Heritage Foundation "conclusions" of its war game against Iran passed onto Bush

[Flabbergasted]

The Telegraph UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/02/wiran102.xml


Will President Bush bomb Iran?
By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 12:17am BST 02/09/2007


In a nondescript room, two blocks from the American Capitol building, a group of Bush administration staffers is gathered to consider the gravest threat their government has faced this century: the testing of a nuclear weapon by Iran.

President Bush dramatically stepped up his war of words with the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The United States, no longer prepared to tolerate the risk that Iranian nuclear weapons will be used against Israel, or passed to terrorists, has already launched a bombing campaign to destroy known Iranian nuclear sites, air bases and air defence sites. Iran has retaliated by cutting off oil to America and its allies, blockading the Straits of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf bottleneck, and sanctioned an uprising by Shia militias in southern Iraq that has shut down 60 per cent of Iraq's oil exports.

The job of the officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Departments of Homeland Security and Energy, who have gathered in an office just off Massachusetts Avenue, behind the rail terminus, Union Station, is to prevent a spike in oil prices that will pitch the world's economy into a catastrophic spin.

The good news is that this was a war game; for those who fear war with Iran, the less happy news is that the officials were real. The simulation, which took four months, was run by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with close links to the White House. Its conclusions, drawn up last month and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, have been passed on to military and civilian planners charged with drawing up plans for confronting Iran.

News that elements of the American government are working in earnest on how to deal with the fallout of an attack on Iran come at a tense moment.

[scarletwoman]

1. Could you please fix your formatting? I can't read your post w/o scrolling back & forth.

I think the big long underline at the top of your post may be the problem.

[Flabbergasted]

2. Thanks is this better?

[scarletwoman]

3. Much! It's all fixed now. Thanks! (nt)

[and-justice-for-all]

4. Heritage Foundation should be deemed a Terrorist Cell. nt

[lapfog_1]

5. "deal with the fallout of an attack on Iran"

why is it that I immediately thought of "round up the dissidents and protesters and put them in FEMA internment camps" and "suspend the constitution in favor of executive orders".

I know, my tinfoil hat is firmly jammed on my head.

:tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat:

[NC_Nurse]

6. The Heritage Foundation:

Always wrong, but never in doubt.

[scarletwoman]

7. Interesting paragraph on page 2 of the article:

The Pentagon has made contact with a Kurdish group called the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, which has been conducting cross-border operations in Iran, and with Azeri and Baluchi tribesmen in northern and south-eastern Iran, who oppose the theocratic regime. By using military special forces, rather than the CIA, the administration does not have to sign a Presidential Finding, required for covert intelligence activity, or report to oversight committees in Congress. (my emphasis)

This is lovely, too -- and how clever! Going to war with Iran in order to open up ANWR to oil drilling:

In the meantime, administration officials are studying the lessons of the recent war game, which was set up to devise a way of weathering an economic storm created by war with Iran. Computer modelling found that if Iran closed the Straits of Hormuz, it would nearly double the world price of oil, knock $161 billion off American GDP in a single quarter, cost one million jobs and slash disposable income by $260 billion a quarter.

The war gamers advocated deploying American oil reserves - good for 60 days - using military force to break the blockade (two US aircraft carrier groups and half of America's 277 warships are already stationed close to Iran), opening up oil development in Alaska, and ending import tariffs on ethanol fuel. If the government also subsidised fuel for poorer Americans, the war-gamers concluded, it would mitigate the financial consequences of a conflict.

The Heritage report concludes: "The results were impressive. The policy recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes from the blockade."

"subsidised fuel for poorer Americans..." Well then. That makes it all okay...
:banghead:

sw

[Flabbergasted]

10. Sorru Dupe

[Flabbergasted]

11. And that places this article into context: Thanks

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g6eoOaW6jT7tTxObv2lu2OmJ_TfQ

[leftchick]

8. oh great! Let's have WW fucking III!!!

:banghead:

<snip>

Washington officials, with close links to the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council, say that the speech was designed as a threat not just to Iran, but to America's Western allies, along with Russia and China, who have been slow to support - or who have opposed - UN sanctions against Iran. James Phillips, a Middle East expert at the Heritage Foundation, who helped devise the war-game scenario, said: "It is simultaneously a shot across Iran's bows and an appeal for the international community to do more to stop or slow Iran's nuclear programme."

A former White House aide added: "If this creates in the Iranians' mind a state of fear such that they back off, that helps your diplomacy. Bush is a political poker player. To play poker, you have to know when to bluff."

Mr Bush had another reason for speaking out, too. With General David Petraeus due before Congress on September 11 to report on progress on his "surge" in Iraq, Mr Bush wanted to make the case that a withdrawal from Iraq would boost Iranian influence there - in the hope that this would increase domestic support for his policies.

In Teheran, Mr Ahmadinejad was also quick to make the Iraq connection, but as an impediment, not impetus, to American adventurism. "We have an expression in Farsi which says, 'Bring up the one that you have given birth to first, then go for another one'," he said. "Let them do what they started in Afghanistan and Iraq then think of other countries." He dismissed threats of military action as "more of a propaganda measure than factual".

[BlooInBloo]

9. Images of the little dog/short man yipping "Cmon get him! Get him! you can DO it!!!"

Would-be-:rofl:-except-lots-of-people-will-die-for-it.

[scarletwoman]

12. This needs a kick... (and some more recs) (nt)