Attack Inevitable?

Chris Floyd From Empire Burlesque observes,

Day after day, almost hour by hour, fresh confirmation comes of the impending American attack on Iran. Yet the same surreal malaise that hung over public affairs before the war of aggression against Iraq has descended again. Everyone knows the war is coming and nothing will stop it, but the strange, ludicrous shadow play of sham "debate" goes on, as if there were some kind of political or diplomatic maneuver out there that could deflect the Bush-Cheney junta from its long-chosen course. But nothing will stop them, just as nothing — not even 10 million people in the streets around the world, the largest protest in human history — stopped them from the rape of Iraq. It's what they want to do — and they will do it.

Cole also points us to the story by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane, who reported on the study by two respected British academics on the likely course of the coming war. According to Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, former Director of the British American Security Information Council, the war preparations now being made by the Bush Administration bespeak something far beyond a quick punitive strike on Iranian Guards positions or lightning raid on Iran's nuclear power facilities. Instead, what the Bush-Cheney junta envision is the complete destruction of the Iranian state in an aerial blitzkrieg aimed at up to 10,000 targets inside Iran.

The goal, says Plesch and Butcher, is to:

"destroy Iran's WMD [capabilities], nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order...Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact. US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours. US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.

Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.

And when we do strike,we will reap the whirlwind. In all likelihood, it will be the end of American empire. As former State Department Middle East and Iraq official Wayne White observed, the last fool hubristic enough to attack Iran paid dearly -- Saddam Hussein. Over the course of eight years, Hussein's army suffered a quarter of a million losses while Iran took about a million casualties. What does that show us? That an attack on Iran has no endgame. Just as they (the older generation anyway) never forgive the US for overthrowing their democratically elected leader and installing our vicious despot, the Shah, an overt attack by the US will lead inexorably to a generational war with the proud nation, one that is capable of sending the global energy market into a freefall likely resulting in a global recession at the very least if not worse, and could bring our country to the point of financial bankruptcy.

former State Department and CIA counterterrorism official Larry Johnson explores what will happened militarily when we do launch a preventative strike,