Heartening news - if it can be believed
I'm of at least two minds about this story:
A veteran U.S. journalist says the Bush Administration is carrying out secret reconnaissance missions in Iran to identify targets for possible military strikes.
In a story published in The New Yorker magazine, Seymour Hersh says informed sources told him the Defense Department has sent secret commando teams into the Islamic nation to identify nuclear, chemical and missile sites that could be destroyed by precision airstrikes and commando raids.
On the one hand, I very much want this to be true, because if Iran is to be denied nuclear weapons that they would surely not hestitate to use against us and Israel, and given how close they are to attaining a nuclear arsenal if they don't have one already, some form of military action on our part is practically inevitable. At the very least we need to have that option, and that would mean the very sort of reconnaissance that the Hersh piece alleges.
On the other hand, Seymour Hersh is a rabid, dedicated Bushophobe who, it will be recalled, was the lead scandalmonger in the Abu Ghraib abuse episode and would certainly not be above "getting creative" with such a story in order to plant the notion that the President and his "neocon" palace guard were about to "go mad" with another invasion on the heels of the "quagmire" they made of Iraq. (He does work for the New York Times, after all.)
There is a third possibility, though, and it is the most insidious. Namely, that this special forces reconnaissance inside Iran is going on, and that (let's not mince words here) traitors in the bowels of the intelligence community who lean Democrat, have always opposed the Administration's foreign policy, and are threatened by the Porter Goss housecleaning operation, are pulling out all the stops to try and derail the Bush White House into embarrassment, scandal, and/or defeat by leaking such secret operations, even if it endangers the lives of the military personal so deployed and imperils U.S. national security.
David Frum got out his magic marker and went through the Hersh article:
There’s this:
“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, an 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 a much of the military infrastructure as possible,’ the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.’
And this:
“[T]he 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. …The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations.”
How about this:
“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.”
And so on and on.
An unscrupulous bastard like Hersh would be only to gleefully eager to run with what he would consider pure gold. But, assuming any of this is on the level, it is his sources who, quite honestly, should be facing firing squads before it's all said and done.
Or, as Mr. Frum more diplomatically concludes:
The fact is that considerable elements of the national security apparatus have gone into open mutiny against this war. If the only way to stop it is to drive the country to defeat, then they will welcome – and indeed hasten – that defeat. If the Administration is to save the situation, it must begin by taking sabotage of the war effort at least half as seriously as it takes indiscretion at the Department of Health and Human Services. The saboteurs do not believe that the Administration will take serious action against them. It’s long past time to correct that misapprehension.
And its penultimate words should be, "Ready...aim..."
A veteran U.S. journalist says the Bush Administration is carrying out secret reconnaissance missions in Iran to identify targets for possible military strikes.
In a story published in The New Yorker magazine, Seymour Hersh says informed sources told him the Defense Department has sent secret commando teams into the Islamic nation to identify nuclear, chemical and missile sites that could be destroyed by precision airstrikes and commando raids.
On the one hand, I very much want this to be true, because if Iran is to be denied nuclear weapons that they would surely not hestitate to use against us and Israel, and given how close they are to attaining a nuclear arsenal if they don't have one already, some form of military action on our part is practically inevitable. At the very least we need to have that option, and that would mean the very sort of reconnaissance that the Hersh piece alleges.
On the other hand, Seymour Hersh is a rabid, dedicated Bushophobe who, it will be recalled, was the lead scandalmonger in the Abu Ghraib abuse episode and would certainly not be above "getting creative" with such a story in order to plant the notion that the President and his "neocon" palace guard were about to "go mad" with another invasion on the heels of the "quagmire" they made of Iraq. (He does work for the New York Times, after all.)
There is a third possibility, though, and it is the most insidious. Namely, that this special forces reconnaissance inside Iran is going on, and that (let's not mince words here) traitors in the bowels of the intelligence community who lean Democrat, have always opposed the Administration's foreign policy, and are threatened by the Porter Goss housecleaning operation, are pulling out all the stops to try and derail the Bush White House into embarrassment, scandal, and/or defeat by leaking such secret operations, even if it endangers the lives of the military personal so deployed and imperils U.S. national security.
David Frum got out his magic marker and went through the Hersh article:
There’s this:
“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, an 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 a much of the military infrastructure as possible,’ the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.’
And this:
“[T]he 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. …The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations.”
How about this:
“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.”
And so on and on.
An unscrupulous bastard like Hersh would be only to gleefully eager to run with what he would consider pure gold. But, assuming any of this is on the level, it is his sources who, quite honestly, should be facing firing squads before it's all said and done.
Or, as Mr. Frum more diplomatically concludes:
The fact is that considerable elements of the national security apparatus have gone into open mutiny against this war. If the only way to stop it is to drive the country to defeat, then they will welcome – and indeed hasten – that defeat. If the Administration is to save the situation, it must begin by taking sabotage of the war effort at least half as seriously as it takes indiscretion at the Department of Health and Human Services. The saboteurs do not believe that the Administration will take serious action against them. It’s long past time to correct that misapprehension.
And its penultimate words should be, "Ready...aim..."
posted by JASmius at 4:43 PM
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