Bombs That Would Backfire - New York Times

Bombs That Would Backfire - New York Times
In this article Richard Clarke and Steven Simon note that "a conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to our interests than the current struggle in Iraq has been." In this article they review US history with Iran and state the following:

American frustrations with Iran were growing, and in early 1996 the House speaker, Newt Gingrich, publicly called for the overthrow of the Iranian government. He and the C.I.A. put together an $18 million package to undertake it.

The Iranian legislature responded with a $20 million initiative for its intelligence organizations to counter American influence in the region... Iranian agents began casing American embassies and other targets around the world. In June 1996, the Qods Force...arranged the bombing of an apartment building used by our Air Force in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans.

Response from the Clinton administration in published reports "suggest that the United States responded with a chilling threat to the Tehran government and conducted a global operation that immobilized Iran's intelligence service. Iranian terrorism against the United States ceased...In essence, both sides looked down the road of conflict and chose to avoid further hostilities...

Now, as in the mid-90's, any United States bombing campaign would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process." This could cause oil prices to spike as high as $80 per barrell...Second and more likely, Iran could use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States.

Third, Iran is in a position to make our situation in Iraq far more difficult than it already is. The Badr Brigade and other Shiite militias in Iraq could launch a more deadly campaign against British and American troops. There is every reason to believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready...the question that would face American planners would be, "What's our next move?" How do we achieve so-called escalation dominance, the condition in which the other side fears responding because they know that the next round of American attacks would be too lethal for the regime to survive?... President Bush would most likely authorize wider and more intensive bombing...So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer...But the current level of activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling.

The parallels to the run-up to to war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was "no war plan on my desk" despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. Congress did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well.

As I noted earlier, the prospect of escalation in the Middle East is a frightening. The planned test bomb in June, I fear, will merely promote escalation from Iran. Where is our country going? Stop the merry-go-round Mr. Bush, it's time to get off and develop a SANE not INSANE policy. Then add to that his new "Decider" idea, and his mistaken belief that Rumsfeld is actually doing a good job, while his administration smears those retired Pentagon Generals who are now speaking out. These guys war game all the time, they know consequences, Bush and Co. know shit from consequences. The prospects for our nation are so daunting and so very, very frightening.