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Gates: We're "Not Planning" To Attack Iran
At his press conference this morning, Defense Secretary Bob Gates used a rather Ari Fleischer-esque formulation on the prospect of war with Iran:
With respect to Iran, first of all, the president has made clear; the secretary of State has made clear; I've made clear -- nobody is planning -- we are not planning for a war with Iran. What we are trying to do is in Iraq, counter what the Iranians are doing to our soldiers, their involvement in activities, particularly these explosively formed projectiles that are killing our troops, and we are trying to get them to stop their nuclear enrichment. We are doing the latter strictly through the diplomatic process. It seems to be showing some progress. At least we -- the diplomatic process is working, and I think that that's where we are relying.So there really is -- you know, I think because we are acting against the Iranians' activities in Iraq, it's given rise to some of these talks. Clearly, the deployment of the second carrier group has given -- has further led to this. But really, the purpose of that is simply to underscore to our friends, as well as to our potential adversaries in the region, that the United States has considered the Persian Gulf and that whole area, and stability in that area, to be a vital national interest.
And that has been the case for decades, under many, many presidents. And we simply want to reinforce to our friends, in particular, that they can count on us having a presence and being strong in their area in protecting our interests and in protecting theirs.
Let's review. The president has authorized military action against Iranian assets in Iraq. There's a new Special Operations task force, known as Task Force 16, devoted to rooting out Iranian influence. A few weeks ago, U.S. forces raided an Iranian diplomatic office in Iraqi Kurdistan and detained several Iranian nationals. Just the other day, President Bush told NPR that he will "respond firmly" to Iranian attacks on U.S. forces, and the administration is non-denial-denying that the Iranians may have been involved in last week's attack in Karbala. For good measure, the U.S. is beefing up naval assets in the Persian Gulf, and the incoming head of Central Command warned at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday of Iranian desires to restrict U.S. access to one of the world's most economically vital shipping lanes.
Perhaps the administration isn't planning a war -- but, as we learned in Iraq, just because there's no planning doesn't mean there won't be war.
Comments (31)
carole wrote on February 2, 2007 3:33 PM:"Perhaps the administration isn't planning a war -- but, as we learned in Iraq, just because there's no planning doesn't mean there won't be war."
This should be nominated as quote of the day.
Node of Evil wrote on February 2, 2007 3:39 PM:Another way to read that is they're not planning because the planning phase is over -- it's time for action. And so that's what we're going to get. We're already at war with Iran, this is all right out of the Iraq playbook. For all intents and purposes the war with Iraq started long before the invasion; there were bombing raids to take out pesky ground-to-air installations and border security among other things. Quite frankly, the main reason for geting out of Iraq immediately is to forestall the conflict with Iran. Bush and the Pentagon have proven their penchant for waging war without authorization. This needs to stop now.
Nick wrote on February 2, 2007 3:48 PM:Or read it this way: "we're not planning any kind of attack, but if Iran doesn't stop its evil-doing, we just might have to attack anyway."
Unmitigated Audacity wrote on February 2, 2007 4:05 PM:Oh B.S. The contingency planning was done long ago. The forces are now arrayed. It's just a matter of getting, or manufacturing, the right pretext. The meaning the propaganda offensive and the deployments couldn't be clearer than the snarl on Cheney's mug.
Jose Padilla wrote on February 2, 2007 4:30 PM:Did Jim Webb ever get an answer to his question?
couser wrote on February 2, 2007 4:42 PM:Could it be that all this talk of invading Iran is just a feint...
EH wrote on February 2, 2007 4:45 PM:That the administration is loco enough to, but not able to really pursue a war against Iran...
But Syria is another story...an easy one...just as evil and right next to Israel (who is quite experienced in warring with Damascas. And, really, who gives a shit about Syria...just about as heroic as Grenada.
One of these days journalists are going to learn how to ask the right questions again. I just think they have to.
Lance wrote on February 2, 2007 4:51 PM:Re "just because there's no planning doesn't mean there won't be war."
Actually, it is exactly because they AREN'T planning a war that we can be sure it will happen. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.
Bobbi wrote on February 2, 2007 4:57 PM:The best way to address this is via Graydon Carter's 'Editor's Letter' in the Feb. Vanity Fair. Because, you see, Bush's optical rectosis is all consuming, and he's going to double down again, because that's the way he *always* plays. And he has Cheney at his back.
To wit...
"I have always thought you could take the measure of a man by his sports manners—that is to say, the way in which he conducts himself on the playing field, or even over a game of chess or cards. Former president Bill Clinton was famous for taking a mulligan, or an extra try, on almost every shot, then playing the ball that had landed in the better spot. He essentially plays a two-man, two-ball "scramble"—but solo. A former employer of mine ensured that he won in tennis against family and underlings by always calling line shots in his own favor. And so it is with our current president, who will scratch, claw, kick, scream, move the goalposts—pretty much do anything to effect a win. He is a sore winner. And a horrible loser.
