U.S. Studies Military Strike Options on Iran

[Imran Siddiqui]

Read your Wiki article:

Hegemony

Do you see a 'D' there?

[q=Patroklos]I find it rather disturbing about how casual you are about nuke usage.[/q]

And Patro is a conservative, not some bleeding heart. To think that nuking Iran (and being a worse human rights offender than anyone in history) would make everyone immediately drop their weapons and want to be our friends is utterly idiotic.

If bin-Laden started detonating nukes all over the US would you say, damn, we have to be his friend? Or would that make you more willing to kick his ass? Yeah... thought so.

But, congrats, you would make Saddam's crimes pale in comparison to the US's. Hell, you'd make Stalin's crimes pale to a nuclear obliteration of an entire country.

And btw, Japan's destruction happened before the Cold War. And we most certainly did not turn Korea into a smoking ruin. Recall we wanted to unify the country under the South.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Patroklos
You do realize that despite the assertions of the yellow journalist types here, nobody anywhere in our government has suggested the use of nukes.

I find it rather disturbing about how casual you are about nuke usage.

Civ teaches us how impotent they really are

OTBOT

[Kuciwalker]

hedgemon

[GePap]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Go back to posting the merely stupid as opposed to the monstrously idiotic and you'll get your wish...

Great. You don;t need any competition in that posting category anyways. Too crowded a field, no?

[Patroklos]

Civ taught me that you don't use nukes until you have SDI.

Not quite there yet, only theatre so far...

God knows those Iranian crazies are probably playing Call to Power instead. Stupid bastards don't realize their nuke ending wonder thingy doesn't work.

[Kuciwalker]

Call to Power doesn't work, ffs. Buggiest game I ever played, except maybe Armada.

[Patroklos]

I actually liked some of the concepts like underwater/orbital cities and whatnot. They should remake so I have something to fill the empty void in my gaming soul that Civ IV so completely failed to fill.

Anyways....

[Alex]

Britain took part in mock Iran invasion

Pentagon planned for Tehran conflict with war game involving UK troops

Julian Borger in Washington and Ewen MacAskill
Saturday April 15, 2006
The Guardian


British officers took part in a US war game aimed at preparing for a possible invasion of Iran, despite repeated claims by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, that a military strike against Iran is inconceivable.

The war game, codenamed Hotspur 2004, took place at the US base of Fort Belvoir in Virginia in July 2004.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman played down its significance yesterday. "These paper-based exercises are designed to test officers to the limit in fictitious scenarios. We use invented countries and situations using real maps," he said.

The disclosure of Britain's participation came in the week in which the Iranian crisis intensified, with a US report that the White House was contemplating a tactical nuclear strike and Tehran defying the United Nations security council.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who sparked outrage in the US, Europe and Israel last year by calling for Israel to be wiped off the face of the Earth, created more alarm yesterday. He told a conference in Tehran in support of the Palestinians: "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

The senior British officers took part in the Iranian war game just over a year after the invasion of Iraq. It was focused on the Caspian Sea, with an invasion date of 2015. Although the planners said the game was based on a fictitious Middle East country called Korona, the border corresponded exactly with Iran's and the characteristics of the enemy were Iranian.

A British medium-weight brigade operated as part of a US-led force.

The MoD's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, which helped run the war game, described it on its website as the "year's main analytical event of the UK-US Future Land Operations Interoperability Study" aimed at ensuring that both armies work well together. The study "was extremely well received on both sides of the Atlantic".

According to an MoD source, war games covering a variety of scenarios are conducted regularly by senior British officers in the UK, the US or at Nato headquarters. He cited senior military staff carrying out a mock invasion of southern England last week and one of Scotland in January.

However, Hotspur took place at a time of accelerated US planning after the fall of Baghdad for a possible conflict with Iran. That planning is being carried out by US Central Command, responsible for the Middle East and central Asia area of operations, and by Strategic Command, which carries out long-range bombing and nuclear operations.

William Arkin, a former army intelligence officer who first reported on the contingency planning for a possible nuclear strike against Iran in his military column for the Washington Post online, said: "The United States military is really, really getting ready, building war plans and options, studying maps, shifting its thinking."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The foreign secretary has made his position very clear that military action is inconceivable. The Foreign Office regards speculation about war, particularly involving Britain, as unhelpful at a time when the diplomatic route is still being pursued."

After the failure of a mission to Tehran on Thursday by Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Russia announced a diplomatic initiative yesterday. It is to host a new round of talks in Moscow on Tuesday with the US, the EU and China.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1754307,00.html

[Lonestar]

Oh Noes! Next thing you know it'l come out that we have war games for the invasions of Mexico, Brazil, AND Venezuela!

