Coup for What Ails You

According to this article in the Chicago Tribune the U.S. is plotting or at least condoning a 'coup' in Iraq that would install former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi as a new PM. How bad an idea is this really? Remember this is the administration that fails at everything except looting the treasury and stealing elections. Not only is it hypocritical in light of the purported mission of "installing a democratic government" in Iraq but it will fail like everything else.

To give you an idea of how totally bizarre the whole idea is... note that we are reading about this before the fact and so are the Iraqis. We are planning a completely 'public coup' and the world will see us with our fingers pulling all the strings. For some strange reason nobody seems to be worried about this fueling more terrorism. It actually seems as if the administration wants the world to see that we are pulling the strings. Somehow they have gotten through their heads the idea that, in spite of our abject failures at occupying and reconstructing Iraq and Afghanistan, that it is a really swell idea for the U.S. to be throwing its weight around even more in the middle east.

Not only does it appear that Bush and Cheney are going to install their own puppet dictator in Iraq but while they are at it they are going to shoot the moon and go for broke with Iran at the same time.

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

It will be interesting to watch the news over the next two weeks and see if this comes to fruition. This is not the only place I have seen warnings about an imminent attack on Iran. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse we get things like this from the Times Online.

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

And also here at dKOS

I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing Signal Officer- she directs carrier aircraft while landing) She told me we are going to attack Iran. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking are finished. That means that all the targets have been chosen, prioritized, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers and so forth.

Could be quite a September.