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Will This End in Iraq?

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13:10 / 31.03.03

It seems like 'They' picked this weekend to start the build-up to invade Syria and Iran next, or at least bomb them.

Iran, Syria get Grave Warning

Same Here

It is now time for the entire international community to step up and insist that Iran end its support for terrorists, including groups violently opposed to Israel and to the Middle East peace process," Powell said here late Sunday.

"Tehran must stop pursuing weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them," Powell told the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful Jewish lobby group.

Powell then singled out Syria, saying: "Syria now faces a critical choice. "Syria can continue direct support for terrorist groups and the dying regime of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), or it can embark on a different and more hopeful course," he said. "Either way, Syria bears the responsibility for its choices, and for the consequences."

Powell said that as part of its "overall strategy in combating terrorism," Washington was "demanding more responsible behavior" from "states that do not follow acceptable patterns of behavior."

Iran and Syria denied the charges.

The warnings to Syria came after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he hoped US forces would fail to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and predicted that if they did, Washington and ally London would be confronted by a "popular resistance" that would prevent them from controlling the country.

The same day, Syrian mufti Sheikh Ahmad Kaftaro called for suicide attacks against US forces. And on Sunday, Al-Jazeera television reported that an unknown number of Syrians had arrived in Iraq's northern city of Mosul to fight for Saddam.

Syria's Response

Iraq's Mass Destruction Weapons in Syria, Israeli Says

I didn't think that the US could invade Iraq a year ago, but it's happened. As insane as it sounds, could the USA/et al. really be building up to kill other countries since they're already in the region will all those troops?

13:19 / 31.03.03

According to Joshua Marshall , White House officials (read: Karl Rove) are already distancing themselves from Rumsfeld, and setting him up to take the fall for whatever happens in Iraq. Marshall has an excellent line on the domestic political implications of the war in Iraq, and conventional wisdom (and White House 'talking points') seems to be that the President was mislead about Iraq by his advisors, mainly the Rumsefeldians but also Dick Cheney. I urge you to read this letter from an anonymous "career diplomat" (Marshall's description of whom would probably be enough for an intrepid soul to tentatively ID the person), who offers the only cogent and convincing prediction of where the war will go, that I've read. And it probably won't be to Syria and Iran.

yawn - thing's buddy

13:20 / 31.03.03

not a fuckin chance.

they're shitting themselves is all.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

15:21 / 31.03.03

The agenda as it was relayed to me by someone more than moderately well-informed some while back was Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, China. I assmume this is a sort of Hawks' Christmas List.

Yes, I know that sounds ludicrous. I'm just reporting.

Oh, and I'm not sure whether it went 'Iran, Syria' or 'Syria, Iran'. Although the order is presumably fairly flexible.

That was looong before the war started, and I thought it, if not fanciful, at least mid-term to long-term, and probably Bushie-wishful - so you can imagine that I went apeshit when I saw Rumsfeld getting tough on Iran and Syria. I'm still goggling.

15:25 / 31.03.03

In fact, at the beginning of the propaganda ramp to support the war on Iraq, Rumsfeld and Bush alike were making as if Iran and Syria were considered equally valid targets. Iraq, in fact, wasn't presented seperately or more urgently -- they indicated that all of these people had to go. Scary, scary.

16:05 / 31.03.03

I don't reckon, not after this fiasco

19:12 / 31.03.03

Maybe the US has just read too many Tom Clancy books and fears Syria and Iran taking over Iraq if the USA leaves*.

One of the article is talking of fears of Iran getting a nuclear bomb and using it on Israel. Is that really feasable? Would Iran do that, especially since Israel probably has them, as well as the USA?

*(That was a Tom Clany plot. Hussein is assasinated and Iran takes over and forms the United Arab Country, and invades Saudi Arabia, which is only saved by American intervention and
'decapitation strike' on the Ayatollah.)

19:17 / 31.03.03

"Im bored. Let's take over the world.
Oh and send out some of those Britishins too"

19:22 / 31.03.03

Presenting.... The New American Century, as brought to you by among others, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad. And the letter W.

And they say the Left looks through rose-colored glasses.

19:53 / 31.03.03

I was going to say - surely the whole point of this exercise, from the point of view of the PNAC people, is precisely that it doesn't stop with Iraq... there's some interesting stuff on this at Information Clearing House.

I just cannot understand that mindset, I really can't - it just doesn't compute...

20:19 / 31.03.03

Many of those folks are card-carrying Neoconvervatives -- an ideological group which does, in fact believe that U.S. superiority is a virtue all it's own and should be reinforced as such.

12:51 / 01.04.03

But they can't afford this, can they? The deficit's reaching a trillion, the economy is still in the tank... Do they even have the army strength to take on Iran??

It's just too absurd a thought to consider to be serious.

