But then …
Senior intel official: Pentagon moves to second-stage planning for Iran strike option

The official, who is close to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking officials of each branch of the US military, says the Chiefs have started what is called “branches and sequels” contingency planning.
“The JCS has accepted the inevitable,” the intelligence official said, “and is engaged in serious contingency planning to deal with the worst case scenarios that the intelligence community has been painting.”
…
The senior intelligence official who spoke to RAW STORY, along with several military intelligence sources, confirmed that the nuclear option remains on the table. In addition, the senior official added that the Joint Chiefs have “come around on to the administration’s thinking.”
“The Joint Chiefs have no longer imposed roadblocks on a possible bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear production facilities,” the intelligence official said. “In the past, only the Air Force had endorsed the contingency, saying that it could carry out the mission of destroying, or at least significantly delaying, Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon.”
…
With allegations of a plan in place and contingency scenarios in play, several military and intelligence experts see this as proof of a secret White House order to proceed with military action.
Last week, a military intelligence official described to this reporter the movement of Naval submarines and a deployment order sent out to Naval assets of strategic import, such as minesweepers, that could indicate contingency planning is already under way to secure oil transport routes and supplies.
On Sunday, Time Magazine confirmed much of what the military intelligence source had described.
…
From all appearances, however, it would seem that at least some members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have not been briefed on deployment orders or on any strike plans, even contingency plans. The Senate Intelligence Committee is attempting to get a grasp on what is and has been going on.
A source close to the Committee, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, explained that a series of briefings will be going on this week and into next.

Posted by: b | Sep 22 2006 6:50 utc | 3

Iran Is Given More Time to End Uranium Enrichment

The United States has agreed, once again, to extend the “weeks, not months” deadline that it set in June for Iran to stop uranium enrichment or face Security Council sanctions. The new deadline: early October.
A senior Bush administration official said Thursday that foreign ministers from the six world powers seeking to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions decided Tuesday night to give Iran a little more time to comply with their demand. Iran missed an Aug. 31 deadline for suspending enrichment, and the United States is pushing for a new measure imposing travel bans and asset freezes on Iranian officials.

Posted by: b | Sep 22 2006 7:08 utc | 5

JUAN COLE WILL BE ON DEMOCRACY NOW FRI. (tomorrow/today)

Posted by: jj | Sep 22 2006 7:17 utc | 7

Billmon missed one point. If Cheney & Co. conduct an air campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity, then it will be in the Bush administration’s interest to make people believe it really succeeded. After all, a Bush at 35% in the polls is not going to start a third war in six years and then give a speech saying “We have acheived a moderate degradation of Iran’s nuclear capability. Mission Accomplished”. He is going to claim he bombed every last shred of Iran’s nuclear capability back to the stone age.
In other words, whether or not a series air strikes really does set back the Iranian nuclear program, Bush will claim it did. This will suit the Iranians just fine.
The Iranians can then say, “Yes our program is totally destroyed. We will never be able to produce nuclear weapons now.” while quietly letting their own people know that’s just for American consumption. They can then resume their nuclear program, perhaps only months behind schedule. All the while the same crowd/propaganda machine that convinced America and itself that Saddam had nukes will be working overtime to convince America/itself that Iran’s nuclear program really is destroyed. The US media will never give the average Joe in the US a chance to realise the Iranians are laughing so hard they can barely pick themselves up to finish off Iraq.
If this sounds like it would take a lot of sophistication on the part of the Iranians, remember how sophisticated Hezbollah’s military/political strategy was in the recent war. Carefully controlling the levels of rocket attacks to undermine Israeli leader’s credibility with their own public was an amazing piece of work that I doubt many people in the Whitehouse even understood. The Iranians are close allies of Hezbollah and may think with similar levels of sophistication.

Posted by: still working it out | Sep 22 2006 10:00 utc | 9

I really urge readers to read my #8 above, between that and billmon’s Only the Beginning post, some things have shifted for me. I have made the decision tonight to prepare to expat the fuck out of here. This move has been under consideration for me for a while now, always at the back of my mind, however, tonight something has brought it forward that I can’t explain, I am up to my chin in disgust for the sad nation, and finding it hard to breath. My soul is suffocating. I can no longer watch this madness from within. If any of our non-American readers have a flat, sofa, or closet they’d be willing to share for a few weeks, I’d be happy to know about it. I would prefer South East Asia, but at this point it doesn’t matter, as I feel the need to just get out.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 22 2006 11:01 utc | 11

The Bush military threat machine is still working when it comes to impressing Billmon and friends, but not when it comes to impressing Iran. Not after failing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not after 120+ countries lining up behind the pro-Iranian new candidate for the UN security council, Venezuela. What would bombing Iran achieve other than completely isolating the US and demonstrate the West’s dependence on oil? Can’t see the upside. Ergo for Bush and Co things are reduced to: showing war face in public, sucking their thumbs in private.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Sep 22 2006 11:20 utc | 13

Can’t see the upside.
We’re bad, we’re bad. Fear us.

