SUCCESSFUL BLITZKRIEG VS. IRAN ?

Russ intelligence services warn that Bushies plan an air-blitzkrieg against Iran, probably in April. Results?
Remember, the Israeli blitzkrieg vs. helpless Lebanon backfired. And Iran is NOT helpless—they have enormous retaliatory resources. And they will have nothing to lose.

We hear that our bombers will take out all Iranian military assets, to block retaliation. But WE LIKELY HAVE NO FIRST-HAND INTELLIGENCE about the LOCATION of these assets. And they have had months to get ready for this attack.

One can envision doors rolling back from mountain hideaways and Iranian missiles firing at Israel, US Navy (2 sitting-duck carriers!) in the waters just outside Iran, the Green Zone next door in Iraq (with our half-billion dollar embassy and the pathetic Iraq govt. offices). And of course Iran will back enraged Iraqi Shia slaughtering our GIs in Iraq, cutting off our supply-lines from Kuwait.

The result that will really impress Americans, however, is the likely spike of gasoline to over $5 a gallon. (Iranians have the power to disrupt world oil supplies.)
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Puzzles about the 15 captured Brits: with the line between Iranian & Iraqian water-territories so vague and indeterminate, what the Hell were Brit sailors doing so close to this line??!? It looks as if they insanely wanted to provoke Iranians into an incident that would ‘justify’ the blitzkrieg.

And why did the Iranians react so dramatically to this provocation?They act as if (insanely) they don’t fear a blitzkrieg attack. If they’re this crazy now, imagine what retaliation they’ll unleash when their visible assets are reduced to rubble, and they have ‘nothing to lose’ !

Perhaps we should expect a germ-war attack on our Homeland; God knows the Bushies have done little to react rationally to such an attack.

 
ONE C-in-C vs. Congress, running a WAR:

A new Bushie propaganda line goes like this (opposing the withdrawal dates set by Congress:)
“Our founding father wisely wrote the Constitution so that one man, the President, runs our wars, not a committee of Congressmen.”

First, Congress is not trying micromanage war-tactics. It’s really (though bashfully) trying to END the war. Since our founders gave Congress the power to declare war OR TO REFUSE TO DECLARE WAR, we can imagine that they would approve of Congress deciding that a given war is (a) unwinnable, (b)costly in dollars and GI lives, (c) involving no real stake for America, --therefore, (d) we should pull out. When 70% of Americans agree, you’d think…..

Second, the Constitution-writers didn’t foresee a President who would not legitimate his impeachment by obvious crimes, but who should be impeached for deceit and war-bungling—and for refusal to pull out of a war when he obviously should. (And of course goofy GOP Congressmen would block a 2/3ds vote to impeach Bush anyway !)

Indeed, with all the little wars of the last half-century—not one real war have we won !--, NOT ONCE HAS CONGRESS DECLARED WAR !
Contemptible Congressmen have abdicated their power to REFUSE to declare war and to raise hell when an UNDECLARED war is started.

About cutting increases in the Pentagon budget:
people don’t realize that only about one in four dollars of Pentagon money is going to pay for our 2 actual wars, in Iraq & Afghanistan ! The remaining 3 in 4 dollars goes for ‘miscellaneous’ ! If Congress cut off the extra money for this absurd Iraq “SURGE”, the Pentagon could maintain its present (inadequate) level of support for our troops out of petty cash !

 
IF WE ATTACK IRAN: PART TWO:

WINNERS & LOSERS IF WE ATTACK IRAN: IDEOLOGY, POLITICS & ECONOMICS:

IDEOLOGY: Of course the millions of Shia Muslims in the world would be furious. Hezbollah in Lebanon is exceedingly well organized in various parts of the world, and would undoubtedly strike at US in various ways and places if we attack their main patron.

Shia in Iraq would set out to attack our GIs, as they have NOTdone much until now.We’d face a 2-front war; Shia control our supply lines from Kuwait. Our casualties would skyrocket.

