, what did I just say?????

[OQmYckYz]

Probably airstrikes like Reagan did to Libya. There will be complaining at the UN, but not much more than that. Hezbollah might fire a few more rockets into Israel.

If I were the Iranians, I would then send troops to bolster the Mahdi army.

[Kilaoksrsa]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
You think the Jerusalem Post is unreliable? I don't know anything about Israeli news sources other than teh names of two of them, but in an effort to sound clever I'll pretend that I do and say that Haaretz pwns teh Jerusalem Post.

[WaicurtaitfuT]

Not much time me thinks given that his term will end soon....

[triardwonvada]

Originally posted by BeBro
Not much time me thinks given that his term will end soon.... Well, you would want to do this after the election anyway.

[moopierof]

Also, if Iran was handed like Gulf War I, people would probably think it was pretty awesome. Considering the set up of the military of Iran, in that type of war they would look even more ridiculous.

The Iranian military is rather ungainly actually. It follows the typical Arab model of having two parallel armies. There are the conventional forces, which consist of the regular army, navy, and air force (which I will refer to as "the regulars" from here on for ease of communicating). The purpose of the Regular branches is to defend the nation of Iran, while the five branches of the Islamic Revolution's Guard Corps (Ground Forces, Navy, Air Forces, Basij, and Quds Force) exist to defend the state. This creates several problems.

First there is an enormous difference between these two forces. Since the IRGC is designed to defend the state from external and internal enemies, the regular services are purposely kept in a weakened state to make the IRGC's mission easier. Training, leadership, equipment, and political influence are all inferior to the IRGC. What this means is that in any war, the ability of the regular forces to defend Iran may come into serious doubt, and the IRGC may be forced to adopt that role in addition to its own responsibilities.

Second, the two services hate each other. This goes far beyond the turf wars that the Pentagon sees. The IRGC actively seeks the marginalization of the regular forces, to the point that the government has rewritten history texts about the Iran-Iraq War that actually omits the participation of regular forces in campaigns, IIRC. Not only that, but this rivalry has lead to a near total lack of cooperation between the two, which leads to the third problem. If I remember right, this lead to a large Basij unit during the war with Iraq being utterly wiped out, when their officers had simply assumed that the regular army would be supporting their attack, despite the fact that they hadn't bothered sharing any of the planning or resulting decisions with the regular officers.

Third, command and coordination for them during a US attack is going to be a hellish problem. They have two parallel forces divided into a total of eight different branches with entirely seperate and parallel chains of command. Unlike the US military model in which non-commissioned officers are given a great deal of ability to make decisions as needed, decisions are made much further up the chain of commmand. This means that information needs to be passed up to a higher level before someone has the authority to deal with it, and then pass the new orders back down the line.

Not only is their commmand structure slow to adapt to a changing situation, but the IRGC and regular forces rarely conduct joint-wargames or exercises, and the Iranian government limits direct communication between senior IRGC commanders to hamper the possibility of a coup attempt by the IRGC itself. The two forces have little experience participating in peacetime exercises with each other, let alone trying to coordinate during a war.

Here's what would probably happen in the event of a US attack. We'd start with aerial attacks on communication hubs and HQs, as we usually do. Guess what happens when an overly centralized and inflexible command chain has its brains and mouths taken out? It's paralyzed and thrown into chaos, and decision making is forced onto lower level commanders who have incomplete views of the situation, no prior experience running a battle without being told exactly what to do by superiors, no idea of who is in charge, and no experience coordinating with the other forces. The regulars and IRGC would most likely fall apart into a series of desperate and virtually uncoordinated units which would be easily destroyed later.

