Bomb, Bomb, Bomb.... Bomb, Bomb Iran

I found this a rather sane estimate in the "Bomb Iran" debate. This has been my other objection to the "bomb Iran" argument. The first being that Iran is still ten years or so from a working nuclear weapon.

(I have no idea how far away they are from those "nookular" weapons that Bush keeps talking about.)

Kenneth Pollack, an expert on Iran at the Brookings Institution, a U.S. think-tank, said the military option was "sub-optimal," but not impossible.

Although Israel has reserved the option of military force, Pollack said the United States would be the only country with the air power to carry out the "hundreds of sorties a day" required, possibly for weeks, to knock out Iran's air defenses and destroy anywhere between several dozen and several hundred facilities linked to its nuclear program.

"It would mean going to war with Iran and I think it's fair to figure that the Iranians would not sit by idly," he said.....

"If you think it's bad now (in Iraq), imagine 6,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards and intelligence agents joining in the insurgency."

Also, we're yet to see the revivals of the early eighties' populist propaganda. The Beach Boys "Barbara Ann" converted to Bomb Iran or some modern version of the "Aayatollah Assahole-ah" logo, etc.

The parties who want to start a war with Iran now,(they should have their foreign policy credentials yanked just for the stupidity of the proposal) haven't really crossed over to public propaganda yet. They're still at the "decision maker consensus" phase. With Iraq, that consensus was more or less achieved in the days after 9-11.

And, by the way, has there been a declaration of war with Iran? Or does the administration argue that the power to declare war now belongs to the "war time executive?"

I think the Bush administration in the main is still at the threat phase, but the pressure seems to be growing from his neocon foreign policy advisers.