Incog4
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Generals and admirals WILL RESIGN if Bush orders attack on Iran
From The Sunday Times, UK
February 25, 2007
US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack
Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter, Washington
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.
“There are enough people who feel this would be an error of judgment too far for there to be resignations.”
A generals’ revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented. “American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,” said a Pentagon source. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.
The threat of a wave of resignations coincided with a warning by Vice-President Cheney that all options, including military action, remained on the table. He was responding to a comment by Tony Blair that it would not “be right to take military action against Iran”.
Iran ignored a United Nations deadline to suspend its uranium enrichment programme last week. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that his country “will not withdraw from its nuclear stances even one single step”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran could soon produce enough enriched uranium for two nuclear bombs a year, although Tehran claims its programme is purely for civilian energy purposes.
Nicholas Burns, the top US negotiator, is to meet British, French, German, Chinese and Russian officials in London tomorrow to discuss additional penalties against Iran. But UN diplomats cautioned that further measures would take weeks to agree and would be mild at best.
A second US navy aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS John C Stennis arrived in the Gulf last week, doubling the US presence there. Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, the commander of the US Fifth Fleet, warned: “The US will take military action if ships are attacked or if countries in the region are targeted or US troops come under direct attack.”
But General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said recently there was “zero chance” of a war with Iran. He played down claims by US intelligence that the Iranian government was responsible for supplying insurgents in Iraq, forcing Bush on the defensive.
Pace’s view was backed up by British intelligence officials who said the extent of the Iranian government’s involvement in activities inside Iraq by a small number of Revolutionary Guards was “far from clear”.
Hillary Mann, the National Security Council’s main Iran expert until 2004, said Pace’s repudiation of the administration’s claims was a sign of grave discontent at the top.
“He is a very serious and a very loyal soldier,” she said. “It is extraordinary for him to have made these comments publicly, and it suggests there are serious problems between the White House, the National Security Council and the Pentagon.”
Mann fears the administration is seeking to provoke Iran into a reaction that could be used as an excuse for an attack. A British official said the US navy was well aware of the risks of confrontation and was being “seriously careful” in the Gulf.
The US air force is regarded as being more willing to attack Iran. General Michael Moseley, the head of the air force, cited Iran as the main likely target for American aircraft at a military conference earlier this month.
According to a report in The New Yorker magazine, the Pentagon has already set up a working group to plan airstrikes on Iran. The panel initially focused on destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities and on regime change but has more recently been instructed to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq.
However, army chiefs fear an attack on Iran would backfire on American troops in Iraq and lead to more terrorist attacks, a rise in oil prices and the threat of a regional war.
Britain is concerned that its own troops in Iraq might be drawn into any American conflict with Iran, regardless of whether the government takes part in the attack.
One retired general who participated in the “generals’ revolt” against Donald Rumsfeld’s handling of the Iraq war said he hoped his former colleagues would resign in the event of an order to attack. “We don’t want to take another initiative unless we’ve really thought through the consequences of our strategy,” he warned.
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2/25/2007, 3:58 pm
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insider3
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Re: Generals and admirals WILL RESIGN if Bush orders attack on Iran
Aaron,
Joseph had mentioned, more than a few times, that he considered a coup d'état by the Military as the only possible way to keep Israel from dragging America into another world war.
Do you pesonally think that there remains even the remote possibility that the mentioned "uprising" by generals and admirals could lead to the Military taking-over the Federal government?
Bob
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2/26/2007, 2:41 pm
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Joseph Sarandos
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Re: Generals and admirals WILL RESIGN if Bush orders attack on Iran
Woman Colonel urges TROOPS to refuse orders to attack Iran
http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=10174
Feminist Daily News Wire
February 26, 2007
Woman Colonel Urges Troops to Refuse Orders if US Attacks Iran
Adding to the chorus of women leaders demanding that President Bush retreat from the possibility of war against Iran, retired Army Reserves Colonel and former high-ranking diplomat Mary Wright asked military personnel to refuse potentially imminent orders to attack Iran.
"Attacking Iran will be a crime against peace, a war crime," wrote Wright in a recent column published by Truthout.org.[See article below. J/S] "Those conducting military operations will be violating the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of Land Warfare... While refusal to drop bombs [on Iran] may initially draw punishment and the loss of one's military career, those who refuse will save their soul, their conscience, and will prevent another criminal action in the name of our country by the Bush administration."
Wright noted the large number of women now in the military and appealed to women military personnel, as well as their male counterparts, to consider the deaths of innocent civilians that will result if Iran is bombed. She went on to say, "We as human beings must take responsibility for ourselves and what our government may ask us to do."
Wright served 29 years in the US Army and Army Reserves, rising to the rank of colonel. In March 2003, Wright was one of the highest-ranking State Department officials to resign in protest of the Iraq war.
Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal joined with Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams of the US and Shirin Ebadi of Iran in April of last year to call for a peaceful resolution to the tensions between the two countries. A May 2006 Ms. magazine poll found that 67 percent of US women (compared with 59 percent of men) oppose the US taking a preemptive, unilateral military action against Iran.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_021307B.shtml
An Appeal to Conscience to Those Who Would Bomb Iran
By US Army Reserves Colonel (Retired) Ann Wright
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Tuesday 13 February 2007
George Bush is going to war again. We see it in the Bush administration's rhetoric about Iran's nuclear program. We see it in the Bush administration's commentary on Iran's reported role in training and equipping Iraqis who are fighting US forces that have invaded and occupied that country. We see it in the Bush administration's criticism of Iran's role in funding and equipping Hezbollah in Lebanon. We see it in the Bush administration's direction to the US military to detain Iranian diplomats in Iraq, breach diplomatic facilities, and capture or kill Iranian operatives in Iraq. We see it in the deployment of the third US Naval carrier group (twenty more ships) to the Gulf.
These actions indicate a very high probability of a US military attack on Iran within the next month. The Bush administration will attempt to argue that any of these triggers are so vital to the national security of the United States that military action is required.
Since January, 2002, the Bush administration has listed Iran as one of the "Axis of Evil" nations. Iran is now surrounded by the United States military. Iran's neighbors have been invaded and occupied by the Bush administration: Iraq to the west, and Afghanistan to the east. 100 US naval ships control access to the Persian Gulf to the south.
Iran is a country with a remarkable 2,500 year history. Iran has a population of 68 million people, 80,000 of whom still suffer from Iraq's use of US, French, German and UK chemical weapons on them (20,000 more were killed outright). This was the largest use of weapons of mass destruction, since the US atomic bombing of two cities in Japan at the end of World War II. Iran has a land mass three times the size of Iraq. Iran has a large military, unconstrained by twelve years of sanctions. Iran has a modern infrastructure. And Iran has a democracy in which the Parliament reportedly is within ten votes of impeaching the country's abrasive president.
Unless we derail Bush's next war, US Air Force and US Navy pilots will be ordered to drop bunker busting, "smart" bombs on facilities of the Iranian nuclear program. US Navy submarine and ship missile operators will be ordered to push the buttons to release $1 million dollar Cruise missiles that will demolish nuclear and military facilities. The military will claim limited collateral damage, but, no doubt as in every military operation, many innocent civilians will be killed by these attacks.
Many in the Bush administration believe in retribution. 52 US diplomats were held for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981 by Iranian revolutionary guards and eight US military personnel were killed in the unsuccessful, April 25, 1980 rescue attempt. To those in the Bush administration who may believe in the retribution principle, one should remind them of the 1988 shooting down of an Iranian civilian passenger aircraft by a US Navy missile, that killed 290 civilian passengers. The 1979 US Embassy takeover score has been settled.
Bombing Iranian facilities by the US military will cause the cycle of violence to begin again. If the US attacks Iran, by international law Iran has the legal right to defend itself from aggressive action by another country. The world will be watching carefully to see if the US provokes an incident whereby the Iranian military is forced into action against US forces. The Gulf is filled with US military ships which may, by the actions of the Bush administration, become legitimate targets.
While we are on the topic of history and aggression, after World War II, the United States executed German and Japanese military officers who were convicted of crimes against peace (wars of aggression) and for violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Principles.
The Nuremberg Principles provide for accountability for war crimes committed by military and civilian officials.
Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles states: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to an order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Principle VI of the Nuremberg Principles: The following crimes are punishable as crimes under international law:
a. Crimes against peace: i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; ii. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
b. War Crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
c. Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done, or such persecutions are carried on in execution of, or in connection with any crime against peace, or any war crime."
Attacking Iran will be a crime against peace, a war crime. Those conducting military operations will be violating the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of Land Warfare. Prosecution for commission of war crimes is possible.
I appeal to the conscience of US Air Force and US Navy pilots and military personnel who command cruise missiles and pilot bombers and those who plan the missions for the pilots and missile commanders. I ask that they refuse what I believe will be unlawful orders to attack Iran.
Accountability for one's actions is finally becoming possible under the new Congress. While refusal to drop bombs may initially draw punishment and the loss of one's military career, those who refuse will save their soul, their conscience and will prevent another criminal action in the name of our country by the Bush administration.
A Reminder: The oath for commissioned officers is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic and not to a particular person or political party.
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Ann Wright retired from the US Army Reserves as a Colonel after 29 years. Ms. Wright served in Grenada, Panama, Greece, the Netherlands, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2001. She resigned from the US diplomatic corps in March 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war.
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2/27/2007, 3:48 am
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Incog4
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Re: Generals and admirals WILL RESIGN if Bush orders attack on Iran
quote:
insider3 wrote:
Aaron,
Joseph had mentioned, more than a few times, that he considered a coup d'état by the Military as the only possible way to keep Israel from dragging America into another world war.
