[lbo-talk] Bush plan to bomb Iran?

Michael Pugliese michael.098762001 at gmail.com
Mon May 16 12:08:01 PDT 2005


Some more from Hersh

The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible," the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.

Some of the missions involve extraordinary coöperation. For example, the former high-level intelligence official told me that an American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and is now working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and technicians who had dealt with Iranian counterparts. (In 2003, the I.A.E.A. disclosed that Iran had been secretly receiving nuclear technology from Pakistan for more than a decade, and had withheld that information from inspectors.) The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations. The task-force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices—known as sniffers—capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.

Also see article in the latest GQ (!) by Joshua Kurtzlantzik (spelling?) on Pentagon/CIA war plans to topple the Iranian regime using the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the ex-leftist, cultish guerillas. MEK has support in Congress from left Democrats like Bob Filner (D.Ca.) to reactionary Rep. Tom Toncredo (R-Co.)

-- Michael Pugliese



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