Iran: The Next Strategic Target

Amy Goodman (Democracy Now) has an interview with Seymour Hersh. A must read to learn more about our plans for Iran and the world.

When asked about the covert ops being run by the Pentagon Hersh said;

I think the president's got a lot of legal power here. The way the world shakes down is this, when it comes to covert secret operations abroad. If the CIA does it, under the law now they must tell the President. The President has to issue a finding approving it, and the Congress has to be told. The House and Senate intelligence committees have to be briefed. If the military does a covert operation, their interpretation of the law is simply that the president's rights as commander in chief trump any other requirement. That is, the military is there to prepare the battlefield with these operations. This is a military deal, totally. Nothing to do with intelligence. No need to inform anybody.

Pretty foxy, W!!

On the overall idea as to how an attack on Iran wil lead to "freedom":

I think their thinking is, that if we hit three or four dozen targets in the spring — late spring or summer, which I think is the tentative plan — that would be roughly at the time (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon is beginning his pullout of Gaza, and so the theory in the Pentagon (is) there would be more good feelings towards America in the Muslim world once this begins. And if Iraq can be stabilized, which they think it will — I don't know why, but they do — after the elections, if that gets stabilized, then the goal is you hit three or four targets quickly and cleanly and you be sure you're right and you have evidence to show that the Iranians are cheating more than they might — than the world [inaudible] knows, this could lead to the secular population, those millions of young people, etc., who don't like the clerical leadership, to overthrowing or beginning to agitate against the mullahs once again. And the only problem with that thinking, of course, is that it's pretty much unique to those group of civilians in the Pentagon; because almost everybody else I talked to, in and out of the government, were scathing in their critique of this, saying it's absolutely hogwash, that what's going to happen, of course, is that the White House and the Pentagon is ignoring the nationalism that exists, the enormous feelings of togetherness inside Iran and love for country

Wow, another bloody mess to look forward to. Thanks, W!!!