Der nächste Krieg der USA wird gegen den Iran sein
03.10.2007 um 20:14
On Sept. 25, retired CIA officer Philip Giraldi penned a frightening piece for antiwar.com, which took up the potential consequences of a U.S. military confrontation with Iran. Under the provocative title "What World War III May Look Like," Giraldi spelled out an unfortunately realistic scenario for an escalation of military conflict between the United States and Iran, triggered by a low-level skirmish between U.S. and Iranian soldiers along the Iraq border. Under Giraldi's scenario, a full-scale war erupts between the United States and Iran, which soon spreads to Iraq, where Shi'ite insurgents engage in large-scale asymmetric combat with American soldiers, who finally have to shoot their way out of the country, at tremendous loss of life. Ultimately, the conflict spreads to the Eastern Mediterranean, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent; it sparks a war between India and Pakistan, a violent coup in Afghanistan, a war between Israel and Syria/Lebanon, riotingthroughout the Muslim nations of the Asia Pacific region, and, ultimately, U.S. use of nuclear weapons, which draws both Russia and China to the brink of intervention. As Giraldi concludes, "World War III has begun."
While we are hopefully some distance away from such an Armageddon nightmare, the onrushing global financial meltdown, and the tensions and war-moves throughout Southwest Asia make it a most appropriate time to take seriously the warnings offered by the former CIA officer.
Furthermore, according to a variety of Washington military sources, the U.S. Air Force is stepping up war plans against Iran through a planning unit called Project Checkmate. Created in the 1970s to plan out strategic warfare against the Soviet Union, Project Checkmate was revived in the early 1990s, as the air-war planning unit for Operation Desert Storm. In June of this year, Project Checkmate was reactivated, to plan for future wars, targetted immediately at Iran, and, in thelonger term, against North Korea and China. According to a Sept. 23, report in Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times, Project Checkmate is the Air Force's primo planning agency. Col. John Warden (USAF), who ran Project Checkmate in the 1990s, told the Times that the unit is vastly better situated to plan out the next war than the staff at the Central Command. "The Centcoms of this world are executional— they don't have the staff, the expertise, or the responsibility to do the thinking that is needed before a country makes the decision to go to war. War planning is not just about bombs, airplanes and sailing boats," he told the Times' Sarah Baxter.
A wide array of Washington insiders interviewed by EIR confirm that there is a humongous faction fight inside the Bush Administration, over war on Iran. Vice President Cheney remains the chief proponent of preventive war, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, with the backing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA, opposesit, arguing instead for robust diplomacy. One centerpiece of the fight is the still-pending National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program. The report was, according to several sources, completed in February and submitted in draft to the White House; but it has been sent back to the intelligence community at least four times. The reason? The report concludes that Iran will not have the capacity to build a nuclear bomb until