Who's the secret planner for the coming war with Iran?

Al Jazeera:

8/17/2005 9:00:00 AM GMT

The U.S. Vice President has instructed the Air Force to start putting plans for an air strike on Iran's nuclear sites using the excuse of the next “terrorist attack”, according to CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi, now a partner in Cannistraro Associates.

"In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing – that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack – but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."

So Philip Giraldi is raising concerns that Mr. Cheney and the neocons, the same men who used 9/11 as their excuse to attack Iraq, are pushing for another war against Iran, using the excuse of another “terrorist” attack.

Why would Iran attack the U.S. when they have been doing everything possible to avoid a war that would absolutely devastate their country? But the U.S. government is following the same script as with Iraq: ‘This Axis of Evil member has ties to “terrorism” and a nuclear weapons program, the UN won't act, so we have to attack them from the air, if not invade them to plant the flag of “liberty and democracy”’. Again, there’s a convergence of interests between those who have a long-term energy strategy and those whose primary objective is protecting Israel.

Giraldi confirmed information about Air Force Intelligence currently in Qatar picking targets. He said that the Special Forces were also already in Iran hunting for "suspected sites."

Last April, former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote an article saying that Air Force officers had told him that they were working on plans for war against Iran, that are supposed to be ready by June of this year.

Ritter also stated that the invasion will come from U.S. bases in Azerbaijan, and that the U.S. is already flying drones in Iranian airspace. He writes:

"Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran.

"As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool's dream."

Invading Iran through Iraq would be impossible, as Iraq’s Shiites would finally be unleashed against U.S. forces, who would then have to fight from both front and rear.

Also a general Shiite uprising in Iraq would be a likely result of bombing Iran.

If the U.S. attacked the Bushehr reactor, not only would radioactive particles blast into the air and fall back down to earth and cause great harm to the environment, but numerous Russians would also be killed.

How is the U.S. going to react if the Russians in retaliation bombed a reactor full of Americans in, say, India?