People like to bring up Hezbollah's succcess against the IDF, and assume that the Iranians will fight the same. But quite frankly, the only forces that Iran has that are trained in that type of operation are the Quds and the Basij (to a lesser extent in the latter case), while the other services are all totally structured for conventional warfare. The Quds Force would be a problem for any occcupation, but its estimated manpower is actually less than the estimated manpower for Hezbollah. Second, the IDF is pretty inferior to the US military. They have good technology but their training, planning, and leadership are not up to par, and their combat experience in the past 20 years up until the campaign with Hezbollah had been almost entirely small scale raids and police actions against Palestinian groups, while the US army gained vastly more experience fighting the type of combat we'd see against Hezbollah or the Quds force thanks to the past five years in Iraq.

It becomes easy if we really don't try to even hold terrority and treat it like Desert Storm II instead of Operation Irani Freedom.

[finasteride]

I wonder, what kind of consequences military action against Iran would have in Iraq & Afghanistan?

[JeorgeNoxeref]

Originally posted by Theben

Possibly airstrikes. I can't see anything else that we could throw at them right now. And while it would be a stupid thing to do, Bush really has nothing left to lose at this point, and it would leave a huge steaming pile of **** for the next president to deal with, democrat or non-conforming McCain. I can't see what harm it could do to Bush. With Iraq, he's already alienated anyone who would object, and apart from Spain, it has been evident that voters will not punish politicians who appease him. His opponents are so demoralized that they won't be able to raise much opposition. People have already seen that putting millions in the streets makes no difference, so apathy reigns.

Frankly, Bush could spend a couple of weeks pounding Iran the way the Israelis went after Lebanon. The diplomatic outcry would only be greater because there would be an immediate spike in oil prices. No one likes the Iranians enough to do anything about it.

[Fluivelip]

Really, oil prices shouldn't rise too too much since we don't get anything from Iran. They should only rise a bit like when they rose because the Democrats started badmouthing Turkey.

[SpeavaJap]

Originally posted by snoopy369

We'd need some sort of 'reason', though, beyond the oil stuff. Maybe have some counterrevolutionaries rise up against the current folks in power, and then we come in to prevent a genocide. Something nice and easy like that. He'll just say that the strikes were aimed at Iran's nuclear program and pour on the usual bullshit like he did with Iraq. Hardly anyone except the American authoritarians will believe it, but it won't make a difference. He already has most of the assets in place. My own view is that there won't be a great deal of sabre rattling beforehand, since it will just be a strike and not an invasion.

Of course it will be a monumental own goal in the long run, but Bush excels at that.

[majestictwelve]

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,168154,00.html

Media Fumbles Iran Narrative Again
Jeff Huber | May 20, 2008

The story that most likely would have knocked the bottom out of the Bush administration�s case for war with Iran occurred more than a week ago, and the mainstream media still haven�t reported it.

While flipping through channels on the evening of May 12, I accidentally heard Keith Olberman referencing a story from the LA Times that told how the U.S. military was all ready to show the American press in Iraq the big cache of Iranian arms that Iraqi security forces had captured from Moqtada al Sadr�s Mahdi Army during the recent fighting in the Iraqi cities.

The arms, in theory, would have proven once and for all the administration�s assertions that Iran is arming Sadr�s Shiite militiamen. There was just one glitch; when U.S. inspectors went in to inspect the captured arms, they said that none of the weapons or ammunition could be reliably traced to Iran.

Olberman ended the segment with �You do realize they are making this up about Iran?� Yes, I do, Keith, I thought. I realized it two years and change ago.

But hooray, I thought, it looks like the mainstream media has finally caught up, and I ran over to the computer to see what other major news outlets were covering the story. All Google came up with was the LA Times story Olberman had referred to. It wasn�t even an LA Times story, exactly. It was an item in the paper�s blog section, posted by Tina Susman in Baghdad on May 8, four days before Olberman talked about it. The paper itself did not run the article.

I went to the New York Times web site and searched for stories in the prior 30 days containing �iran iraq weapons basra karbala.� Zip. I did the same search at the Washington Post site. Squat. I tried again at the Boston Herald. Nada, and I also got jack at the Chicago Tribune.

