Stumbling towards disaster - again
Bush asked for - and received - $400,000,000 to conduct covert
military operation against Iran.
A quote from the recent Sy Hersch article in the New Yorker
"Operations outside the knowledge and control of commanders have
eroded “the coherence of military strategy,” one general says."
Further, it seems the only people in the government (or military)
who favor an attack on Iran are Bush and Cheney:
"A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an
off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with
the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held
regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush
Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the
senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our
grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s
comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator
asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick
Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say
that I’m here speaking for myself.” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed
that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but
would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s
characterization.)
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen,
were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to
undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with
the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is
involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag
and general officers, including combatant commanders”—the four-star
officers who direct military operations around the world—“have
weighed in on that issue.”