Saudi royals would love an attack on their main Shia rival for Mideast dominiance. (In fact, this dumb attack would be mainly the Bushies obeying their masters in S.Arabia & Israel.) But the Saudi oil regions are dominated by Shia populations; one could expect that the Saudi oil facilities would be attacked.

POLITICS: Russia and China would not like such a demonstration of US power to succeed.

ECONOMICS: Almost certainly, there’d be a big cut in world oil-supply, with skyrocketing oil prices. This would HELP ALL OIL-SUPPLIERS (including Russia and Venezuela). It would harm China importantly (& of course US SUV drivers !) China could turn to coal, reluctantly. Japan would have to increase their nuke-power supply, and would be furious.
Both Japan and China have ways to retaliate vs. US. (China could figure that eventually, the market for US bonds will weaken anyway—then the first bond-holders to sell off would lose the least.) One hopes that China and Japan have warned of economic retaliation if we attack Iran. One hopes that Gates, the new Secy of Defense, is sane enough to heed such omens, so that the grumbling of the US giant in Mideast is just a bluff. ONE HOPES...)
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WHY TWO US CARRIERS JUST OFF IRAN? One can’t imagine a rational reason for needing more than one carrier, plus bombers in Israel, etc,. to intimidate Iran IF THEYRE SANE ENOUGH TO BE INTIMIDATED.
If they’re NOT SANE , (they surely know our attacking power !) then imagine what they could do to us IF THEY’VE NOTHING MORE TO LOSE !

One grisly hypothesis; the 2 carriers are there HOPING FOR AN ATTACK ON THEM. Pentagon is not about war, it’s about money going to the war corporations who are the masters of the Pentagon. Every bit of military equipment that is damaged or destroyed must be replaced or repaired, with more hundreds of billions flowing to the war corporations.

 
ATTACK ON IRAN? I’ve always dismissed warnings about our attacking Iran, because I figured that if knowledgeable oil-speculators even suspected an attack were imminent, they’d spike up oil-future prices ahead of time.

Well, now oil is $62 a barrel—pretty high, and US gas prices are rising even more steeply. Perhaps the oil-buddies of Bushies are jacking up the prices ahead of time so the spike won’t be so sharp when the actual attack is imminent.

God help the GIs in Iraq if we attack next-door Iran !
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Strangely, Pentagon refers to road-bombs killing our Iraq GIS (bombs obviously set by SUNNI insurgents) as ‘sectarian attacks’, hinting the bomb attacks might have been by Shia!
Pent. says conflict has 'morphed' from Sunnis attacking Americans into a clash between factions.
Well, this latter clash might be ADDED toSunni attacks, but these Sunni attacks are proceding as ever: 3 GIs a day killed in March (12 more each day, presumably, seriously wounded.)


These strange Pent.utterances are likely in the service of Bushies’ masters, the Saudi oil-sultans and Israel; both want to excuse an attack on Shia Iran when it happens.

But Bushies need no excuse to attack Iran; who would stop them?
And no excuse will work—who would believe them?

 
IRAQIS do NOT think we are staying on to help them !

Poll BY SATODAY, ABC, BBC, & A GERMAN FIRM: http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphics/iraqpoll/poll5/flash.htm

IRAQI OPINIONS:Kurdland is already a separate ministate,with its own flag, protected from Turkey by US & Israel. (So we’ll ignore Kurdish opinions, concentrating on opinions of those in Arab Iraq (Shia & Sunni).
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SUNNI OPINIONS (1 IN 3 OF Iraq Arabs)(Overthrow of Saddam also meant overthrow of ancient Sunni dominance.) 94% say ATTACKS ON GIs ARE OK !97% oppose US presence97% say we’ve done a bad job.68% say US ‘surge’ will make things worse.Only 4% WANT partition, but 20% PREDICT it.ONLY 45% predict united Iraq. 58% want a dictator.
[Given hatred for America, why should we protect them from Shia?]
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SHIA OPINIONS: (2 IN 3 OF Arab Iraqis) Split on wanting Democracy or Islamic State.ONE IN THREE SAY ATTACKS ON GIs are OK !(enough to support insurgents!)ONLY 17% support US presence.
49% say US ‘surge’ will MAKE THINGS WORSE.Only 4% WANT partition, but 40% PREDICT it .79%: “US has done bad job.”
100% in Baghdad SAY US PRESENCE HAS MADE THINGS WORSE !But only 23% want us to leave immediately. ?????????
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OPINIONS OF ALL IRAQIS (including pro-US Kurds):
40% BLAME BUSH for mess; only 18% blame alQaeda !