I discussed the issue briefly with policy analyst Gareth Porter on the evening of the 12th. I mentioned Susman�s story in a May 13 column about the Pentagon�s Office of Strategic Influence and its progeny. On May 14, Porter put the Iranian-weapons-that-weren�t-from-Iran story in context.

�Top Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus had plotted a sequence of events that would build domestic U.S. political support for a possible strike against Iran,� Porter wrote. Admiral Mike Mullen, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, told the press on April 25 that Petraeus was preparing a briefing that would provide detailed evidence of how far Iran was provoking events in Iraq. The core of Petraeus�s briefing would be the claim that arms captured in Basra bore 2008 manufacturing dates. The briefing document was to surface after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki�s government endorsed it and used it to accuse the Iranians.

U.S. officials planned to show the captured weapons to reporters. Petraeus' staff alerted U.S. media to a major news event in which the captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then destroyed. �That sequence of media events would fill the airwaves with spectacular news framing Iran as the culprit in Iraq for several days,� Porter noted, �aimed at breaking down Congressional and public resistance to the idea that Iranian bases supporting the meddling would have to be attacked.�

But things went awry.

Mice and Men and David Petraeus

Two wrenches intruded the cogs of Petraeus�s propaganda machinery. After an Iraqi delegation returned from meetings in Iran with evidence Iran had not armed Iraqi militias, al-Maliki formed his own committee to investigate U.S. claims about Iran.

On top of that, when American arms inspectors took a look at the �Iranian� arms captured in Karbala, they determined than none of them had come from Iran. The U.S. military told reporters there had been a �misunderstanding� and cancelled the demonstration.

Porter noted that among the arms determined not to be from Iran were explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) designed to penetrate vehicle armor that the U.S. command once claimed could only have come from Iran because facilities required to manufacture them did not exist in Iraq.

It was back in January 2007, about the time the administration unveiled its surge strategy, that then U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad promised America would provide evidence of Iran�s �meddling� in Iran. (Khalilzad, keep in mind, was one of the Project for the New American Century neocons who called for an Iraq invasion in 1998.) The February 2007 briefing given to reporters in Baghdad in which the �proof� was presented was largely discredited. Throughout his tenure as U.S. commander in Iraq, David Petraeus has accused Iran of arming Iraqi militias, though the largest known supplier of arms to Iraqi militias is David Petraeus himself.

This recent �misunderstanding� about the Iranian weapons that weren�t from Iran and the refusal of the administration�s lap dog Maliki to go along with the administration�s grim fairy tale should have shut the trash talk on Iran down for good, and it might well have if Big Media (other than Keith Olberman, whose program many people mistakenly equate with John Stewart�s Daily Show) had reported it.

But Big Media said nothing. On March 17 I googled �iran iraq weapons basra karbala� again. Porter�s story had made it into the Asia Times and AlterNet, and was referenced in countless progressive blogs. Tina Susman�s original blog post had migrated to MichaelMoore.com. That�s something, I guess, but the search string still fetched 0 relevant results at the New York Times and Washington Post web sites. You can bet your sweet bippy that if American inspectors had found so much as a slingshot with Farsi markings on it, you would have heard more about it overnight than you�ve heard about Britney Spears in the last six months.

I don�t know if everyone in the mainstream media is in the tank for Bush now or if they all just suck or what, but something smells to high heaven like a big honking pile of fresh laid, pure unadulterated monkey business.

[rorsvierwelia]

Originally posted by Az
True but his comparison is not full. The Navy Times is published by a subsidiary of a publicly-traded corporation. Army Radio is a unit of the IDF. that hosts some of the more critical and strong minded journalists on air.

it also often is the first to break silence on touchy defense and idf issues.

Army Radio isn't in any way a propaganda machine, though - it broadcasts to the general public, hosts a variety of opinions and people, plays music by some draft-dodging artists - etc. It provides a source of entertainment, with the soldiers in mind, nothing else. are you not confusing army radio with it's musical sibling station?