Sunday, September 30, 2007

Bush has a plan: Sy Hersh in the New Yorker

"We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years."
Zbigniew Brzezinski

David Seaton's News Links
Seymour Hersh, America's foremost investigative reporter with his amazing sources and impeccable attitude, has brought out another of his meticulously researched articles that will be invaluable aids to future Chinese historians investigating the decline and fall of the United States of America.

Now, when I say the United State will "fall", I must add that I know (believe) it will get right back up again.

Look at Russia. Huge countries with enormous natural resources and a gifted, hard working population, don't just lie there, but, as we have observed with Russia, its a painful journey from up to down and back and I am not at all confident that America's democracy or whatever is left of it, will survive the trip. DS

Seymour M. Hersh: The Administration’s plan for Iran. - New Yorker
Abstract:(...) “They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.” That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”(...) The Iranian leadership is feeling the pressure. In the press conference after his U.N. speech, Ahmadinejad was asked about a possible attack. “They want to hurt us,” he said, “but, with the will of God, they won’t be able to do it.” According to a former State Department adviser on Iran, the Iranians complained, in diplomatic meetings in Baghdad with Ambassador Crocker, about a refusal by the Bush Administration to take advantage of their knowledge of the Iraqi political scene. The former adviser said, “They’ve been trying to convey to the United States that ‘We can help you in Iraq. Nobody knows Iraq better than us.’ ” Instead, the Iranians are preparing for an American attack. The adviser said that he had heard from a source in Iran that the Revolutionary Guards have been telling religious leaders that they can stand up to an American attack. “The Guards are claiming that they can infiltrate American security,” the adviser said. “They are bragging that they have spray-painted an American warship—to signal the Americans that they can get close to them.” (I was told by the former senior intelligence official that there was an unexplained incident, this spring, in which an American warship was spray-painted with a bull’s-eye while docked in Qatar, which may have been the source of the boasts.) “Do you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, ‘Uncle Sam is here! We’d better stand down’? ” the former senior intelligence official said. “The reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer.” READ IT ALL

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