Posted on 04/09/2006 3:17:23 PM PDT by freedom44
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Middle East News
WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Israel's military was said to be unable to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.
A former leading U.S. intelligence chief said Israel does not have sufficient assets or support for a major attack required to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program. The intelligence chief cited the absence of Israeli aircraft carriers and the need for warplanes to enter the air space of Arab rivals.
"The United States is the only country in the world that has capability of carrying out the estimated thousand strike sorties needed to destroy the Iran's nuclear program," [Ret.] Col. Patrick Lang, director of the Middle East section of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said. "The objective has to be not to destroy the program, but to set it back a desired number of years."
Lang told a March 23 seminar at the Washington-based Nixon Center that Israel's military could not sustain an air campaign against Iran. He cited the more than 1,500 kilometers from Israel to Iran as well as a shortage of Israeli combat aircraft.
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If we bomb Iran, I'm going to be very disappointed if Israeli jets don't join in. Iran is a threat to the US, but a far greater threat to Israel. Israel developed F-15I and F-16I long-range fighter bombers specifically to have an Iran attack capability. They need to join in. I don't have a problem with us helping Israel out, but they shouldn't just be twiddling their thumbs while we undergo the risks.
"The objective has to be not to destroy the program, but to set it back a desired number of years."
A thousand would suit me just fine~!
This assumes conventional attack with bombers, and not with ballistic rockets [non-conventional].
Be Ever Vigilant!
Sorry Chief!!! Bad Form!!!! Never tell the Isreali's that they can't do something; that's just the time that they show you that they've figured out a way to do just what you said they couldn't do and do it well.
They have uranium mines in country? I wonder why the big drive to buy in Africa?
All good. Can we just bomb them now. Please.
"Never tell the Isreali's that they can't do something; that's just the time that they show you that they've figured out a way to do just what you said they couldn't do and do it well."
Ahem. Perhaps thats the point...
Israel carried the burden itself when it destroyed Iraq's nuclear bomb program in the 80's.
If we don't get absolutely everything, (and how can we with it all dispersed and hidden?) then we will surely face retaliation.
The U.S. can sustain a nuke or two and still survive. Israel can't.
Look at Israel on a map. It won't take more than one nuke, two at the most, to pretty much wipe them out.
Because Israel can't to this strike alone, there is no good tactical reason for them to be involved at all this time around. And there are good political reasons not to involve Israel, just like we kept them out of Gulf War I despite their being the recipient of scud attacks from Saddam.
Having Israel in the mix just muddies the waters vis a vis stirring religious furor in the Islamic world. So I disagree with your initial reaction of possible disappointment if they don't join in.
Save the country's infrastructure for the next generation of pro-Western Iranians, eliminate the Islamo-facists at the top instead.
While I agree Israel should be helping, it would create other problems. The Arab countries would never allow an attack, which involved Israel. Not that we should care what those countries think.
But the Clinton days are over, and Lang is clueless. Israel has prepared enough combat aircraft to make the round trip (and most likely refueling plans for more) and has purchased hundreds of penetrators from us for exactly that mission.
Isreal must participate in putting down Iran's military, because:
* Iran threatened to wipe Israel off of the map while building a nuclear weapons program. That behavior is best punished and later prevented by the humiliation of being defeated by Israel.
* Israel has spent enormous sums of revenues for the hardware to do the job: F-16Is fitted for the trip, at least 500 bunker busters and more. Such great ammo shouldn't be wasted by storage rot.
But IMO, we in the USA should do much to help, because it would be a shame for such a tiny nation as Israel to go alone to put down an enemy that also threatens Europe and the USA (see Iran's threats and development of the 3,500-mile Shahab-6).
If Iran's nuclear development treatens the world, we should ask China, Russia and Pakistan to be first involved as their closest neighbors but maybe they aren't as afraid as the far way USA is.
If it were a matter of hitting a single plant, as it was years ago with Iraq's nuclear project, Israel might have a shot of carrying this off.
But it isn't. Its a matter of hitting multiple targets multiple times at an enormous distance from Israel. Israel isn't the one with the fleet sitting off Iran's coast, Israel isn't the one with airbases up and down the Persian Gulf, we are.
The primary reason for wanting Israel to do it is so that they will take the blame. They would take the political hit within their own system, the diplomatic hit from all the decent countries of the world trying to toady up to the arab countries, and they might take the military hit when Iran retaliates.
Except that everyone will know that Israel didn't do it alone, and in radical muslim eyes the US and Israel are one. Iran will respond by attacking both Israel and the US, you can count on it. They will heat things up for us in Iraq, and they will almost certainly try to slip a nuke into New York Harbor as well as another one into Tel Aviv. If not one they made themselves, then one they purchased in Belarus or North Korea. Mind you, this is not an argument against our attack, since Iran fully intends to do this whether we do or don't attack.
When we do this, our guys in Iraq will come under fierce attack by Iran's militias in the region, and its entirely possible they will send in regular Iranian military dressed as militia. We will have a hot war on our hands, and this is whether we do it, or Israel does it, or whether we both do it together.
So if and when we do this thing, we had better have backup plans on top of backup plans, because we are moving from our present state of undeclared war with Iran into a full scale war, declared or not, unto death, or at least unto its cataclysmic final logical outcome.
When we pull the trigger we had better be ready for what follows.
Here here,
Spot on. Just got back from the "region" and we can handle these ass-clowns. There will be retribution, however, from the Iranians. The military can take it, can the civilians?
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