US Carrier group headed towards Iran
There's been a lot of talk in the lefty blogosphere recently about US Naval deployments close to the shores of Iran. AlterNet:
The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.Billmon and Digby have both mentioned it. The best coverage on the fleet movements and their proximity to the midterm elections seems to be this Kos diary by Steven D. I wish I could say that this was all tinfoil hat speculation, but I would not put it past this administration to launch airstrikes against Iran in an effort to salvage the midterm elections. I can only hope that saner heads in the US military prevail and prevent this immoral and counterproductive action. And I hope the American voters don't fall for such a ploy.
Comments
But I suspect that there are ways they could frustrate and attempt to attack Iran: foot dragging, asking for more time to build up forces, etc. But if the carrier group is on its way there, there probably isn't much one could do to delay things.
I’m ex-Air Force, and there’s no way in hell that the generals will be able to dissuade Bush and Condi and Rumsfeld from doing just exactly what they want to do. And the coup thing is most definitely out of the question. Subordination to (elected) civilian leadership is far too ingrained in the U.S. military. (And that’s a good thing.)
This is the first I’ve heard of a naval task group headed toward Iran. Gonna have to check it out. But I wouldn’t be surprised.
I think of it this way: The Bush administration has rewritten the rules of mathematics, and it goes like this:
1 + 1 = 3 so,
al Qaeda attacks on 9/11 + al Qaeda hiding out in Afghanistan = invade Iraq
North Korea has fissile material + North Korea tests nuke = send task force to Iran
I call it “the newer new math”. The thing that gets me is that in his 2002 state of the union address, George identified North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as the “Axis if Evil”. In that exact order! And at the time, everyone knew that North Korea was the real the bad-ass of the bunch--the closest one to getting nukes. So Bush decided to go after the easiest of the three and hope that the other ones would go away until he was out of office. And now we know for a fact that Kim Chong Il has nukes, and George has to be seen as doing something, ANYTHING, so he’s gonna try to redirect our attention toward Iran instead.
Wow. He probably thinks we haven’t noticed these things….
Yes, I agree that military subordination to civilian government is a very good thing. It just sucks that the current civilian government is so awful.
I would be very interested in learning more about the carrier task force moving to Iran. I tried to do some Google research, but I kept getting the same story, linked to over and over again by different people. Surely there's some war geek type sites out there that have cool little maps of what's going on. I know a lot of military information is classified and stuff, but you can't hide the movements of an aircraft carrier.
I feel so frustrated that there seems to be NO WAY to influence the behavior of this administration. Public opinion doesn't matter to them, international opinion doesn't matter, military opinion doesn't matter, former administration officials don't matter, their own state department seems to be stymied by Cheney and Rumsfeld a lot.
I really hope a Democratic congress comes in with this election, and I hope it exercises its oversight functions. But that wouldn't prevent a late October strike on Iran.