[Patroklos]

Wow, then you will be really supprised when I tell you last May my ship practiced the invasion of Scotland along with British, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Peruvian, Swedisn, and Dutch!!!

Look out you dirty Scots!

[Lonestar]

Yeah, but they deserve it.

[Pekka]

I bet the Swedes took it up the butt, but when you tried to invade our nations of glorious power, you got your ass handed to you, that's why you don't mention you practiced us too.

Our 3 ships defeated your whole army. I mean boats. Boats with guns in them.

[MKSheppard]

Do you see a 'D' there?

Hedgemon, Hegemon, whatever; So you're willing to dismiss my point about the US being the Hedgemon/Hegemon whatever of the world because of an additional 'd'?

To think that nuking Iran (and being a worse human rights offender than anyone in history) would make everyone immediately drop their weapons and want to be our friends is utterly idiotic.

Actually, yes it would. World power is a zero-sum game in the real world and in Civilization, as well.

Let's look at the facts:

1.) Iran is ruled by a fascist mullohcracy which recently issued a fatwa sanctioning the use of nuclear weapons.

2.) Ahmadinejad has boasted that Iran wants to "wipe Israel off the map."

3.) A few years ago, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani—a man considered "moderate" by the standards of the Iranian regime—boasted that "a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel."

4.) Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust is a hoax.

5.) Ahmadinejad has publicaly said that the the United States is in its "last throes," an ofuli (sunset) power destined to be superceded by the toluee (sunrise) of the Islamic republic.

6.) "You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it," said General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the head of the Revolutionary Guards

7.) "We have American forces in the region under total surveillance. For the past two years, we have been ready for any scenario, whether sanctions or an attack." - Gen Safavi.

So what would be the world reaction to such a country being totally destroyed?

I don't mean a few critical weapons factories destroyed, not a few casualties inflicted on the Iranian military. I mean the entire country being destroyed in an hour or less.

They will look at what prompted the US to launch such a massive assault against Iran, and conclude that it is in their best interests to NOT annoy the US in any manner whatsoever after the US has quite publically demonstrated it's return to Eisenhowerian defense policies; we won't maintain a large army, we won't fight your countries, we'll just destroy them and go home.

In the calculus of internal politics all over the world; dictators such as Musharraf, Mubarak, Quaddafi and whoever else will look at the smoking radiating ruin of Iran and conclude that the price to pay in internal dissent fostered by them brutally suppressing any Islamic movements will be insignificant next to the greater price; their country being destroyed, totally, by the United States.

If bin-Laden started detonating nukes all over the US would you say, damn, we have to be his friend?

We'd destroy the country he was last seen in, and once again, go home. US nuclear policy since the 1950s has been Assured Destruction.

But, congrats, you would make Saddam's crimes pale in comparison to the US's. Hell, you'd make Stalin's crimes pale to a nuclear obliteration of an entire country.

And btw, Japan's destruction happened before the Cold War. And we most certainly did not turn Korea into a smoking ruin. Recall we wanted to unify the country under the South.

Ah yes, the old canard thrown about by opponents of Nuclear War; the death toll will make you a even bigger mass murderer than Hitler, Tojo, or Stalin.

This brings to mind a famous quote by Curtis E. LeMay, which makes his and my philosophy clear:

Actually I think it's more immoral to use less force than necessary, than it is to use more. If you use less force, you kill off more of humanity in the long run, because you are merely protracting the struggle.

We have had the same situation all over again, both in Korea and in Viet Nam. I suggested informally, when the Korean flap started in 1950, that we go up north immediately with incendiaries and delete four or five of the largest towns: Wonsan, Pyongyang and so on.

The answer from Washington: "No, no, that's too utterly horrible! You'd kill a lot of noncombatants!"

Thus we went along, allowing ourselves to be cajoled into conducting a war under wraps, because the alternative was unacceptable morally. And what happened? We burned down just about every city in North Korea and South Korea both, including Pusan. That one was an accident. But we nearly burned all of it down just the same.

And during the three years of warfare we killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes, with the inevitable additional tragedies bound to ensue. The military casualties on both sides totaled nearly three and one-half million.

Over fifty-four thousand dead Americans. . . .

To expunge a few people to stop a war right at the start is unacceptable. Or a few hundred people, or a few thousand. Or—go all out on it—a few hundred thousand. But over a long period of time, wearily killing them off and killing them off, killing millions under the most horrible circumstances—That is acceptable. Mankind keeps on doing it.

[Sir Og]

I think we should not protract any longer and kill you right away for the sake of humanity.

[Cort Haus]

General Jack Ripper is alive and well and posting on Apolyton.