Posted by: Hamburger | Sep 22 2006 11:32 utc | 15

UK suspects in new claims of torture at Guantanamo
By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
Published: 21 September 2006
The extent of the torture and abuse that British residents held at Guantanamo Bay claim to have suffered is revealed for the first time in a series of recently declassified interviews between the detainees and their human rights lawyers.
Documents submitted to the American courts allege that one of the detainees was strapped to a chair by prison guards and beaten and tortured to the point of death.
Other British suspects are still being held in solitary confinement, four years after their capture, where they are subjected to extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation and the confiscation of the most basic necessities, including lavatory paper and blankets.
None has been charged with any crime.
Some of the most serious allegations of torture concern the treatment of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national who until his arrest four years ago had been living in London with his wife and four children.
In June this year, Mr Aamer claims he was badly beaten and tortured because he failed to provide a retina scan and fingerprints to the camp authorities. He says he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs.
The habeas corpus motion filed in the court of the District of Columbia states: “The MPs [military police] inflicted so much pain, Mr Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose so hard he thought it would break.
“They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a Maglite [torch] in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.”
Mr Aamer, who had been resident in Britain since 1996, was used as key negotiator on behalf of the prisoners during recent hunger strikes.
But when a settlement between the prisoners and the guards broke down last year he was sent to solitary confinement. This month he was visited by his lawyer from the human rights charity Reprieve. Mr Aamer told the lawyer that he had not seen the sun for 79 days and had had no meaningful contact with the outside world.
In a harrowing account of his torture he said: “At any moment, they can strip you naked. They will put your head in the toilet in the name of security. It is all about humiliation. They are trying to break me.”
Bisher al-Rawi, another British resident captured by the Americans in Gambia after alleged collusion between the CIA and MI5 officers, is also being held in solitary confinement at another detention centre known as Camp V.
Mr al-Rawi has stopped co-operating with his interrogators because they are still seeking answers to the same questions they were asking when he was first arrested in 2002.
His resistance has cost him the few privileges he had and led to his interrogators using torture lasting for weeks. The most common form of torture he has been forced to endure is the use of extreme temperatures in the cells. During the day the guards let the temperatures reach 100 degrees and in the night take away his sheet and use the air conditioning system to create freezing conditions
Zachary Katznelson, the Reprieve lawyer who interviewed the men in Guantanamo, said the torture had been so severe that Mr Al Rawi had suffered wheezing and loss of consciousness.
The evidence relating to Mr al-Rawi is to be used to support an appeal already lodged at the High Court in London. Two other British residents, Omar Deghayes and Ahmed Errachidi, are also being held in Camp V.
Ahmed Belbacha and Abdennour Sameur are in Camp II. Jamil al-Banna is in Camp IV, the lowest security rated part of the prison. An eighth man, Binyam Mohamed, is due to appear before a military commission. All the men remain defiant and protest their innocence.
Reprieve, the British based human rights charity representing the men, says their detention is a gross breach of international law and an infringement of the Geneva Conventions.
The extent of the torture and abuse that British residents held at Guantanamo Bay claim to have suffered is revealed for the first time in a series of recently declassified interviews between the detainees and their human rights lawyers.
Documents submitted to the American courts allege that one of the detainees was strapped to a chair by prison guards and beaten and tortured to the point of death.
Other British suspects are still being held in solitary confinement, four years after their capture, where they are subjected to extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation and the confiscation of the most basic necessities, including lavatory paper and blankets.
None has been charged with any crime.
Some of the most serious allegations of torture concern the treatment of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national who until his arrest four years ago had been living in London with his wife and four children.
In June this year, Mr Aamer claims he was badly beaten and tortured because he failed to provide a retina scan and fingerprints to the camp authorities. He says he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs.
The habeas corpus motion filed in the court of the District of Columbia states: “The MPs [military police] inflicted so much pain, Mr Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose so hard he thought it would break.
“They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a Maglite [torch] in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.”
Mr Aamer, who had been resident in Britain since 1996, was used as key negotiator on behalf of the prisoners during recent hunger strikes.
But when a settlement between the prisoners and the guards broke down last year he was sent to solitary confinement. This month he was visited by his lawyer from the human rights charity Reprieve. Mr Aamer told the lawyer that he had not seen the sun for 79 days and had had no meaningful contact with the outside world.
In a harrowing account of his torture he said: “At any moment, they can strip you naked. They will put your head in the toilet in the name of security. It is all about humiliation. They are trying to break me.”
Bisher al-Rawi, another British resident captured by the Americans in Gambia after alleged collusion between the CIA and MI5 officers, is also being held in solitary confinement at another detention centre known as Camp V.
Mr al-Rawi has stopped co-operating with his interrogators because they are still seeking answers to the same questions they were asking when he was first arrested in 2002.
His resistance has cost him the few privileges he had and led to his interrogators using torture lasting for weeks. The most common form of torture he has been forced to endure is the use of extreme temperatures in the cells. During the day the guards let the temperatures reach 100 degrees and in the night take away his sheet and use the air conditioning system to create freezing conditions
Zachary Katznelson, the Reprieve lawyer who interviewed the men in Guantanamo, said the torture had been so severe that Mr Al Rawi had suffered wheezing and loss of consciousness.
The evidence relating to Mr al-Rawi is to be used to support an appeal already lodged at the High Court in London. Two other British residents, Omar Deghayes and Ahmed Errachidi, are also being held in Camp V.
Ahmed Belbacha and Abdennour Sameur are in Camp II. Jamil al-Banna is in Camp IV, the lowest security rated part of the prison. An eighth man, Binyam Mohamed, is due to appear before a military commission. All the men remain defiant and protest their innocence.
Reprieve, the British based human rights charity representing the men, says their detention is a gross breach of international law and an infringement of the Geneva Conventions.

