oops.

Posted by: catlady | Jul 22 2005 18:28 utc | 3

whyyyyy doesn’t this surprise me???

Posted by: annie | Jul 22 2005 18:36 utc | 5

WW3………… gentlemen start your engines.
This has to happen….. pr battle going on in London as we speak.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 22 2005 19:00 utc | 7

these motherfuckers are completely capable of such a horrific & imbecilc act
i do not doubt it. there is no limit to their obscenity. no limit to their negation of the other which is even implicit in the the american liberal intellectual tradition
these times are so genuinely frightening – that nothing, absolutely nothing surprises or scares me, now. not at all.
& i’d concur with a person on the other thread that all these little pin pricks in england for me mark that something big is about to happen – for it not to happen – to not want it to happen constitutes an illussion
how many decades will we have to pay for the crimes of cheney & bush because it is we who will pay – these fuckers don’t even see the bill they send it to us direct

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 22 2005 19:21 utc | 9

let’s just pray — real hard — that this is a bluff, Cheney’s application of Nixon’s “madman theory.” Because otherwise some of us are now living in the functional equivalent of the Third Reich.
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.
I’m sure that defense will go over REAL big at their war crime trials.

Posted by: Billmon | Jul 22 2005 19:42 utc | 11

Google “AF 2025”, DoD’s “Mein Kampf” v. 21st C.,
America’s battle plan for full-spectrum dominance.
It was at: http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/
However, Der Feuhrer’s minions took it down, it’s 404.
Our DoD f–g road map to hell, objekt nicht gefunden!
Start trying to rebuilt it from old web archives!

Posted by: lash marks | Jul 22 2005 19:54 utc | 13

Gary Brecher analyzed this move back in March in his War Nerd column. Some excerpts:

People don’t realize how fast a Superpower can fall. It only takes one invasion too many.
Napoleon was unstoppable before he invaded Russia. So was Hitler. Now France and Germany are “Old Europe.”
Invading the wrong country can age you faster than driving a Long Beach bus on the night shift. Invading Iran helped end the win-streak of the best, biggest Empire of all, the Romans. It was in 260 AD, when emperor Valerius headed east to deal with the Persians who were kickin’ up a fuss on the eastern border of the Empire. This Valerian would’ve risen high in Dubya’s administration, because he was a real hard charger, a go-getter…and dumb as a half brick. He charged right into Iraq — they called it Mesopotamia back then — even though his troops were dying of plague all around him. The Persians sat back, watched Roman troops keeling over, and had a good laugh, eating pistachios in the shade while Valerian tried to figure out what to do.
Naturally, he decided it was time for bold action. That’s the only trick these go-getters know. It reminds me of what one of MacArthur’s aides said about him: “When it paid to be aggressive, he was aggressive. And when it didn’t pay to be aggressive…he was aggressive.”
—snip—
Iran is scarier than Iraq in every way you can name. First of all, it’s physically way bigger, three times the size of Iraq. The population is 65 million, nearly three times as many as Iraq. The Iranians are young, too. Their birthrate is way down now, around 2 kids per woman, but back in the Khomeini years it was one of the highest in the world. So right now, the Iranian population has a demographic profile that’s a military planner’s dream: not too many little kids to take care of, but a huge pool of fighting-age men — about 18 million.
—snip—
Other items they’ve been buying should be worrying us much more. For instance, they’ve invested heavily in Chinese anti-ship cruise missiles, which have been fitted on ten new, fast coastal-attack ships. In a column of mine a couple of years ago (“U Sank My Carrier” eXile #156), I talked about the very scary outcome of a Persian Gulf war game, when USMC General Paul van Ripen, who was playing the part of Iranian commander, managed to sink half our Persian Gulf task force, including a carrier, with simultaneous attacks by small planes and fast attack craft.

Read the rest at The Exile

Posted by: citizen | Jul 22 2005 20:37 utc | 15

I remember van Riper’s (not Ripen, afaik) marvelous performance as Red Leader.:

If the US and Iraq do go to war, there can only be one winner, can’t there? Maybe not. This summer, in a huge rehearsal of just such a conflict – and with retired Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper playing Saddam – the US lost. Julian Borger asks the former marine how he did it
Friday September 6, 2002
The Guardian
At the height of the summer, as talk of invading Iraq built in Washington like a dark, billowing storm, the US armed forces staged a rehearsal using over 13,000 troops, countless computers and $250m. Officially, America won and a rogue state was liberated from an evil dictator.
What really happened is quite another story, one that has set alarm bells ringing throughout America’s defence establishment and raised questions over the US military’s readiness for an Iraqi invasion. In fact, this war game was won by Saddam Hussein, or at least by the retired marine playing the Iraqi dictator’s part, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper.
In the first few days of the exercise, using surprise and unorthodox tactics, the wily 64-year-old Vietnam veteran sank most of the US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf, bringing the US assault to a halt.
What happened next will be familiar to anyone who ever played soldiers in the playground. Faced with an abrupt and embarrassing end to the most expensive and sophisticated military exercise in US history, the Pentagon top brass simply pretended the whole thing had not happened. They ordered their dead troops back to life and “refloated” the sunken fleet. Then they instructed the enemy forces to look the other way as their marines performed amphibious landings. Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this cheating that he refused to play any more. Instead, he sat on the sidelines making abrasive remarks until the three-week war game – grandiosely entitled Millennium Challenge – staggered to a star-spangled conclusion on August 15, with a US “victory”.
If the Pentagon thought it could keep its mishap quiet, it underestimated Van Riper. A classic marine – straight-talking and fearless, with a purple heart from Vietnam to prove it – his retirement means he no longer has to put up with the bureaucratic niceties of the defence department. So he blew the whistle.

