i wonder if this means that the palm islands and related other bits of sand will have freedom bombed into them.

And just after setting a "time table" for Iraq withdrawl. There is no time table, war in Iraq is strategically desired by the administration for a war with Iran.

Its bad strategy but I dont think they care about that.

Of course America will battle Iran. Iran has asked for it and begun fighting! "Israel is the little satan and America is the great satan...Israel will be no longer...George Bush will be erased from history just as Adolf Hitler...We will cut off the heads of the infidels..."

I just hope we can do it with as little bloodshed as possible. I think a couple handguns could take care of the problem. The heads of Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Islamic Republic of Iran, Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyers brigade...(I could go on but my wrist is getting exhuasted)

Barnett Rubin, who was at least an early adopter and might have been the original source of the "september rollout" story, has a lengthy round-up of reactions, evidence, et cetera:

I once wrote a book about early warning and conflict prevention. There are two kinds of errors in early warning (as in statistical inference): believing something that ain't so and disbelieving something that is. You have to weigh the likelihood and the cost of each kind of error. That's the calculus behind Vice-President Cheney's One Percent Doctrine: the risk of not acting on a warning of nuclear terrorism is so great, that you have to treat a one percent possibility as a certainty.

I set the bar a bit higher than one percent. But in view of the record of this administration, including what its leaders and supporters have said themselves, the cost of not acting on these warnings is too great. The cost of acting (for me anyway) is being attacked by the New York Sun and the National Review and being supported by a few conspiracy theorists. I can live with it.
See also Justin Logan at cato.

Bleah, next-to-last paragraph above should have been blockquoted.

this may be giving trolls more than they deserve, but right, a 'Persian Jew': - like taking out nuclear facilities and government buildings in Baghdad will be a precise business, without any 'civilian fallout' or 'collateral damage' - and you being Persian, how do you think the Persian people deal with vengeance and resentment? Given what happened only in the last 50 years, with two upheavals, not all that well... and then consider that 1400 years on, they're still weeping and beating themselves bloody over the Arab invasion, this might not be the battle America wants to choose...

as the Iranian Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi said when visiting the US a few years ago: "We may not like our government. But if America invades, every last man woman and child will lay down their lives and shed their blood to make the invaders leave." see: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/02/09/iran10159.htm

It seems unlikely that the US is seriously considering attacking Iran, a country with few international friends and a population that's at best accepting of its own government, a million-strong army, a huge land mass, and a military leadership which is presumably intelligent enough to make the destruction of any nuclear facilities difficult both strategically and politically. The administration is probably aware that its best option in Iran is to continue to enforce (and strengthen) international sanctions, which are having a very tangible effect on the local economy (resulting in, for example, the recent gas rationing which led to a mass burning of gas stations across the country). The domestic environment in Iran is, in my perception, far from stable and farther from sustainable and it would not be hard for the US government to find this out. Moreover, the attitude of non-hardliner Iranians (read: most of the country) towards the US is actually quite positive on the whole. As has been discussed all over the place, a direct military strike against Iran will more or less ruin that mentality. On the other hand, we can sit around and wait ten years and probably see the government there cave in on itself.

This doesn't even take into account the reality of a lack of available troops, the beleaguered American psyche towards foreign war, the fact that elections will happen shortly, the massive strategic problems with any kind of invasion into the rather large and geographically varied landscape, etc. There are other issues, such as the fact that the body of officials which (among other things) elects the supreme leader has recently become headed by Rafsanjani, a relatively moderate cleric who would probably be willing to actually talk with the US, and who is now a very real possible replacement for the aging Khamenei.

What is considerably more likely is that as the negotiations between Iran and the US have already gone to hell, the US is back to its old hand of cards which led to the surge, i.e., we are stuck trying to intimidate Iran in preparation for the power vacuum that will appear with the beginning of US withdrawal in Iraq. Once the Iranians move into Iraq (which they of course will do immediately), the US has to worry about containing them, in particular along the Saudi border, and I suspect that any anti-Iranian military operations will be focused towards that, rather than a mindless invasion into mainland Iran, which would only exacerbate all the current problems we have in the region. I wouldn't put it past the administration to do some airstrikes to wreck a bit of infrastructure, but any kind of full-scale war seems quite unlikely if you allow for the slightest rationality on the part of the US.

any kind of full-scale war seems quite unlikely if you allow for the slightest rationality on the part of the US.

In the past several years, allowing for this has been tenuous but ot everything you say is logical.