Posted by: DM | Sep 22 2006 11:56 utc | 17

Antifa,
Noone has ever been bombed back into the stone age. Not Germany, not Japan, not Vietnam, not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not Lebanon. Noone. Bombs don’t have that power.
You are buying into PR: Bush Shock and Awe PR.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Sep 22 2006 12:51 utc | 19

I think that there’s another option that Billmon might want to consider as an explanation for Iranian insouciance: that if it comes down to a shooting war, they think that they can win, and that they have their chess-pieces already in place on the board waiting to spring the check-mate.
From both a tactical and a strategic point of view they have a number of very clear advantages – a large, embattled US military force surrounded by a sea of militias and insurgents in Iraq, lots of easy-to-hit critical US logistical infrastructure, allies, a strategic oil weapon that can only be decisively countered with boots on ground that the US cannot muster, a US military machine that is degrading as it heads into year 5 of OIF deployments and year 6 of OEF deployments with no end in sight and is caught in the entropy trap, political leverage over key US enablers in the region ( Qatar, Kuwait, Dubai and Bahrain ) and, perhaps most critical of all, general global loathing of the Bush administration, an administration that appears to be hard-wired to fuck things up when it comes to the application of military force.
The Iranians have won every battle against the Bush administration thus far, and I can see nothing on the horizon to suggest that this trajectory is going to alter in any material way. The Bush administration might see a million dead Iranians as a victory, the Iranians might see it as the price of defeating the US.

Posted by: dan | Sep 22 2006 13:34 utc | 21

I also wonder about that $150-$200 oil. A world wide recession/depression might send oil to $30-$50.

Posted by: Jesus Reyes | Sep 22 2006 13:51 utc | 23

The American Empire has reached River Styx. Before, it has stepped back.
Rational observers see US troops surrounded by militias in Iraq, NATO and Canada in a hot nasty guerilla war in Afghanistan, the failure of Shock and Awe in Lebanon and falling gasoline prices because oil traders decided Iranian oil supplies won’t be blockaded.
But, Curtis LeMay’s Bomb them into the Stone Age has reappeared. William Lind sees the rise of Islam and the drowning of Christianity in a sea of political correctness. In the Clash of Civilizations a million casualties from nuclear fallout from the use of tactical nuclear weapons becomes just collateral damage.
Billmon’s nuclear dawn is one of only two alternatives. The other is containment. Except in the twilight of Hades, corporate media is blind and enables the true believers rush towards Rapture.

Posted by: Jim S | Sep 22 2006 16:21 utc | 25

PLEASE, Any of yours, pls friends translate this commentary. (If possible).I read everyday this page , but I can´t write English decently.
POR FAVOR, Alguno de Uds, por favor traduzca mi pequeño comentario.(Si es posible)
Cuando la preparación de la última guerra de Iraq, con todas las acusaciones del gobierno USA y otros paises del mundo acerca de las Armas de Destrucción Masiva ( WMD), con las dudas de los inspectores de la UN y las negaciones de Sadam, me pregunté muchas veces, por qué Sadam actuaba de esa manera prácticamente sin defenderse. Sadam podía haber dicho con cara seria: “No tenemos Armas de Destrucción Masiva aquí en Irak. Nuestras Armas de DM, No están en Iraq.” Y dejar al arbitrio del mundo pensar si las tiene, dónde estarán.
Nunca pensé que Sadam ,fuera un gran lider ni un gran terrorista. Probablemente era un mediocre asesino de su propio pueblo y un gran ladron, que se robó gran parte de sus propios presupuestos de Defensa. Como muchos otros Jefes de Estado.

