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the consequence may well be that China crashes the US dollar (they hold much of our debt paper), or a consortium of China, Russia and India do so (they met recently with this as the agenda--how to stop the bully US), or an an even bigger consortium including most of Europe (everyone potentially impacted by US nukes or mass refugee problems--Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, along with FORMER allies France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ireland....), or, basically, the entire world, will join together to crash the US dollar and punish us in other ways. South America--now gone almost entirely "blue" as to political maps--has been discussing a South American "Common Market" and common currency--to get off the US dollar. The punishment could be very severe--and we, the American people, unfortunately, would be the ones to suffer it most. The Bush Junta no doubt has all their stolen booty in foreign currency.
There is no question that Cheney (18% approval rating) "wants" Iran. That's the main reason he's in office. They had a deal. The Corporate Reich would cover his ass. He would get them control of the Mideast oil fields. And there is no question that he's moved the US fleet into position, and that the "surge" money and troops are a buildup to bombing/invasion of Iran, in Cheney's mind.
But there are other possibilities: 1. That the fleet is there to warn off Iran, as to its legitimate and natural interest in the disaster we have created next door. And Cheney intends to hang onto Iraq with tooth and claw (our soldiers lives). (There is no way Cheney can invade Iran--doesn't have the troops; can't hold it; "Big Crusade" has bombed at home--74% of the people opposed--nobody wants this dirty "Crusade.") So the idea is to hold Iraq. 2. That the fleet is there as cover for a US withdrawal, again to warn Iran off intervening in Iraq in the subsequent vacuum. Cheney and Bush are not good at anything except killing people. They cannot put together the international meeting needed for the US to withdraw from Iraq. They have to do it with guns and threats and saber-ratting. 3. There is a split between Bush and Cheney--evident in the Libby trial, and in other ways--with Bush tugged by, for instance, the Iraq Study Group (Bush I), by Republicans concerned about elections, by the economic realities (China holding our paper--China gets a lot of its oil from Iran), and by the complete repudiation of his war policy by the American people (in so far as they could outvote the machines) in 2006.
So, with Possibility #3, what we are looking at is a CONFUSED policy: Cheney pushing for war, war, war, to save his ass from the Corporate Reich (who don't like their tools getting indicted--Cheney has been unable to get a handle on Fitzgerald), and/or to create such mayhem that impeachment is impossible, on the one hand (and Cheney having to do so with his chief co-dirty trickster, Rumsfeld, ousted*); and, on the other hand, Bush, Cheney's puppet, trying to distance himself from the Plame wars, and build his "My Pet Goat" library.
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*(Rumsfeld's ouster is pretty interesting. On the surface, there has been no change of policy in Iraq. So why was he ousted? If it was some sort of sop to the Democrats, it was short-lived. Bush came right back with "the surge." And if it wasn't related to the elections, what WAS it related to? My guess: To a Pentagon plot, uncovered by insiders, to plant nukes in Iraq, after the invasion, as followup to the Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries--planted evidence to justify the war, and to discredit the CIA (--enticed into a no-nukes-in-Iraq position, by the "crude" forgeries). The plot was foiled--possibly by someone in Plame's WMD counter-proliferation network. Thus, the outings of Plame and that network by two enraged plotters--Rumsfeld and Cheney. Cheney has more of an excuse--political coverup--and is harder to oust (with his Diebold/ES&S "mandate"). Rumsfeld--on the operational end, actively engaged in this nefarious plot--had to go. And what went with him was the foul "dirty trickster" operational capability re war on Iran. Cheney is still in forward motion on that scheme (so is Libby, in my opinion), but now lacks the dirty ops they had arranged for tricking Iran into war, or that capability is severely reduced.)
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Upshot of all this: The world is not nearly as paralyzed, in dealing with Bush Junta aggression, as it was back in 2003. The Junta has lost all sorts of support. Even the Brits are pulling out. Support at home has evaporated. They're barely hanging onto their base (maybe 30%--diehard 'christian' jihadists, the super-rich). There is disaster everywhere you look in their administration--starting with a $10 trillion deficit (and that's just the part we know about). Rampant corruption. Discontent on every side, within and without government, within and without the Republican Party, among corporatists, and even among war profiteers, who may fear their big tit drying up, when the dust settles with the American people. The Junta has transformed us into a "paper tiger." Our emergency services are in shambles. Our schools are failing. Millions of jobs have been outsourced. Our manufacturing capability has been outsourced. Even services are being outsourced. The middle class is disappearing--even their homes are becoming worthless now. Upward mobility (hope for the poor) is gone. Costs for ordinary people (energy, medical, education) are skyrocketing. The credit card companies are completely out-of-control. Not to mention the enormous damage to our military. All with a government that doesn't give a crap. And the whole world can see it. We could not have been better set up for some sort of attack--financial, natural disaster, plague, opportunistic terrorist or insider terrorist (if those plans are still in place). So how Cheney intends to bomb and occupy Iran, in these circumstances, is beyond me. It is a practical impossibility. The man may be mad. And Bush may be stupid. But I don't think the US military leaders are stupid (or crazy). I think there are very powerful forces, at home and abroad, pushing back.
Even limited damage to Iran I think would cause such a reaction, we would never recover. And what has Iran done to deserve such an attack? They want nukes. Lord, if I were them, I would want nukes, too. They do not have imperial ambitions. There is no evidence of it whatsoever. They may have elements who sympathize with Palestinians and other displaced Middle Easterners, and hate Israel, but they wouldn't bomb Israel (with total annihilation as the probable consequence). Bush/Cheney may have created a far more dangerous world than we had before, but we will just have to live with it, and hope for a standoff, until we can do better. Bombing Iran, to stop them from getting nukes, will not solve the problem, and could well fail. Then what? You have the entire Muslim world up in arms--and the entire rest of the world in sympathy with them. Even just thinking coldly and strategically, it is stupid beyond belief. The scheme of an old sick man trying to hang onto power.
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