What to do about Iran? Seal the frickin' borders!
Mon Oct 08, 2007 at 07:49:38 AM PDT
What to do about Iran? That is the question these days, but no one has given the simple answer. Cheney want(ed) to bomb 2,000+ targets. That didn't sell well enough, so they had to back down. The new target is al Quds and their factories and such. That would mean acts of war against Iran. Which all the military experts and administration flacks now portray as inevitable.
When Petraeus testified before congress, he made sure to stoke the fires of war with Iran. Political mission accomplished (.PDF):
Malign actions by Syria and, especially, by Iran fuel that violence.
...snip...
...disrupting the efforts of the Iranian-supported militia extremists.
...snip...
...the deputy commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800, the organization created to support the training, arming, funding, and, in some cases, direction of the militia extremists by the Iranian Republican Guard Corps’ Qods Force.
The Senate stupidly wasted their time on long-winded questions and speechifying:
Senator Barbara Boxer of California got her allotted seven minutes to ask questions. Boxer's "question" went on for 1275 words, and used up her entire seven minutes.
So Petraeus did his duty to Bush and played up the Iran issue. At the same time he didn't ask for more troops to secure the border. Yeah, we don't have them, but if General Dave was there to sell a military strategy, he would have insisted this be done. It's been obvious for years.
David Petraeus failed to ask for the critical resources. Senate Democrats failed to ask the critical questions. They even - again, stupidly - played into administration plan by naming al Quds a terrorist organization. The press failed to report the critical issues and instead gave us the inside baseball.
And the most simple solution to the Iran/Iraq border question was left on the table: why aren't we shutting down the Iran/Iraq border?
Of course, we know how difficult it is to truly secure a border. And we know the half-assed job Bush's team has done in fanning the flames of hate while (not) sealing the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
But the fact that no one asked for the resources to do it and no one brought it up in a significant way shows that they don't really want to stop border activity. They don't want to "win" - whatever the hell that can be considered now. And they certainly don't want to do what is necessary militarily to contain the clusterf**k that is Iraq.
And on to the next war we go......
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