U.S. Generals To Quit If Bush Orders Iran Strike

From the Sunday Times:

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them."

While Bush and Cheney are focusing on Iran and the escalation in Iraq, the folks who originally attacked us are getting stronger by the day. As Frank Rich points out in his latest column, Bush wasn't interested in hearing about the Al Qaeda threat a few weeks before 9/11, and his administration doesn't want to hear about the threat now:

That’s why terrorism experts are trying to get its attention by going public, and not just through The Times. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the C.I.A. bin Laden unit, told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann last week that the Taliban and Al Qaeda, having regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan, “are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States” (the real United States, that is, not the fictional stand-in where this same scenario can be found on “24”). Al Qaeda is “on the march” rather than on the run, the Georgetown University and West Point terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman told Congress. Tony Blair is pulling troops out of Iraq not because Basra is calm enough to be entrusted to Iraqi forces — it’s “not ready for transition,” according to the Pentagon’s last report — but to shift some British resources to the losing battle against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

This is why the entire debate about the Iraq “surge” is as much a sideshow as Britney’s scalp. More troops in Baghdad are irrelevant to what’s going down in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The surge supporters who accuse the Iraq war’s critics of emboldening the enemy are trying to deflect attention from their own complicity in losing a bigger battle: the one against the enemy that actually did attack us on 9/11. Who lost Iraq? is but a distraction from the more damning question, Who is losing the war on terrorism?

This is the kind of big picture stuff that the Democrats should be running with right now. Instead of merely focusing on whether or not to get out of Iraq, the Democrats should combine the idea of a withdrawal from Iraq with the need to increase our military presence in Afghanistan. Then, when BushCo resists such a proposal, the Democrats can attack Bush for being weak on national security, just like he was weak back in August 2001 when he didn't do shit to stop the 9/11 attacks even though he was warned that bin Laden was determined to strike inside the U.S.

Every time someone brings up BushCo's pre-9-11 incompetence, the Extreme Right always makes some comment about how such criticism is "old news." The Democrats can now counter this "old news" talking point with a "history is repeating itself" talking point. It's a perfect opportunity, and that's why I'm sure that the Democrats will fail to take advantage of it.