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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
US forces inside Iran to pick sites for air strikes
2005-01-18
AFP, Washington: Teams of US commandos have been operating inside Iran since last summer, selecting suspected weapons sites for possible air strikes, The New Yorker reported yesterday. The magazine's award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, who last year exposed the extent of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, wrote that he was repeatedly told by US intelligence and military sources that "the next strategic target was Iran."
Would that be "former intelligence and military sources, now unemployed with a chip on their shoulders"?
President George W. Bush has signed a series of orders authorizing commando groups to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia, the New Yorker said.
I would certainly hope so
The Bush administration has been conducting secret spying missions inside Iran at least since mid-2004, gathering intelligence on declared and suspected nuclear, chemical and missile sites, it said. "The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids," Hersh wrote.
"This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign," a former high-level government intelligence official told the magazine. "The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy," the official said.
Works for me
A top government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told the magazine that Pentagon civilians -- especially Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz -- "want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible." Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believe that Iran's clerical regime could not withstand a military blow and would collapse, the magazine reports.
International allies are helping the Pentagon with its Iran plans, according to the magazine. Israeli consultants are helping develop potential weapons targets inside Iran. Pakistan is also involved. Pakistani scientists are providing information to an American task force that is penetrating eastern Iran searching for underground nuclear installations, the magazine said.
In return, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has received guarantees that he will not have to hand over disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to international authorities for questioning. Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme, in February took responsibility for transfers of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
The New Yorker article went on to describe how the Bush White House has solidified control over US intelligence operations and how the Pentagon has finagled new powers to conduct covert operations without oversight from the US Congress or involvement by the CIA.
Pssst! Iran, the US spies are pretending to be al-Qaeda operatives. Don't tell anyone, ok?
Posted by:Steve

#3  Maybe the Bush Team is using hersh. Why else would they give him ANY info whatsoever? They know he's a freakin' idiot, out to discredit them any way he can.

"....We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy."

If the countries of the world don't want Americans coming soon to a country near them, chasing terrorists, all they have to do is stop helping the terrorists and start killing them.

The mullahs in iran must be shittin' in their robes right about now. Ha ha ha..... They know our boys can put a 2,000 pound bomb right in their soup bowl at dinnertime. And, that's just eatin' at their insides.
Posted by: Dudley Doright   2005-01-18 7:29:05 PM  

#2  Pssst! Iran, the US spies are pretending to be al-Qaeda operatives. Don't tell anyone, ok?

actually it's just as easy to hide as Basij members...I'd purge em all along with the shifty AQ guys
Posted by: Frank G   2005-01-18 2:16:31 PM  

#1  I doubt that "Seeless" Hersh knows what's going on. An earlier article said he was working on some kind of historical hysterical novel which puts such reports in the realm of fiction. If indeed we had SF, CIA, or Commandos in Iran on intelligence gathering missions, Hersh would be a traitor for endangering the lives of these people.
Posted by: John Q. Citizen   2005-01-18 1:57:32 PM  

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