Posted by: curioso | Sep 22 2006 17:05 utc | 27

I’d like to offer a scenario to complement Billmon’s analysis.
What if Iran has made a deal to buy nuclear weapons, if the United States launches an unprovoked attack?

Posted by: Carl Nyberg | Sep 22 2006 17:18 utc | 29

One possibility: if the Administration makes a big show of staying its hand in Iran, then it might soften opposition to staying in Iraq (as being a lesser evil of some kind).
Propaganda’s hard to follow because it plays at such very high speeds.

Posted by: alabama | Sep 22 2006 18:01 utc | 31

The stated neo-con goal is regime change in both Iraq and Iran. Iran may have nuclear technology, like India or Pakistan, provided a complicit regime is in power. After all, the U.S. provided Iran with with the initial technology itself. The U.S. (& the world) desperately need Irans (&Iraq) oil production up to speed, and the only way to insure optimum production is U.S. control over production. Conversly (alabama), regime change in Iran would would truncate Shiite radicalism in Iraq (along with Iran). Success in Iraq requires regime change in Iran, the source of extremism, or as Bush would say, evil. For years now, my position (here at moa) has been that the administration would not attack Iran. This has now changed.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 22 2006 18:36 utc | 33

Innaresting.*
Excellent musings concerning Iran’s response to a pre-emptive strike, even a nuclear one. If we actually do go nuke, I don’t know how we, let alon Iran, could “go on” after that and if we could, we’re in deeper sh*t as a society than I thought. And forget getting out of Dodge: who in the world would take us?
I dunno, Billmon. I’ve noticed the amused nonchalance of the Iranian President, too. It’s like he’s got a very big fish by the very short hairs. He definately knows something we don’t.
*William Burroughs: “Naked Lunch”.

Posted by: vachon | Sep 22 2006 20:15 utc | 35

Anyone remember “I will never apologize for the United States of America — I don’t care what the facts are”?
Like father, like son.

Posted by: cpg | Sep 22 2006 21:08 utc | 37

@Call the “Long War” the “Lame Duck War”, as in two years of hostility, until Bush leaves office and a new American president rings down the curtain on the catastrophe in the Middle East.
Not picking on you personally, but I don’t see why anyone would at this point assume that Bush is going anywhere in 2 years. They are trampling laws left and right and justifying it in retrospect as they go along – why would scrapping term limits or even scrapping the election altogether be any different?
The idea that everything will start to get better in a couple years because this crowd will be gone is, I think, a losing bet.

Posted by: mats | Sep 23 2006 1:05 utc | 39

@Slothrop, Iran long ago agreed to that – it’s CheneyCo that refused. Other things at issue, for starters at least, are recyling Petrodollars through NY banks, etc, and Iran & Syria are the Only 2 ME countries where xUS doesn’t have bases, so presumably they might have to agree to a military presence.
If you were the Iranian leadership, which poison path would you choose?

Posted by: jj | Sep 23 2006 1:15 utc | 41

Another thing. I do not think Iran has any nuclear weapons or any serious plans to develop them. Their (present or former?) highest ayatollah has said that nuclear weapons are evil and unislamic. Such stuff matters if you have a theocratic state.
Plus it is very expensive and the one good thing is to use them for MAD-standoffs which require a lot of them.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Sep 23 2006 2:06 utc | 43

Last week’s UN traffic is being read by Europeans as a sure sign that Bush is backing off from the military option. If he goes forward, they’ll have just one conclusion to draw–viz., that the man Bush has no control over the actions of his country. The impact of such a conclusion on American relations with just about everyone would be, I think, incalculable. I mean, who would they work with in any future negotiation on any topic whatsoever?
Israel?

Posted by: alabama | Sep 23 2006 4:10 utc | 45

An attack on Iran would provide causus centrifugus for other nations to embark upon La Rue de Uranium.

Posted by: dooglefish | Sep 23 2006 5:33 utc | 47

Interesting report on the Russian Sunburn Missile by Mark Gaffney. The Iranians have this missile, a cruse missile, carries a 750lb warhead, travels close to the water in evasive pattern at Mach2.5 designed to defeat U.S. Aegis type ship defenses. Travels twice as fast as the exocet. They also have the more advanced Yakhonts missile which comes in close to Mach 3. Naval blockade? Could be more than risky.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 23 2006 8:51 utc | 49

Since the only allegedly rational motive for bombing Iran, nukes or conventional, is to rally the base, it is most likely going to happen before 7 November: since (as I understand it) the prevailing winds will carry the radioactivity from nukes to the S/SE, we’ll have alot of pissed off Pakis and Indians to deal with.

Posted by: Brian Boru | Sep 25 2006 5:18 utc | 51