Apr 9, 2006
Would Bush Bomb Iran?
"Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?" asks Seymour M. Hersh in the latest issue of The New Yorker. Go here to read his story.
"Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium."
Today’s Sunday Times (London) tells us that"[t]he favoured scenario is an attack using a small number of ground attack aircraft flying out of the British dependency of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The British would have to approve the use of the American base there for an attack and would be asked to play a supporting role by providing air-to-air refuelling or sending surveillance aircraft, ships and submarines."
Would Tony Blair oblige? Although Harold Wilson, the British premier in the 1960s, had the nous to refuse LBJ's request to provide a token British force to fight alongside the U.S. in Vietnam, I can well imagine Blair supporting Bush in an attack on Iran. Would the Cabinet and the Parliamentary Labour Party accept the decision? I can see enough resignations to terminate Blair's tenure at 10 Downing Street. But I fear the Conservative Party would for the most part support Blair—just like most Democrats would support Bush.
"Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium."
Today’s Sunday Times (London) tells us that"[t]he favoured scenario is an attack using a small number of ground attack aircraft flying out of the British dependency of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The British would have to approve the use of the American base there for an attack and would be asked to play a supporting role by providing air-to-air refuelling or sending surveillance aircraft, ships and submarines."
Would Tony Blair oblige? Although Harold Wilson, the British premier in the 1960s, had the nous to refuse LBJ's request to provide a token British force to fight alongside the U.S. in Vietnam, I can well imagine Blair supporting Bush in an attack on Iran. Would the Cabinet and the Parliamentary Labour Party accept the decision? I can see enough resignations to terminate Blair's tenure at 10 Downing Street. But I fear the Conservative Party would for the most part support Blair—just like most Democrats would support Bush.