Seymour Hersh - with help from CNN - is posing an idiocy. It is not that he might be wrong;it’s possible he’s actually correct. The issue is that this earth-shattering report is a) abnormal behavior and b) that it is somehow unwarranted.
The new article, “Preparing the Battlefield,” is the latest in a series of articles accusing the Bush administration of preparing for war with Iran.
He based the report on accounts from current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. Watch Hersh discuss what he says are the administration’s plans for Iran
“As usual with his quarterly pieces, we’ll decline to comment,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told CNN.
“The CIA, as a rule, does not comment on allegations regarding covert operations,” CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, denied U.S. raids were being launched from Iraq, where American commanders believe Iran is stoking sectarian warfare and fomenting attacks on U.S. troops.
“I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else,” Crocker said.
Hersh said U.S. efforts were staged from Afghanistan, which also shares a border with Iran.
He said the program resulted in “a dramatic increase in kinetic events and chaos” inside Iran, including attacks by Kurdish separatists in the country’s north and a May attack on a mosque in Shiraz that killed 13 people.
The United States has said it is trying to isolate Iran diplomatically in order to get it to come clean about its nuclear ambitions. But Bush has said “all options” are open in dealing with the issue.
This is not rocket surgery being performed here and my take is that Seymour Hersh is proving his worth as an in-flight rocket mechanic.
The United States military establishment - heck ANY military establishment - is operated on a foundation of contingencies.
I am fairly sure we have a contingency plan being dusted off and textured with updated information and ideas for the invasion of Iran. I am also fairly sure we have a contingency plan covered in dust, buried in a safe somewhere, for the invasion of Burma - or China; maybe even Poland. Seymour Hersh probably knows this and also knows that the CIA, US Military, and White House are not going to comment on something like that. If they deny it, people think they are hiding something. If they say no comment, people think they are hiding something. So, the answer is no comment. It is the best the government gets in such a deal.
Additionally, The United States should have special operatives in Iran working with dissidents. We should be doing everything in our power to impact the social uprising that is just around the corner in Iran. Iran is a country with well over half of the population under the age of 40. They have no ingrained memory of the “great satan” years that galvanized the hardliners now running the country after the 1979 revo9lution. They do not remember the repressions of the Shah and his secret police. The need for the hardline government in Iran today is muddled. They want what everyone wants - peace, education for their kids, the ability to make a decent living, a few luxuries.
The idiocy of Seymour Hersh is in trying to appeal using demagoguery - and just whom do you suppose Seymour Hersh is trying to appeal to? Look to see who responds to this post or those like it and find out who they’re going to vote for.
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