Why Bush will Choose War Against Iran by Ray Close (former CIA analyst)

[Annces]

Like many people, I find it extremely difficult to believe that President Bush could actually do anything so crazy as to launch a military attack against Iran, and that even if he wanted to, the Congress, the Pentagon, and the American public would ever countenance such action.

The problem is that today the downside risks of attacking Iran seem even more horrendous ---- and yet? It makes me nervous when my president truly believes he is carrying out the will of God. So this is why I reluctantly believe today that Bush will indeed launch an attack on Iran before the expiration of his term of office:

1. As expected, Iran has offered to enter negotiations, but has rejected the precondition that they discontinue uranium enrichment. Iran will continue to stall indefinitely in the expectation that the U.S. cannot summon the international political and economic clout to damage Iran to any critical degree in the near future.

2. The U.S. will fail to get the UNSC to establish (and then enforce) a regimen of sanctions that Washington considers tough enough --- despite the unanimous concern of the larger powers, including China and Russia, that a nuclear Iran would be undesirable.

3. Whatever sanctions are eventually applied will have zero chance of persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions; most certain is the fact that Iran will continue its development program without any slowdown until it has passed the US-Israel "red line" of possessing the necessary raw material to produce a nuclear bomb whenever it chooses to do so.

full article

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/why_bush_will_c.html#more

Ray Close is a former CIA analyst in the Near East division. He is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

[joemurphy]

1. He'll do it because he'll think it's politically expedient and

because he's an ignorant simpleton who really believes himself to be the instrument of God.

[eccles12]

2. Who in their right mind would expect Iran to halt enrichment in the face

of US/Israel/UK aggression? If that is going to be Bush's excuse to attack Iran, then we can all expect the attack to begin anytime but I think we will be in for a rude awakening. I predict that an attack on Iran will not only bring the Arab street together but will unite Sunni and Shia leadership as well. The Arabs will put aside their differences with the Persians and the economic toll on the US will bring us to our knees. They won't have to drop one bomb.

[bananarepublican]

6. Who has Iran attacked in the last 30 years?

Was Saddam doing America's bidding in the early eighties by initiating a war against Iran? Who supplied Iraq with "weapons of mass destruction" during this war... AND then turned around and accused Iraq of having said weapons???

I'm developing an ability to know a rogue nation when I see one. To me, Iran is not any more of a rogue nation than either the USA, or indeed, the UK.

Let's face facts, nukes are safer in the hands of the Iranians, than they are in those of Dick Cheney.

[bronxiteforever]

3. Interesting article but how does Bush attack Iran in the face of

China/Russia alliance? They simply won't let this happen.China gets alot of oil from Iran -from the bbc "Iran supplied roughly 13% of China's oil imports in 2003, according to official figures quoted by Xinhua." They just signed the world's largest oil deal too.

[clmbohdem]

4. A catastrophic event that proves Iran is a threat.

Americans will start waving flags and chant USA causing Congress to bend over and take it, then boom, there goes Iran. Then Russia/China must make the decision, how crazy is the nut in the White House? I'm not so sure Russia/China will go all out on this one.

[Betty]

5. and what army is the asshole going to use?

he's already decimated the armed forces we have. He'll have to reinstate the draft/