Islamanazi speculates on what might be happening:
War signals are on the rise once again. A major “strike group” of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship is headed for the Persian Gulf just off Irans western coast. A group of minelayer ships is also ordered to the area.
The minelayers would be useful to block up Irans harbors to keep Irans own minelayers from executing the threat of Ahmadinejad to load up the straits of Hormuz with mines and blow up oil tankers loaded with oil, thereby bottling up Mid-East oil production. This would cause a great increase in oil prices and damage to national economies, not to mention the ecological damage, which would be enormous.
Sam Gardiner, 67, retired Air Force colonel, has taught strategy at the National War College, Air War College and the Naval War College. “Gardiner says when Bush ‘Iraqs’ Iran, air strikes will not be limited to the country`s widely scattered nuclear facilities, but will also include military air bases (some of them only 15 minutes flying time from Baghdad); air defense command and control; terrorist training camps; chemical facilities; medium-range ballistic missiles; Gulf-threatening assets; submarines; anti-ship missiles; and naval ships, including small, fast minelayers. He reckons ‘an attack of relatively high certainty on nuclear targets would require 400 aim points … 75 of these would require penetrating weapons.’ Air target planners believe this can be done after five nights of bombing.”
Sending over a Naval strike force of such power is either designed to pressure Iran to stop refining uranium or be attacked, or, an attack is imminent. I think it’s fully accepted by our government that Iran will never stop unless they are beaten senseless.
This may just be another dry run, but sending an aircraft carrier into harms way with such an unstable and unpredictable enemy is not an act done lightly.
7 comments:
Is anyone else torn between hoping that this means something finally will be done, yet dreading the howls of outrage that will rend the air -- not the ones from the Iranians, the ones from the Leftards and all the nitwits who have been living on a steady diet of Iraq Book of the Week spin for the past 3 years? The longer we wait to confront this, the worse it will be. But the sooner we confront it, the greater the chance that they will leverage it into defeat at the polls in November and a Democratic Congress that will just let things play out until it is too late to avoid catastrophe.
Plus now the North Koreans have chimed in again with their latest we-gonna-test-a-bomb-what-you-gonna-do-about-it threat.
And it's Ramadan so we get to wonder whether Mir it just looking for attention or would Al Qaeda like to upstage everybody?
Should've found me that cabin up in the Maine woods when I had the chance...
You know, the way I feel about it is we have to end the Iranian regime. That is the biggest battle in the war, at least as far as we can see at this time.
If we ended Iran, we would almost instantaneously also win Iraq. And, Syria would then be on the precipice of toppling.
Therefore, it's almost like, who cares what happens then. Let the Dems howl, and let them win, and let a whole generation of people deny we were ever in a war at all. At least, we would be assured of surviving as a planet for 10-20 more years.
Is this an addition or a replacement task force?
The impression I got was it was an addition, but I could be mistaken.
ok part of this seems to be based on the analysis of one Ray Mcgovern... I knew that name rang a bell.
Strike one
It's also taken from claims by The Nation (which also defended Stalin's pact with Hitler from it's signing until June 22, 1941)
Strike two
'Doing Iran' properly is going to require a lot, and I mean a lot, more firepower than this. Something on the order of 5-6 carrier battle groups, and at least several hundred land based aircraft will be needed (which could launch from as far away as Diego Garcia, Guam, or even the CONUS). The magnitude of this sort of deployment would be impossible to hide. So far, I am not seeing anywhere near this level of activity. As your own post mentions, there are a lot of targets to hit, and only a significant and very publically visible sign of force is going to be able to accomplish the mission.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of cleansing Iran of its despicable regime by any means, including the 'loud' (guns and bombs) option. But I don't see anyone inside the beltway with the political wherewithal or the willpower for a war like this. It simply isn't happening.
Yeah, I think you're right, AJ. I put this post up just in case it indicated something. I thought about not posting it, but decided that just for the record, IBA had to make mention of this.
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