 
"Dem plan means failure",says Bush. No, Dem plans display the failure of Bushies' goofy strategies.

 
I take the liberty of repeating an old PADDY-DAY blog:
ANTI-IRISH SLANDERS:
How do the Irish provoke foreigners to slander them so poisonously? A medieval historian Gerald of Wales said these preposterous things:
--that Irish monks spent every day laboring in the fields, chanting psalms, fasting, and flogging themselves. But then in the evening they punched out and went into town to raise hell.

--that Irish women pissed standing up, while the men squatted. Now really!
Actually,old Gerald had some skeletons in his own family closet. The Geraldines were actually Italian bandits who threw in with William to conquer England. On closer inspection, William sent them all to Wales..and then, on second thought, shipped them off to rule sullen Ireland.

The Fitzgeralds (it’s alleged that ‘Fitz’ means ‘bastard’!) ruled Ireland until the Protestants took over England.

One nasty story was of an Earl Fitzgerald who was indicted before HenryVIII for burning the cathedral of Castel. In his defense he said, “I would never have burnt the cathedral, Sire, except I thought the Archbishop was inside.”

This slanderous tradition extends to our time. I was in Ireland visiting a stately home of the Fitzgerald clan. As usual, the woman showing people around was from that rare species, Irish Protestant landowners still in Eire; of course she spoke with a posh British accent.

I said to her, “My family comes from Iowa—but my grandmother was named Fitzgerald; and we like to think we might be related to the famous Fitzgeralds of old.”

“That’s very possible,” she replied coolly, “They left Bahstahds all over Ireland.”

 
PRETENCE OVER? SUNNIS ARE OUR REAL FOES !
An NYT headline gave the game away: SUNNI MILITANTS REPLACE SHIITES AS TOP CONCERN.

Sunnis always were the main killers of our GIs, but the Bushies tried to hide that fact. Why? Because of the alliance between Sunni SaudiArabia, Israel, and the Bushies against Shia Iran. They wanted to pretend that Iran and their Shia/Iraqi allies were a big threat to our troops in Iraq.

But the road bombs & the suicide bombs that have killed and maimed so many of our troops were clearly set by the SUNNI insurgents. The Sunni alQuaeda are aware of this new alliance and are afraid that Iraq secularists, including their insurgent allies the Baathists, might ally together with the ‘Shia’ government and the US. (Eventually, after partition into Kurdland, Sunni/arabLand, and Shialand, the US will hand over Anbar province to the secular Sunnis, counting on them to turn on their fanatic Quaeda allies.)

After the US Surge began, the Shia militia have laid low, waiting till the surge peters out, to come roaring out again afterward. (It has been demonstrated that the toothless govt. and the US cannot protect Shia pilgrims from Sunni bombs. Shia see now that they need Shia militia to protect them.)

But SUNNI insurgents, strangely, have UPPED their attacks since the US surge began. They understand TV requirements--the awful chlorine-GAS attacks were bound to make TV headlines. (The first 5 of them, in Anbar,were ignored by US media; but then one in the city could not be ignored.)

Quaeda have a rational motive for such spectacular moves; they want Shia to respond viciously against Sunni, so Sunni rage will guarantee that Sunni leaders won’t dare to ally with Shia govt.