At the time Van Riper was playing Saddam/Iraq, not an Iranian commander. But his victory does underline what a nation with a functioning Navy and Air Force, and decent leadership, could do to the Yankee invader. At the time I rather liked the idea of the old jarhead sitting on the sidelines “making abrasive remarks” while the officeboys played out their fantasies. A scene right out an Altman remake of Strangelove.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 22 2005 20:54 utc | 17

of course, i thought i was typing “2025”. the link is correct.

Posted by: b real | Jul 22 2005 21:00 utc | 19

Air Force Motto – Career before Country.
Seems the right time to re-read this Sid Blumenthal art. from last yr. & the underlying article it references. God, what a long year it has been.
Anybody else forget this detail:
For decades, Rumsfeld has had a reputation as a great white shark of the bureaucratic seas: sleek, fast-moving and voracious. As counsellor to Richard Nixon during the impeachment crisis, his deputy was the young Dick Cheney, and together they helped to right the ship of state under Gerald Ford.
Here they were given a misleading gloss as moderates; competence at handling power was confused with pragmatism. Cheney became the most hardline of congressmen, and Rumsfeld informed acquaintances that he was always more conservative than they imagined. One lesson they seem to have learned from the Nixon debacle was ruthlessness. His collapse confirmed in them a belief in the imperial presidency based on executive secrecy. One gets the impression that, unlike Nixon, they would have burned the White House tapes.
…
One high-level military strategist told me that Rumsfeld is “detested”, and that “if there’s a sentiment in the army it is: Support Our Troops, Impeach Rumsfeld”.
The Council on Foreign Relations has been showing old movies with renewed relevance to its members. The Battle of Algiers, depicting the nature and costs of a struggle with terrorism, is the latest feature. The seething in the military against Bush and Rumsfeld might prompt a showing of Seven Days in May, about a coup staged by a rightwing general against a weak liberal president, an artefact of the conservative hatred directed at President Kennedy in the early 60s.
In 1992, General Colin Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs, awarded the prize for his strategy essay competition at the National Defence University to Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dunlap for The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012. His cautionary tale imagined an incapable civilian government creating a vacuum that drew a competent military into a coup disastrous for democracy. The military, of course, is bound to uphold the constitution. But Dunlap wrote: “The catastrophe that occurred on our watch took place because we failed to speak out against policies we knew were wrong. It’s too late for me to do any more. But it’s not for you.”
The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 is today circulating among top US military strategists.
Did the Air Force brass not get copies?

Posted by: jj | Jul 22 2005 23:50 utc | 21

Maybe this hopelessness we all feel is somehow planned by the string pullers, designed to keep us off balance. It was reported long ago that this administration makes it own reality and as soon as we begin to understand what they are doing, they change and create another one.
Of course it is senseless to invade Iran, we all know that. It was also a bad idea to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
I believe there were choices to be made years ago when some in the world began to push back, the US’s choice was to push harder. Instead of having a “sit down” as they are so fond of saying on The Sopranos to work out how to divide the spoils, our admin decided to use muscle. It might have worked had they been extraordinarily cruel in the beginning and spent much time and money in the killing of anyone who dared to raise their head anywhere in the world. As it is we are caught in bad decisions, this is the path chosen and no one has the balls to yell out BULLSHIT! lest they be thought of as sympathetic to the enemy.
Dear Outraged, I see it being dark for a very long time. We watch the US constitution being used for asswipe and the sheeple flip over to watch the latest reality show on TV. Our courts have handed the prez unlimited powers to detain and/or kill anyone in the world and we wonder what happened to that pretty girl in Aruba. I see that our military officers are meekly going along with planning an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran and no one of them is resigning. Indeed, what a sad and sorry state we are in.
Even when I try to ignore this stuff for a few days it stays on my mind, my own insignificance is blaringly obvious and so very frustrating to me.
please keep doing what you do, you were missed sorely and I read with great interest each and every one of your posts.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 23 2005 10:44 utc | 23

I think the darkness and light are equal in the world and are playing a game of seesaw. The darkness does seem to be on top now. I remember the the varying factor was the speed in which the motion occurred and the strength of impact when you came down and hit the ground. And then there was the fun part when both side tried to balance in the air.
No matter how dark, the light is always positioned for a play in the game.

Posted by: jm | Jul 23 2005 12:25 utc | 25