Secret US air force team to perfect plan for Iran strike

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk

THE United States Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic
planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions rise with
Iran.

Project Checkmate, a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War’s
air campaign, was quietly reestablished at the Pentagon in June.

It reports directly to General Michael Moseley, the US Air Force chief, and
consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defence and cyberspace experts
with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence
agencies.

Detailed contingency planning for a possible attack on Iran has been carried
out for more than two years by Centcom (US central command), according to
defence sources.

It is led by Brigadier-General Lawrence “Stutz” Stutzriem, who is considered
one of the brightest air force generals. He is assisted by Dr Lani Kass, a
former Israeli military officer and expert on cyberwarfare.

Greenspan Says Iraq War Was About Oil

clipped from http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/09/17/greenspan_spills_the_beans.php

Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, whom the president has praised for his "wise policies and prudent judgment." Sadly for Bush and Cheney, Greenspan decided to put prudence aside in his new book, The Age of Turbulence, and answer the most neuralgiac issue of our times-why the United States invaded Iraq.

Greenspan writes:

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

In the heady days of "Mission Accomplished," a week after the president landed on the aircraft carrier, then-deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz virtually bragged about the deceit during an interview. On May 9, 2003, Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair:

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason..."

Bush Setting America Up for War With Iran

clipped from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/16/wiran116.xml

Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.

The intelligence source said: "No one outside that tight circle knows what is going to happen." But he said that within the CIA "many if not most officials believe that diplomacy is failing" and that "top Pentagon brass believes the same".

Recent developments over Iraq appear to fit with the pattern of escalation predicted by Pentagon officials.

US Plans to Attack Iran

Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran

clipped from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2369001.ece

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.

"We Are Going To Hit Iran. Bigtime"

"I don’t think it’s limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every damn Tomahawk we have in inventory. I think this is going to be massive and sudden, like thousands of targets. I believe that no American will know when it happens until after it happens. And whatever the consequences, whatever the consequences, they will have to be lived with. I am sure if my father knew I was telling someone in a news organization that we were about to launch a supposedly secret attack that it would be treason. But something inside me tells me to tell it anyway."