So far, Shias have responded only by chasing Sunnis out of mixed neighborhoods, and attacks (with torture) against individual Sunnis whom they probably suspect of alliance with insurgents. But they outnumber Sunnis 3 to 1 in Arab/Iraq; sooner or later they will respond spectacularly against all Sunnis. Then the Quaeda strategy will bear fruit.

 
P.CAN’T AFFORD SAFE VEHICLES FOR GIs:
Twenty years ago, it was discovered that a ‘v-shape’ bottom for armed vehicles was much safer than flat-bottom against road-bombs.

FOUR years into Iraq war, only 200 such vehicles are available for 150,000 Iraq GIs.

But after all, Pentagon can’t afford such frills & innovations. They get only TWELVE HUNDRED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS EACH DAY !

 
GI OPINIONS: We’re constantly told that Iraq GIs support the war.
--During the Korean War, my job was to interview GIs from all over the front line. I found out (a) that most of them despised the ‘police action’, (b) most treated our Korean allies with total conempt, and (c) most knew little about the geopolitical reasons for or against the war.

That’s why I now support the Iraq GIs’ welfare, not necessarily their opinions--and want them brought home now.

--Also, we don’t KNOW what their opinions really are; these are filtered to us thru generals; remember, the GIs are completely at the mercy of these generals, so are not likely to express to them any anti-war feelings they might have.

 
IRAQ PM FEARS US WILL OUST HIM IF HE DOESN’T MANAGE A LAW GIVING ‘FAIR SHARE’ OF OIL MONEY TO SUNNIS.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Iraq_Oil.html

Do Bushies think this will pacify insurgents? When US leaves, who will ENFORCE this sharing, when $ go first to Kurds & Shia?

Kurds are now in deFacto secession; Shia will soon follow. Central govt. will be toothless, largely fictional.

 
ATTACK...COME BACK
One year of rehab is supposedly guaranteed for shell-shocked war returnees, DATING FROM TIME OF RETURN. But for reservists & natl.guard (a good proportion of Iraq troops, many serving more than once), so much time is often taken by red tape that most of the year is swallowed up. Catch 22.

THEY WAVE THE FLAG WHEN WE ATTACK; THEY TURN AWAY WHEN WE COME BACK !

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4056

 
ULSTER & IRAQ:
UNITED Press (13Mar, Sieff) story recalls the Brits were smart enough to ally themselves with the Protestant majority in Ulster. Analogously, US should line up with strongest majority militia,The Sadrites.

Instead, Buhies are picking a fight with Sadrites, and threatening to attack Shia Iran.

Likely result: a 2-front war in Iraq, far greater slaughter of GIs.

 
COULD, BUT WOULD THEY ?

COULD CONGRESS STOP THE WARS? Legal scholars agree that Congress COULD cut off funds for wars, or for parts of wars, if they had the votes.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0314/p01s01-uspo.html

Problem is to get enough Congressmen to vote ‘yes’ to stopping the war. It isn’t clear how many votes would be needed, but Pelosi so far has not had the power to get House Dems in line.

Shabby and disgraceful.

 
CUSTER'S NEXT STAND:

One strategy that attracts Bushies: pull out combat troops, and just leave a few as military advisors.

However, says a retired general:If we pull out most troops, and leave some, it’ll be Custer all over again.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2032023,00.html

 
BUSH SENDS 4K MORE TROOPS..MORE ON THE WAY.
“That’s OK, they’re just support troops, not more combat troops.”

But in Iraq, support troops are just as vulnerable to bombs as are combat troops.

More ‘sitting-duck’ GIs mean more GIs killed, maimed, wounded.
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SUNNIS DOING THE KILLING: Bushies chatter about 'shia' attacks. But most VICTIMS are Shia. Govt. tries to reverse ethnic cleansing. Sunni insurgents respond by BURNING homes of those they chase out.
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'Haliburton moves HQ to Dubai. This just illustrates the fact that there are NO AMERICAN CORPORATIONS. MONEY HAS NO NATIONAL LOYALTY.