I was reminded of these traits when I reread "The Accidental Candidate," Gail Sheehy's prescient portrait of the future president, published in these pages in October 2000. A sampling:
When Barbara Bush took her 13-year-old son and his best friend, Doug Hannah, to play golf at her Houston club, George would start cursing if he didn't tee off well. His mother would tell him to quit it. By the third or fourth hole he would be yelling "Fuck this" until he had ensured that his mother would send him to the car.
"It fit his needs," says Hannah. "He couldn't lose."
Once, after his mother banished him from the golf course, she turned to Hannah and declared, "That boy is going to have optical rectosis." What did that mean? "She said, 'A shitty outlook on life.'"
Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off…. It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that." …
Another fast friend, Roland Betts, acknowledges that it is the same in tennis. In November 1992, Bush and Betts were in Santa Fe to host a dinner party, but they had just enough time for one set of doubles. The former Yale classmates were on opposite sides of the net. "There was only one problem—my side won the first set," recalls Betts. "O.K., then we're going two out of three," Bush decreed. Bush's side takes the next set. But Betts's side is winning the third set when it starts to snow. Hard, fat flakes.
The catering truck pulls up. But Bush won't let anybody quit. "He's pissed. George runs his mouth constantly," says Betts indulgently. "He's making fun of your last shot, mocking you, needling you, goading you—he never shuts up!" They continued to play tennis through a driving snowstorm.
It is something of an in-joke with Bush's friends and family. "In reality we all know who won, but George wants to go further to see what happens," says an old family friend, venture capitalist and former MGM chairman Louis "Bo" Polk Jr. "George would say, 'Play that one over,' or 'I wasn't quite ready.' The overtimes are what's fun, so you make your own. When you go that extra mile or that extra point … you go to a whole new level."
Inasmuch as I am writing this the week before Christmas, any sort of prediction is a dicey proposition, but my guess is that Bush will double-down on Iraq. He has lost, but his past would indicate that he will figure that he can have another chance if he can just keep the game going a little longer."
George E. Lowe wrote on February 2, 2007 5:07 PM:Hi,The Pentagon[Gates]& the White House are playing us for fools. At Cheney's request STRATCOM in 2005 began "drawing up a contingency plan. . . which includes a large scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons." The source of this LEAK?-- Pat Buchanan's "The American Conservative," Deep Background, August 1, 2005. It's the old "Victory Through Airpower" fanatics, who will gladly turn Iran into glass & make the dunes bounce. No need for Army/Marine "grunts" for victory in Iran,just bomb them "back into the Stone Age." Massive AIRPOWER is the way to get the atention of those Iranian "Rag Heads" & "Sand Monkeys" & FINALLY bring "victory" to the Bush-Cheney Administration--with few US casualties. These madmen must be stopped before they trigger Armageddon-WW III--"East of Eden" in Iran. Very worried in Stuart, FL, George E. Lowe
Mrs Panstreppon wrote on February 2, 2007 5:27 PM:Gatespeak: Bombing the Iranians to smithereens is a preemptive peace initiative, not an act of war.
Paul O. wrote on February 2, 2007 5:28 PM:Suppose we aren't "planning" for war with Iran, but merely "preparing" for it, as the President has suggested. In the event that war does become necessary -- with Iran, or any other country -- we will be left to fight that war with the Commander-in-Chief we have, not the Commander-in-Chief we wish we had.
Perhaps in all the fine focus on the Iraq quagmire that he got us into, we've lost sight of the fact that, yes, it really IS the President's job to be Commander-in-Chief when necessary. And further, this particular Commander has lost the confidence of our allies, a large portion of his own military, and the vast majority of the American people themselves.
So it is not just a question of "can he solve Iraq" that we ought to be considering, and considering the consequences of; the question is, can we afford to have this man commanding, and blundering, another -- any other -- military conflict that may or may not arise in the next 2 years?
Has this man not done enough to prove to us that not only can he not solve Iraq, but that he is not competent to serve as Commander in Chief?
Will we be sitting here in 2009, envying our relatively unscathed 2007 selves, wondering why Pelosi pulled impeachment off the table?
Deb wrote on February 2, 2007 5:41 PM:Of course you're not going to attack Iran... although your non-existent war plans seem to be all over the internet. You're just going to allow Israel to do it for you or force another Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify another war.
Jeff wrote on February 2, 2007 5:49 PM:In July 2002, Bush said that there were no plans on his desk for the invasion of Iraq. Of course, we learned that the plans were already off his desk and in the field being implemented. So he wasn't lying.
Neither is Gates lying. Nobody is planning. The planning is done. They are implementing the plan. They know they can't win Congressional approval, so they have to provoke an incident.