14:41 / 01.04.03

It is absurd, but they can still take more money from the American people. They haven't even begun to get their war on. When the rations come, then we'll know the financial situation. I think Bush is hoping for two things -- Firstly, that he'll achieve enough political power by obtaining a stranglehold over Iraqi oil to pressure would-be opponents into capitulating to U.S. demands without armed conflict. Second, that American markets will enjoy an adrenaline boost thanks to the need to build more bombs and planes coupled with the sudden availability of so much oil. In a very particular sense, Iraq is the richest nation on earth. I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. managed to impose regulations setting Iraq up to sell to U.S. and only the U.S. Thus the United States would become the premier oil merchants in the world community. OPEC would seem laughable. Doing war could become much easier. Popular resistance is key. In my opinion, the most effective course of action right now is to pre-emptively assure that there is little American popular support for further conflicts.

I'm curious to see how many of those servicemen are going to need jobs when they get back.

20:13 / 01.04.03

What do you mean when they get back? We've got enough wars planned to keep them overseas til they're old and gray.

Apparently, right after Bush's "election," they sent all those New American Century guys out to his Crawford Ranch where they taught him everything he knows about the world and foreign policy, their way. Their way, as I understand it, basically means toppling every non-democratic government in the world one-by-one and forcing democracy on them. The list, as Nick gave it, is pretty much the order they talk about. The basic idea being that we fixed Japan and Germany by beating them in a war and running them for awhile, so why not do the same all over the globe?

The scariest thing is that this isn't even really conspiracy theory. These guys have published all of it (much of it in Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard), and are very open about it (except Rumsfeld who has to keep a little quiet about the ultimate plan).

21:27 / 01.04.03

Conquest followed by the Republican version of the Marshall Plan--enterprise zones and workfare, no doubt. War won't bring a sustained boost to the economy. The circle of favored contractors is too small, and they don't employ nearly as many people as in the old days. It'll be like crack, or maybe PCP, for the economy. Still, the war is pretty cheap as a fraction of the GDP, compared to other wars. The Korean war was the most expensive. I'll try to find a link in the morning.

23:44 / 01.04.03

"What do you mean when they get back? We've got enough wars planned to keep them overseas til they're old and gray."

Right. Believe me, I know. But to be literal and proper here, they will be coming back, and there won't be enough crack in the economy to go around, if I can borrow.

"The scariest thing is that this isn't even really conspiracy theory. These guys have published all of it (much of it in Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard), and are very open about it (except Rumsfeld who has to keep a little quiet about the ultimate plan)."

It gets worse. They believe all of this is mandated by god, and their doctrine states that approval and agreement always come after successful military endeavours. It is therefore best policy in Neoconvervatist thought to ignore entirely dissent from inside and out. They can't be stopped democratically, funnily enough.

09:44 / 02.04.03

*(That was a Tom Clany plot. Hussein is assasinated and Iran takes over and forms the United Arab Country, and invades Saudi Arabia, which is only saved by American intervention and
'decapitation strike' on the Ayatollah.)

Jesus fucking Christ - this explains a lot. Does anyone in the Bush administration realise that the majority of Iranians aren't Arabs but Persian - or are they just relying on hack novelists for 'intelligence' now?

11:10 / 02.04.03

Well, the previous Tom Clancy book ended with a crazed Japanese airline pilot crashing a 747 into the capitol, killing the entire senate, the president, cabinet, etc. so after September, 11 he somehow became an expert or something...

Jack Straw said today that the UK will not invade Syria or Iran

We're The Great Old Ones Now

11:29 / 02.04.03

Arg.

Does he even remember that WMD are supposed to be a/the main reason we're going into Iraq?

"Iran is an emerging democracy and there would be no case whatsoever for taking any kind of action."

It's embarrassing. They're not even consistent.

13:53 / 03.04.03

I'm kind of hoping that, the one good thing that could come out of the disaster that is Gulf War II at the moment America will not be able to continue with their big mideast takeover plan.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

14:43 / 03.04.03

Well, let no one forget: Blair has ruled out UK participation in any attack on Syria.

I, for one, will not sit still for it if he goes back on that.

16:51 / 03.04.03

That's supposed to be funny, right?

18:58 / 03.04.03

Cherry wrote:I'm kind of hoping that, the one good thing that could come out of the disaster that is Gulf War II at the moment America will not be able to continue with their big mideast takeover plan.

I guess that's the only way these plans make sense, is that they didn't think they would meet much resistance in invading Iraq, and therefore in Syria, Iran, etc.
Looking at the problems they're had convincing people that Iraq was a threat, convincing anyone that they should continue this elsewhere next would be impossible.

01:39 / 04.04.03

I don't know about that; the US, at least, is a nation become used to waging war. "convincing" people of the need to war on Iraq seemed relatively painless and easy. While a long, protracted conflict may be seen as undesirable to one's constituents, it doesn't look like their current admin has any problems with it, as it's "good for business" (or so the myth goes). And problems encountered in Iraq right now, well, they seem to merely fuel the TV drama that this is a "real" war, replete with the realpolitik of ego-driven Hollywood power struggles. I mean, you don't want this to look like a total slaughter; there has to be some threat level therein.