 
DEMS WILTING;
A shrewd observer in UNITED PRESS
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20070307-035556-3512r

explains why Congressional Dems don’t really want the war to end before the latter part of ‘-08. By then it will be obvious to everyone that the war is hopeless, that our GI casualties are wasted. Then, Dems plausibly hope that they’ll take the Presidency, the Senate and the House of Reps…as the lesser evil.

But this observer is puzzled by the way the GOP Congressmen, who would lose catastrophically on this scenario, stay loyal to self-destructive Bush.
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Another hypothesis: both Dem & GOP Congressmen know that the secret hundreds of billions held by the Pentagon and their war-corporations could be used in ’08 to SINK any Congressman who seriously opposed the war’s continuation.

 
WHY THE ATTACKS VS. VATICAN?
Several novels recently have launched vigorous--often vicious---fictional attacks on the Vatican. What attracts these attacks, makes them best-sellers? Two aspects: the absolute power of Vatican bureaucrats (within a huge range of activities !) and the obsessive secrecy of this bureaucracy.
POWER: Every priest (thousands of them !) aspiring to be a bishop knows that the fate of his ambitions depends completely on these bureaucrats. Every actual bishop knows that if he offends these guys, he could be named the bishop of Nome, Alaska. This means that thousands of intelligent, on-the-spot men are passive agents, all overthe world, of these bureaucrats—for religious or non-religious purposes.

Secondly, there is the obsessive secrecy they treasure. The Vatican library was recently opened PARTIALLY to researchers investigating the relationship between Pope Pius XII and the Nazis. But PARTIAL opening is no opening at all—the part still concealed could be the interesting part.

A famous theologian was called before the Inquisition (still operating, but without flames !) to a basement meeting to be questioned about his suspected heresies. He was told he must take an oath that all the proceedings would be secret. He flatly refused. The trial was ended abruptly—but he was fired without a trial as the Catholic theologian-in-residence at a German university. (Of course the university kept him on as professor.)

“Power corrupts—and absolute power corrupts absolutely !” said Lord Acton about the Papacy. Acton was a Catholic thinker opposed to the way that Pius IX ‘awoke one morning and felt himself infallible.’ (Under pressure, Vatican I proclaimed this absurd idea as dogma.)
(The Vatican excommunicated other ‘Old Catholic’ objectors to this new doctrine—but Acton’s family was so prominent they didn’t dare excommunicate him !) Acton could have added that SECRET absolute power was even more likely to corrupt !

The present result? Devout Catholics are often loyal to their local priest, but not to the remote, mysterious bishop. (Of course as long as the bishop can control the priest by threats and promises, this is no real impediment to his power--but the present urgent shortage of priests makes the remaining priests less vulnerable.)
Very few young Catholics want to be enrolled as priests or nuns in this conspiratorial-seeming organization, and not just because they object to celibacy.

The Church is competing with Muslims in Africa for the millions of potential converts.
The conspiratorial image of the Church is no help in this competition—especially since the bishops have run out of slave-nuns to do good in African villages and present a humanitarian image of this organization

The Catholic Church has fallen into bad times before—there were once THREE rival Popes !-- but has somehow always managed to reform in time to preserve itself. It will be interesting to see whether such salvation will happen again.

 
“Mil.force ALONE won’t beat insurgency”, says Gen. Petraeus, stating the obvious. ‘Political unity and compromise also are necessary.” HoustonChronicle. Chron.com

And Allawi (our failed puppet ruler earlier) is trying to put together a majority of parliamentarians opposed to the Shia firebrand Sadr. They’ll have to recruit Kurds and Sunnis to make up this majority. But Kurds will demand a high price for alliance : for instance, possession of oil-soaked Kirkuk, and autonomy regarding oil-money. That would enrage SunniArabs beyond cooperating.

Already there must be a large number of Shia leaders who despair of controlling all of Arab/Iraq as the supermajority there (3 to 1). They are likely preparing for deFacto secession, permitted by constitution, and already implemented by the Kurds.

