iranistan

awright - so theres a lot of noise today about QuagMyers' comments about reduced am.capability to go kill a lot of people other than where they are currently killing them.

what does this mean? does it mean that the ams will stop launching unprovoked wars? or the draft? or something else?

for 3 years we've been wondering how the ams could maintain the drumbeat on syria and iran given the obvious constraints - the options appeared to be either the draft or nuking the hell outta entire countries. ive long maintained that while the draft seems inevitable, the timeframes never seemed to fit - which seemed to only leave us with the nuking 'strategy'. a ground war with iran never seemed to make any sense anyway - it sure looks a lot more dificult than iraq, which itself is apparently kind of a handful.

we are fast approaching ritter's june timeframe, and we've heard repeatedly that the israelis see june as the point of no return - despite everyone else saying that the iranians are years away, even if they are intent on having the n.bomb. the israelis of course say that it doesnt matter how long itll actually take - because of this notion of the 'point of no return' - which is pre-emptively pre-emptive. the grandmother of the mother of all war crimes. or some such.

with all that in mind - consider the media about myers' testimony today. surely its not news that america has less capacity to conduct new wars, given that it already has two in play. i wonder if the intent of the latest media noise is not to demonstrate that the am.mil is broken, so much as inoculate the ampublic for a nastier war - ie if we take for granted that we need to destroy iran (and which patriotic american would question that?), and we obviously have a broken military, then our only choice is to nuke the place.

lets take a look at the media today:

* ""We will prevail," Myers said when asked about the report. "The timelines (to winning a new war) may have to be extended and we may have to use additional resources, but that doesn't matter because we're going to be successful in the end." " LINK

* " Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have constrained the military's ability to tackle other potential conflicts, making any future war more likely to be longer and bloodier, according to America's top general... the U.S. armed forces would "succeed" in any future major conflict but "may be unable to meet expectations for speed or precision," officials said... Potential future armed conflicts "may result in significantly extended campaign timelines, and achieving campaign objectives may result in higher casualties and collateral damage,"" LINK

"Bush was asked during an April 28 news conference whether troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan were limiting U.S. military options elsewhere in the world. Bush responded that he asked Myers a similar question.
"I say, 'Do you feel that we've limited our capacity to deal with other problems because of our troop levels in Iraq?' And the answer is, 'No,' he doesn't feel we're limited. He feels like we've got plenty of capacity," Bush told reporters." LINK

* ""The assessment is that we would succeed, but there would be higher casualties and more collateral damage," said one senior defense official. "We would have to win uglier."" LINK

* "Another reason for the new assessment, officials said, is that the Pentagon has rewritten every major war plan over the last few years — using advances in technology to plan faster wars with fewer U.S. troops." LINK

* ""It's certainly a blinding flash of the obvious," said Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "But it's always nice when someone says the obvious."" LINK

* "Pentagon officials said several initiatives were underway to mitigate the risks outlined in Myers' report, such as increasing the number of special operations troops, placing more reliance on long-range precision weaponry and increasing the Army's size by 10 combat brigades by converting soldiers in staff positions into front-line troops." LINK

* "The report cites areas in particular stress: stockpiles of precision weapons and the availability of pre-positioned equipment, including vehicles, and reserve units -- who are providing much of the combat support in Iraq." LINK

* "The report finds that the United States still would have the ability to win another military face-off but wouldn't be able to build up its forces as quickly as it did for the Iraq war. "It would be harder to sprint that fast," the official said." LINK

meanwhile - we've got the shitehouse spending enormous amounts of capital trying to get bolton confirmed, and threatening to go up/down regardless of what the sfrc sez, and we've got the egadmin (& the media) ignoring the riots in iran...

odd.

we've also got el baradei's re-nomination getting postponed - sans media fanfare.

Michel Chossudovsky gives us a rundown of many of the latest shenanigans.

in light of the latest npt discussions, its not difficult to imagine iran being taken to the security council for a spanking - and as we've seen amply demonstrated with the latest blair/iraq leaks, once the decision to go to war has been taken, everything else is backfill.

i hope that we dont see iran getting its bunkers busted soon. that'd really suck. as myers says (by proxy) "there would be higher casualties and more collateral damage".

tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.ticking timebomb.