I kind of favor the view that this could all be a ploy for negotiating advantage, or, more likely, that a limited set of airstrikes are being laid ready for next year. A full scale invasion, or an aim to overthrow the regime, would not sell well and the military is overstretched; that is probably not the likely scenario at all.

For a variety of reasons in a next post, if the military strikes are in process, the motive and driving force is not as neoconservative as the iraq war but from the hard realist desire to make a humbling demonstration of power.

"Rafsanjani, a relatively moderate cleric who would probably be willing to actually talk with the US"

In the first place, it is the Supreme Leader, not the head of the Guardian Council, who ultimately decides foreign policy in Iran. Secondly, the Iranians have long professed their willingness to talk to the US. It is the fundamentalists who run the US government who refuse to talk with Iran. The childish morons even vacate their seats at the UN when an Iranian representative is speaking!

"Rafsanjani, a relatively moderate cleric who would probably be willing to actually talk with the US"

In the first place, it is the Supreme Leader, not the head of the Guardian Council, who ultimately decides foreign policy in Iran. Secondly, the Iranians have long professed their willingness to talk to the US. It is the fundamentalists who run the US government who refuse to talk with Iran. The childish morons even vacate their seats at the UN when an Iranian representative is speaking!

Vice-President Cheney's One Percent Doctrine

That deserves to be called Cheney's Wager.

Morality aside, on it's own terms, it is just as bogus as Pascal's version: you can't simply say hell is infinitely bad, and so worth doing anything to avoid, no matter the odds, when you don't know what will and won't land you there.

whoops - I wrote Baghdad above, when I meant Teheran - although, unintentional point made, there were plenty of civilian lives lost in Baghdad as well when bombs dropped...

In the first place, it is the Supreme Leader, not the head of the Guardian Council, who ultimately decides foreign policy in Iran.

If you'll kindly read the rest of the sentence you quoted me on: "...Rafsanjani, a relatively moderate cleric who would probably be willing to actually talk with the US, and who is now a very real possible replacement for the aging Khamenei."

Secondly, the Iranians have long professed their willingness to talk to the US. It is the fundamentalists who run the US government who refuse to talk with Iran. The childish morons even vacate their seats at the UN when an Iranian representative is speaking!

It's naive to suggest that the US is the only side of the table who's been less than useful in setting up talks, you might recall e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6627557.stm .

"If you'll kindly read the rest of the sentence you quoted me on: "...Rafsanjani, a relatively moderate cleric who would probably be willing to actually talk with the US, and who is now a very real possible replacement for the aging Khamenei."

I did read it but - apart from the fact that Rafsanjani is about the same age as 'the aging Khamenei - there is little likliehood of his taking over Khamenei's job any time soon, if ever.

As for your article, it is referring to one incident were the Iranians were unwilling to participate in talks simply designed to help the US in its self-made crisis in Iraq. Why should Iran acquiesce in talks simply to help the country that openly called them 'evil', while being shunned as unworthy of participating in any wider discussions? IN 2003, the Iranians offered the US a 'grand bargain'. The US did not want to know. They may yet be sorry.

The thing with the all propagandising, is that for it to mean something it needs to align with separate military and diplo-political tracks - I'm not going to bother with the economic and energy signposts, as they are so far out of whack that alignment isn't possible.

Forgetting about boots on the ground - which is not an option - any bombing campaign on Iran is going to resemble the 40-odd day air campaign of Desert Storm ( which required 6 US aircraft carriers plus an additional 2000 aircraft to pull off ) but this time without the advantages of explicit UNSC authorisation or the benefits of a global alliance, and against an opponent with far greater tactical, political and strategic-economic leverage.

Further commentary from Pat Lang, John Robb (they both think the war is going to happen in the next year or so), and Jamie of Blood and Treasure (who thinks that it will be a decade-long affair of ratcheting pressure & confrontation).

Ah, you beat me to it. I was just going to link to an interesting post about carrier deployments that was pointed out at B & T. If accurate, it would seem there's simply not enough guns in the Gulf to attack anyone in a while. At least not in any conventional way.

Alle - yeah, I'd meant to link to the Ranter as well, but didn't feel like finding a specific post to link to. OTOH, the Fox News article in Matthew's post mentions next summer as the time for the attack, so if we take that as an estimate, an immediate lack of carriers proves nothing.

Next summer, huh? Considering the Israel-Syria situation, someone should warn them about double-booking 2008.