Ethnic Cleansing is proceeding apace, with minorities being chased out of mixed neighborhoods.

People chatter about ‘fair division’ of oil money to include SunniArabs. But with a super-weak central govt., who would ENFORCE such sharing? Sunnis would be convinced only by a permanent grant of oil-rich lands (bloody likely !!)…or by discovery of lots of oil within the Sunni/arab territories.

To the rage of Bushies, the new Shia ministate will be allied with Shia Iran.
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Bushes talk of US forces being used to reinforce BORDERS (to stop infiltrating foreign insurgents) But nobody has claimed that such foreigners make up an important portion of the insurgents. Besides, US has not been able to seal its own border with Mexico—and doesn’t even TRY to seal its long border with Canada.

You can bet they’ll try to seal borders only against Syria and Iran. But new insurgent recruits will be allowed to infiltrate from SaudiArabia and Jordan, our ‘allies’.

The whole ‘new strategy’ is a tragic farce. Most Americans want us out in ’07. Then the insurgents and militias will come out from hiding and go at it again.The only difference our new strategy will make is increased GI casualties ( 9 killed on 7Mar; 25 a day seriously wounded in Feb.)

. (Bushies will add thousands of ‘support troops’ to the 21k combat troops. Support troops are just as vulnerable to road bombs and suicide bombers and mortars and snipers as are combat troops.)

 
HOW (RARE) NON-THINKING MILITARY HAPPENS:
Best example is Jap submarine svc. in WWII.
Most military leaders respond flexibly to changing conditions.
United Press writer tells what kind of institution is UNLIKELY to respond flexibly to changing conditions..

Without naming it, he describes accurately the Pentagon.

 
25 GIs each day BADLY hurt ! NBC evening news (28Feb) ran a story emphasizing the wonderful care our wounded get when they are evacuated. (The huge airplane is fixed up like a complete intensive care unit).
One wonders why Americans don't wonder why the Pentagon reports carefully the number of GIs KILLED each day--but not the GIs wounded. Perhaps Americans don't mind this silence because they think'wounded' means 'hurt slightly.'

However, slightly wounded GIs are treated right in Iraq, and perhaps returned to service. Those evacuated are BADLY maimed or hurt--perhaps missing arms or legs or eyes or face, or (frequently) suffering brain damage from road-bombs. (Some of these latter might be better off dead.)

In the course of this puff-piece from the Pentagon, one deadly sentence slipped thru: last month, SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY GIs were airlifted to Germany. That's TWENTY-FIVE SERIOUSLY WOUNDED GIs each DAY!

Americans are foolish to heed the number killed each day, ignoring the number wounded.
The dead will be soon forgotten, except by their few relatives & friends. For the rest of us, Memorial Day is for shopping. But the thousands of maimed veterans will haunt us for decades.

 
SUNNIS ARE OUR MAIN ENEMIES! Incredibly, the Bushies are now siding pretty openly with the Iraq Sunnis against the Shia ! But the main killers are the Sunnis. (Sunni alQaeda just braggedthat they killed the 18 policemen !)

Seymour Hersh, in current New Yorker, analyzes this incredible turn of events. The Bushies realized belatedly that the main winner of their war was hated Iran! So now there is an open alliance between Israel, (Sunni) Saudi Arabia, and the Iraq Sunnis AND AMERICANS to crush the power of the supermajority Shia in Iraq.
(However, the Sunni insurgents continue to attack Americans, killing, maiming or seriously wounding almost 30 a day!)

Results? Iraqi Shia will cuddle ever close to protective Iran. Iraqi Shia will turn ever more against US; more and more we face a two-front war, with our Gis sitting ducks for BOTH of the civil war opponents!

Bushies are trying hard to provoke Iran to do something that would excuse their planned attack on Iran. They don't need an excuse--who would stop them? and no excuse of theirs would work--who in the world would now believe any of their trumped-up 'intelligence' about the menace from Iran? Everything hinges on whether they realize the formidable retaliatory power Iran has even BEFORE it gets nukes.