Why Is He On Televison?
On Face The Nation – Lieberman: Bomb Iran If It Doesn’t Stop
(CBS) The United States should launch military strikes against Iran if the government in Tehran does not stop supplying anti-American forces in Iraq, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday on Face The Nation.
“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman told Bob Schieffer. “And to me, that would include a strike into… over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.”
Where is the evidence, Senator LIEberman [Likud-CT]? It wasn’t in the munitions, obviously stenciled by an American, for that dog-and-pony show that Caldwell ran in Baghdad. Defense Secretary Gates doesn’t say it; the ground commanders will only say that some of the weapons are Iranian in origin; but there has been no proof of Iranian government involvement presented. Before you advocate starting another war, and let’s be clear, bombing another country is an act of war, you better be able to provide some proof. We are already in one war based on “sexed-up, dodgy dossiers” and “slam dunks” that belonged in a freshman creative writing class, we don’t need to expand it. If you want to save the lives of the troops, vote to cut off funds for the war.
The Iranians actually have a functioning air defense capability, and an air force. They cannot stop an American air assault, but they can make it “expensive.” If Iran retaliates, we will lose our current assets in Iraq, a regional war will be triggered, and oil from the Persian Gulf will stop flowing.
Someone needs to give Lieberman a wedgie and stick him in a locker for the rest of the semester, because this crap belongs in a middle school.
12 comments
Can’t we just drop Lieberman from the plane?
We should arrange to have Lieberman, McCain, and the rest of these idiots dropped into the mountains of somewhere, so we can forget about them.
Another new rule – those agitating to bomb or otherwise attack ANY other country while Bush is in office should be required to lead the first wave.
Idiots. From everything I’ve read – and surely everything these nuts should be reading – the Iranian people are NOT our sworn enemies.
Andante, this is about Israel, the Israel of the Likud Party, not the country in the Med with people who would just like to live their lives in peace. This is about attacking anyone who doesn’t like the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This has nothing to do with the US, or US policy, or US interests.
This is about men who think they are tough because they can talk casually about getting other people killed.
This is how we end with with Castro long after the Cuban people would have thrown him out. This is how the Iranian people will be stuck with Ahmadinejad long after he has outlived his popularity. Attacking these people provides them with more support than they could ever win on their own.
I had all kinds of witty comments to write upon reading the entry, only to find that all witty comments about sending Lieberman and other politicians out there were already written. I am therefore reduced to lobbying for Lindsey Lohan to join them in Iraq : (
My mouth was agape when Lieberman droned on about attacking Iran. What does he think Iran is going to do AFTER??? Iran has an organized military and has the ability to strike back. Iran is a fucking HUGE country. We bomb Iran and the entire Middle East would go up in flames.
Besides, Lieberman’s Droopy Dog delivery still has impact around the world. Iranians hear this and get mad. Iraqis hear this and get mad. Muslims around the world hear this and get mad. Al-Qaeda hears this and laughs because Iranians do not like al-Qaeda.
WTF???
CD, Paris can join her and the crew as drivers.
Ellroon, the bridges in Iraq are being bombed which reduces our mobility. If the Iranians enter Iraq in response to an attack there is not much we can do. The Turks are already ticked off about the PKK raids from Iraq, so our troops will be isolated. If we bring carriers into the Gulf, the Iranians have antiship missiles that will definitely cause losses, and they can block the Strait of Hormus without much effort.
When oil hits $500/barrel what happens to the world economy?
I’ve got twenty bucks that says we’re stupid enough to go after Iran…
CultureGhost, no one’s gonna take you up on that. I might quibble about exactly who that “we” includes, but I wouldn’t bet against anything violent and stupid the neocons might contemplate doing, especially invading or bombing Iran.
I’m still trying to wash the stain from my hands, the one that has been there ever since I voted Lieberman for veep. But in my opinion, he has gotten much worse since then.
I just finished posting the response to all of the threats from the real leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which is pretty much all out war in the Persian Gulf. Iran fought a decade long war against Iraq that included the use of US-supplied WMDs [thanks, Ron], and these people take the long view: Persia has been destroyed before and always came back.
Threatening the Iranian religious leaders with bombing them back to the 12th century doesn’t have much bite because most still live in the 10th century intellectually.
As Steve says, CG, you’ll have to offer long odds to convince anyone to take that bet, and if you win it will not be enough to buy a gallon of gas afterwards.
Steve, I think he lost the thread after 2000. He is trying to be the alpha neocon with his rhetoric.
Iran does not have an effective Air Force, sorry. On paper it appears they have a usable air force, but reality is that they don’t have any AMRAAMSKI’s (just some cheap IR missiles where our jets can just hang back and turkey shoot the Iranians out of the air at long range using AMRAAM’s) and all the AMRAAM-like missiles we sold them for their Tomcats were expended during their Iraq war, so they’re basically an all-gun daylight-only air force. We just turn their hangers into rubble and their runways into craters at night using stealth aircraft and that’s that.
That said, they are threatening total war against both the U.S. and against any Gulf state that allows themselves to be used by the U.S. to strike Iran, and even though they have no air force and their air defense system wouldn’t last more than a few days before our stealth aircraft finally managed to blow the last of it to smithereens, what they do have are 30 million fanatical men of military age and a *ton* of those damned anti-ship missiles. Much as the U.S. viewed the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor as a declaration of war, the Iranians would view an American attack upon their soil as a declaration of war, and react accordingly. Maybe they don’t have the ability to threaten the U.S. directly, but they can certainly make life difficult by attacking the (doh) O I L.
Not that this logic will stop the neo-cons. They don’t believe in logic, just in belief.
-Badtux the War Penguin
The IAF has spent more time on ground attack than air defense, and they certainly can’t challenge US air superiority, but they can attack US forces, as we lack air defense capabilities in Iraq.
Air defense is afforded by missile batteries which they have been upgrading regularly with purchases from the Chinese and Russians and which will impact our effort. The Serbs figured out out to detect the F-117, so I would have to assume that the Iranians have the knowledge. The mountains of Iran are not the easy target field of Iraq. I will assume that cruise missiles will be the lead elements and there is a lot of Iran to overfly before you get to the airfields.
While I have ties to the Air Force, this will be a Naval and Army show. The oil facilities are out in the open along the coast, and they look down on the Strait of Hormuz from the coastal mountains. Even without their guided stuff, they have tens, hundreds of thousands of long range rockets to rained down on the area.
The Iranians used human wave attacks during the Iran-Iraq War, so they don’t have a problem with dying for Iran.
Our slim hope is for sanity among the brass and a willingness of Robert Gates to resign.