To me, it seems all too easy now for the US to wage war wherever it feels. Mobilizing their populace for Iraq was a pushover; if I understand correctly, there's an even more visible majority in the UK opposing the current rationale for war, but Blair's all on board regardless. Please correct me if I'm wrong, though.

11:56 / 04.04.03

The Russians are helping Syria and Iraq modernize their militaries, I think. They'd be stupid not to. Russia's economy may be weak, but they can still tell Bush, "what are ya gonna do? nuke us?"

Who says Bush can't build coalitions? He'll certainly push Germany, France and Russia closer together at this rate.

10:19 / 15.04.03

After a weekend of threatening Syria with sanctions and war, they've apparently (and hopefully) decided not to bomb Damascus

In the past few weeks, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered contingency plans for a war on Syria to be reviewed following the fall of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, his undersecretary for policy, Doug Feith, and William Luti, the head of the Pentagon's office of special plans, were asked to put together a briefing paper on the case for war against Syria, outlining its role in supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein, its links with Middle East terrorist groups and its allegedly advanced chemical weapons programme. Mr Feith and Mr Luti were both instrumental in persuading the White House to go to war in Iraq...

...President George Bush, who faces re-election next year with two perilous nation-building projects, in Afghanistan and Iraq, on his hands, is said to have cut off discussion among his advisers about the possibility of taking the "war on terror" to Syria.

23:44 / 09.10.03

It looks like the USA's trying to keep on Syria AND Iran at the same time now:

US mulling defensive missiles against Iran in Europe: report

The US government is considering stationing defensive missiles in a number of European countries against a potential attack from Iran.

Germany's Sueddeutsche newspaper quoted a high-ranking US diplomat as saying that the Americans would like to develop a defensive missile network with Europeans but doubted whether a deal could be reached quickly by NATO, in an article to appear in its Friday issue, citing State Department sources. Because of these concerns, Washington may pursue bilateral agreements with individual European countries for deployment in 2006 anti-ballistic systems in exchange for economic aid, the Sueddeutsche said.

US defense policy specialist Benjamin Schreer of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs told the newspaper that Romania and Bulgaria could be the "first choices" for such agreements with the United States.

...I know the USA used the same logic with Iraq, which itself didn't seem likely to suddenly invade a neighboring country anytime soon, but what would Iran have to gain from launching a strike? Or is the US worried of a retaliatory strike if/when it invades?

00:40 / 10.10.03

I think Rumsfeld and possibly the rest of the neo-con executive at Defense are on their way out. Rumsfeld not being included in the reorganization of the "reconstruction" efforts was a very clear message, and his anger when it was brought up was pretty clear. Rice is now in control of the administration's foreign policy.

Rumsfeld will be resigning in the next month, barring any unexpected geopolitical developments.

17:04 / 10.10.03

Rumsfeld resigning...now that WOULD be nice.

I don't forsee any kind of invasion of Iran and Syria though. Covert action? Yes. Airstrikes & cruise missiles? Probably. But invasion and occupation? Very doubtful. Of course, we could always have another "Gulf of Tonkin"-type scenario.

17:37 / 10.10.03

Y'know, he's still got some kind of Executive Override in all them Robo-Cop units.

You *know* it's true.

The minute someone inside moves against him, smart missles will just start flying every damn where.

Unless they can set it up so he takes the fall for the CIA-exposed business.

00:06 / 11.10.03

Knives are out for Powell too, apparently. Rumours published today that both him and Rumsfeld will have no part in a second Bush administration, if to our collective woe the man is re-elected.

07:39 / 11.10.03

The War Against Terror still has legs, though not for much longer, barring an "October Surprise." Since the WMD angle is an obvious bust, who better to pitch over the side for 2004 than Rummy (while keeping the core PNAC gang)? For the rest of us, Rice is a godsend, since she looks downright evil (as opposed to Rumsfeld and Cheney, who look corrupt and overfed, respectively). And if you wanted to anger a Shiite Iraq, you couldn't do better than to put a woman in charge. I think she's being set up in case Iraq looks worse in 2004 and the election gods demand a further sacrifice. Both Powells are gone. The father blew his political capital representing the unwanted "liberal wing" and the son, as FCC Chairman, failed to deliver the goods for Rupert Murdoch.

And who do *you* pick for the Rugby World Cup?

13:23 / 14.05.04

Given that the USA put sanctions on Syria last week, is this a run up?

They are next door to Iraq, and are being blamed for letting all those insurgents in...

We're The Great Old Ones Now

13:34 / 14.05.04

I think, in the fantasy, Syria was next on the list, then Iran (maybe vice versa, who knows) and North Korea. But then, the whole thing was predicated on the notion of a quick, clean liberation, American Boys Feted Through Baghdad and Home For Beer And Medals. Right now, Iraq looks distinctly less than fun, and Afghanistan is a mess. I wouldn't imagine they're keen to open a new front. But what do I know? This administration is pretty bloody odd.

08:32 / 15.05.04

Hey, its not like Afghanistan was turn into a safe and stable fully democratic state before the invasion of Iraq...

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