Posted by Jon Ponder | Oct. 16, 2006, 6:04 am
Bombing Could Start 17 Days before Mid-Term Elections
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Based on stories last month in Time magazine and The Nation, it appears that the U.S.S. Eisenhower Strike Group left Norfolk, Virginia, on Oct. 1 and will reach the shores of Iran at the Strait of Hormuz this Saturday, Oct. 21 — 17 days before the mid-term elections.
First word of the Eisenhower’s deployment to the Persian Gulf came from angry Navy officers, who contacted military critics of the Iraq war and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.
According to the mid-September 2006 article in The Nation, the strike group includes:
[The] nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship…
And:
First word of the early dispatch of the “Ike Strike” group to the Persian Gulf region came from several angry officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.
“This is very serious,” said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early word of the Navy officers’ complaints about the sudden deployment orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA, resigned in 2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration pressures to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. He and other intelligence agency critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.)
Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War College, says that the carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October 21 is “very important evidence” of war planning. He says, “I know that some naval forces have already received ‘prepare to deploy orders’ [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date” of any possible military action against Iran. (A PTDO means that all crews should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a certain date–in this case, reportedly, October 1.)
So why has the president sent the strike group to Iran?
“I think the plan’s been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran,” says Gardiner. “It’s a terrible idea, it’s against US law and it’s against international law, but I think they’ve decided to do it.” Gardiner says that while the United States has the capability to hit those sites with its cruise missiles, “the Iranians have many more options than we do: They can activate Hezbollah; they can organize riots all over the Islamic world, including Pakistan, which could bring down the Musharraf government, putting nuclear weapons into terrorist hands; they can encourage the Shia militias in Iraq to attack US troops; they can blow up oil pipelines and shut the Persian Gulf.” Most of the major oil-producing states in the Middle East have substantial Shiite populations, which has long been a concern of their own Sunni leaders and of Washington policy-makers, given the sometimes close connection of Shiite populations to Iran’s religious rulers.
Aside from the articles in Time and The Nation a month ago, there has been little or no coverage by the Old Media of this provocative, potentially disastrous and politically motivated move by the Bush Administration.
When the Naval Officers were notified that their scheduled deployment was moved up by about a month, you can bet money that no one was officially told that they might attack Iran; this was only typical rumour/speculation and not someone with inside knowledge of actual (Top Secret) op plans calling up their old friends with hot scoop.
Instead, the expectation of this group of vessels is that they will REPLACE those ships that have already been in the Persian Gulf Region for many months. The fact that the ships are arriving a little earlier than originally planned may be a useful psychological ploy in the minds of some strategists, but it does not change the basic balance of forces in the Gulf.
Any Naval Forces that stray within about forty miles of the Iran’s coast will be sitting ducks for a large array of anti-ship missles. One of the low-tech versions of these missles almost sunk the USS Stark during the Iran-Iraq War. Iran is estimated to have hundreds of these missles, which are capable of overcoming current ship defenses, if fired in swarms. An even bigger problem is the high-tech Russian-built “Sunburn” missile. Because of the Mach 2plus speed, ships would have at best, about twenty seconds warning time from launch to impact and a poor chance of destroying the Sunburn, even with only one inbound at a time.
The US has a TOTAL of eleven aircraft carriers, which are essential for force projection, in places like Korea. If you are going to protect these important assets, you have to launch a strike from further offshore. This makes it really difficult then to protect the shipping in the Gulf. The Gulf then becomes an “Iranian Lake”, because these anti-ship weapons are mobile and hard to find.
Of course you could use nuclear weapons to take out so much of Iran’s infrastructure that they could not coordinate a shutdown of commerce in the Gulf Region. Then what would the US gain strategically? With the massive collateral damage, terrorist recruiting and attacks on our troops in Iraq would go through the roof!
Forget about any kind of diplomatic leverage in the Middle East for a long time. Scott Ritter opines today on NYC Public Radio, that the response of a US nuclear strike would lead to terrorist getting a bomb from ?Pakistan? and result in an eventual nuclear attack in a US city.
Do you see anything rational about an actual attack on Iran? Please remember that the US invasion of Iraq was carefully justified in the press as an immediate danger, supported by (slanted) intelligence, accompanyed up by the “Coalition of the Willing”, and with SOME cover in the UN.
Besides the UN speech by Colin Powell, the Iraq attack had (at least grudging) support of the US Military, which is actually run by rational, careful strategists.
Thanks, Adirondack, for that calm, rational explanation for the early deployment of the strike force.
Unfortunately, the deployment and any subesquent actions, including bombing, may have nothing to do with rationality and everything to do with politics — in particular, the midterm elections on Nov. 7.
Consider the timing of the invasion of Iraq in 02-03. Team Bush started the drumbeat for war (which Andy Card described as “marketing”) when Bush came back his monthlong stay in Crawford in Sept. 02. This was timed deliberately in order to weaken the Dems in the 02 midterms via the vote to authorize military force that fall. (A secondary purpose of the vote was to hamstring senators like John Kerry who were planning to run against Bush in 04. It worked brilliantly.)
The invasion itself had to happen by the following spring 03 to ensure they had a year to get an elected government in place after Saddam was overthrown, so that Bush could campaign for reelection in 04 as a victorious war president.
In the Bush Administration, the Pentagon provides logistics but the military decisions are made by the White House political office. President Bush simply cannot afford for the Dems to take control of either house of Congress. Bush, Rove et al are desperate and bombing Iran is well within the realm of possible tactics they might use to change the outcome of the election in their favor.
The US doesn’t need to attack Iran. All it needs to do is to make it appear as if Iran had attacked one of our ships. Then “retaliation” is warranted–and not “illegal.” No need for Congress or UN to approve.
WHO AMONG YOU IS DUMB ENOUGH to say that BUSH is rational????????
In the midst of all this I can’t but wonder if anyone remembers ex-General Kevin P. Byrnes and Charlestown Harbor SC Summer 2005 right after Katrina. Surf the name — you’ll find all kinds of fun stuff.
The buzz that has been going around the Internet is that a false-flag operation (like Northwoods, the Maine, etc.) is being planned, where an aging nuclear carrier and all its crew will be sacrificed, and the blame placed on Iran, to justify waging war on them. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? You don’t know who to believe any more.
Or, the October Surprise will be a pre-arranged “surrender” by Iran, either with or without a few US bombs dropped first and some show of Iranian ‘resistance”. Iranian agreement to give up their nuclear weapons program (which they’ve never really seemed all that serious about anyway) would let Bush claim a major victory in his “War On Terror”, thus “justifying” the Iraq War and his entire foreign policy just in time for the election. The Iranian theocrats showed in the 1979-80 US Embassy hostage crisis that they had no problem with fitting their own actions to the GOP’s political needs, if they can expect an Iran-Contra-type reward later in the form of shiploads of advanced conventional arms and a large cash incentive; not to mention that the Iranians have ALREADY been given the best present they could have asked the Bush Gang for: the Shiite portion of Iraq, Saddam-free, fully (Iran-supported) militia-dominated, and ripe to fall into Iran’s hands as soon as allied forces begin to withdraw next year.
I have preemptively written both of my senators and my representative to urge them in the strongest possible terms, to not allow Bush to bomb Iran. The man is insane and delusional. If he thinks Congress will fall into the hands of Democrats after the November elections and he thinks impeachment is in the wind (as it should be), he will do anything. Let me repeat that - BUSH WILL DO ANYTHING TO SAVE HIS OWN SKIN!