I just hope the Iranians are smart enough to take a very dramatic fall and appeal to the refs (the UN, the media, and world opinion) when it happens, rather than strike back.
tom baker wrote on February 2, 2007 6:22 PM:they don't have to plan to do it. their "plan" is to say Iran "made" them do it, just like Saddam "made them do it" - what a spineless bunch of cowards - at least as cowardly as those who foment terrorism.
chip wrote on February 2, 2007 6:33 PM:somehow these folks need to be stopped-I'm thinking we can't depend on our purchased representatives to do this for us. I'm thinking that when the next oportunity comes to take to the street that this is now our obligation to join in so that they may see our voices being raised.
Jeff wrote on February 2, 2007 6:49 PM:One of the congress critters should have asked Gates if it would count as 'not planning' if they were currently acting on a plan to start a war with Iran.
Or would it count as 'not planning' if they were expecting Iran to start a war with them.
Or would it count as 'not planning' if the administration considers us as already at war with Iran.
etc. all the way down the hostile witness decision tree.
Alexander Baldal wrote on February 2, 2007 7:14 PM:We wait for the next false flag operation to blame on Iran. USrahel is morally and ethically bankrupt, it needs a suicide to cry foul and lament to the world for help again. Only an attack on Iran will bring this about. The mess is taking gargantuan proportions.
Ted wrote on February 2, 2007 10:49 PM:They're obviously trying to create a "Gulf of Tonkin" incident to fool the numbskulls in America. Bush hopes poking the Iranian beehive with a stick will get em mad enough to swarm us.
Scoppertop wrote on February 2, 2007 10:57 PM:Gates didn't say attack, he said, "we are not planning for A WAR with Iran."
War and Attack are not the same things at all, and neither one are anything like one-time total annihilation of a country.
Speculation is as useless as snooping is useful. There are lots of articles worldwide which give varied views of the situation; we all need to get to work uncovering their plot...
Fel wrote on February 3, 2007 12:46 AM:I read the 'not planning' ploy the same way as Nick/3:38 and tom baker/6:22.
Ozzie Maland wrote on February 3, 2007 1:06 AM:The scariest evidence I've seen re potential attack on Iran is all the spin in the NYTimes in the last month or so as to the evil axis Iran. The hawks in Israel are getting our media "on message."
Ozzie Maland
montanachef wrote on February 3, 2007 4:20 AM:San Diego
Here we go again! How stupid do they really think we are? Of course they're going to try to go expand this fiasco. Recent info out of the Middle East, as reported by Amanpour yesterday, is that Iran is NOT as involved in the Iraqi situation as our imperial leaders like to make out. Talk about cherry picking, this is tubes and yellow cake all over again. These guys couldn't plan their way out of a paper bag. We'd better look sharp and be on our toes or this one's gonna slide by like grease on a garage floor. And yes, Lucy, it's been about the oil all along.
Jack wrote on February 3, 2007 10:48 AM:Why haven't we heard more about the two Iraqi generals involved in the Karbala killing of US soldiers reported by Faux News here?
Robin Boerner wrote on February 3, 2007 5:29 PM:http://www.foxnews.com/story/ 0,2...,249403,00.html
Why was this story only leaked to these guys?
Maybe these are Iranian-Iraqi generals?
Other Gates quotes to live by:
The check is in the mail.
I'll still love you in the morning.
Don't worry baby, I won't cum.
Trust me, I'm from the government, I'm here
to help you.
What was exactly WAS Mr. Gates up to in South America during Iran Contra? If he couldn't tell us the truth about that, why would we trust him to tell the truth now?
I'll bet in the name of national security this guy could look straight at the camera and lie like a true sociopath.
casam wrote on February 3, 2007 5:47 PM:This was written in 2005.
The US War with Iran has Already Begun
by Scott Ritter
[snip]
"The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.
It is bitter irony that the CIA is using a group still labelled as a terrorist organisation, a group trained in the art of explosive assassination by the same intelligence units of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, who are slaughtering American soldiers in Iraq today, to carry out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq."
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0620-31.htm
della Rovere wrote on February 3, 2007 8:14 PM:"Perhaps the administration isn't planning a war -- but, as we learned in Iraq, just because there's no planning doesn't mean there won't be war."
I wonder if anyone remembers just how blatant the lying done by the administration before the Iraq war. My favorite was "War with Iraq is a last resort". Lying is the ONLY diplomatic art that our right wing loonies care about or have mastered.
Emily wrote on February 3, 2007 10:03 PM:NO.
Vaughn wrote on February 4, 2007 6:34 AM:I feel like Alice-in-Wonderland, where up is down, and down is up. My prediction is the U.S. will attack Iran from offshore, and with B-2 bombers, during the most opportune months with moderate climatic conditions, March-April. If no one chooses to impeach this fraudulent president, he will take this country to hell. Doesn't anyone in Washington know how how to stop this poseur?
Rokusan wrote on February 5, 2007 8:29 AM:Clearly, March is war season for these guys.
If it's inevitable, plan the reaction.
PAnos wrote on March 27, 2007 5:20 AM:They are going to attack IRAN by air at 11 of April 2007. Mark this day..