Do you pesonally think that there remains even the remote possibility that the mentioned "uprising" by generals and admirals could lead to the Military taking-over the Federal government?
Bob
Hi Bob,
Well, with an ex-Marine having suggested it's "time for a mutiny" because of the Haditha trials, a bunch of retired generals having openly opposed Bush's handling of the war, and now some active-duty generals and admirals threatening to resign, along with the retired colonel mentioned in Joseph's interim post calling for our troops to refuse orders, it would appear that the Military is "ripe" for a coup d'état.
However, such an action would have to be ordered by the top brass in the Pentagon, but Bush is keeping those top slots filled with men who are the least likely to do so.
My personal opinion is that it would be "miraculous" for the Military to exercise that option at this stage of the game.
Aaron
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2/27/2007, 12:47 pm
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Joseph Sarandos
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Re: Generals and admirals WILL RESIGN if Bush orders attack on Iran
Notice that the following article makes no mentions of the threats by generals and admirals to resign if Bush orders an attack against Iran.
Joseph
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TIME
Thursday, Mar. 01, 2007
Washington's Mixed Signals on Iran
By Elaine Shannon/Washington
One day the Bush Administration is bashing Iran, pushing U.N. Security Council sanctions, cutting off its credit, arresting its nationals and sending more warships into the Persian Gulf. Then, practically the next day it seems, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is announcing plans for U.S. and Iranian diplomats to meet in Baghdad to discuss cooperating to quell the carnage in Iraq.
Mixed messages? For sure. But that's not by accident. It's just a new take on the classic carrot-and-stick diplomatic strategy, in which contradictions are at the core of the U.S. Iran strategy.
"It is a message of pressure and possibility," says a senior U.S. official. "We're trying to keep up the pressure but also hold open the possibility of constructive dialogue, if they meet the conditions."
Rice made front page news with her disclosure Tuesday that the U.S. would send a representative — most probably Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Iran, or his successor, Ryan Crocker — to meet face to face with Middle East diplomats,including envoys from Iran and Syria. The occasion is a "neighbors' meeting" that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is convening March 10 in hopes of getting help stabilizing Iraq.
It's not actually a new idea. Back in the fall of 2005, the White House and Rice authorized Khalilzad to meet with Iranian officials about Iraqi violence. The meetings didn't happen and by the next spring the idea faded as the war of words between Washington and Tehran heated up.
It will be bigger news if the second, higher-level security conference comes off in April, as planned, which Rice herself intends to attend. She will make more headlines by sitting at the same table with the Iranian and Syrian foreign ministers, despite her condemnation of those nations for contributing to instability and bloodshed in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories — and, in Iran's case, for seeking the capability to make nuclear weapons.
Still the group will be large — ministers from the Arab world, the G-8 industrialized nations and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have been invited, along with representatives from the United Nations and other international organizations — and officials say Rice doesn't anticipate breaking away into a one-on-one session with the Iranian delegate. Nor, they say, does she intend to allow the discussion to veer off into the issue of Iran's nuclear activities now before the U.N. Security Council. (On Thursday, in a conference call with his counterparts from the other Perm-Five nations, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, Rice's point man for Iran's nukes, hopes to reach agreement on terms for the next round of sanctions.)
During the April meeting in Baghdad, says a U.S. official, Rice "is not going to hide in the corner. If she has a chance to bring up EFPs [explosively formed penetrators], she will," referring to U.S. assertions that Iran has been sending these vicious high-tech bombs to Shi'ite militias in Iraq.
One reason Rice is touting U.S. participation in the Baghdad meetings is to answer critics — including the Iraq Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker, as well as Arab and European leaders — who have urged the Administration to engage broadly with Tehran and also Damascus. But the Administration is keeping the bar high by insisting that the Baghdad talks will deal only with Iraq's security and that there will be no formal negotiations with Iran on the nuclear issue until it freezes its uranium enrichment work as ordered by the Security Council. Another reason behind Rice's move is to put Tehran on the spot: if U.S. envoys show up in Baghdad and Iranian diplomats don't, the U.S. believes it would be able to harden its case in the U.N. that the regime can't be trusted.
But some analysts find these disclaimers disingenuous and suspect that the Administration is edging toward a real reversal because it realizes its policy of isolating the Iranian regime has only made matters worse. "My reading is, Rice is ready to cave, meaning she's ready to negotiate without preconditions, and she's looking for a venue to do it," says Ray Takeyh, author of Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic. If Rice doesn't want to lay the groundwork for talking to the Iranians and Syrians, says Takeyh, why bother to attend the Baghdad conference? "The Americans don't need a conference to talk to the others," he says.
Certainly the mixed-signals strategy has generated a good deal of confusion. On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack contended that U.S. Iran policy was not, as various news reports portrayed it, "going wobbly, shift, turnabout, change." "There's no change in our policy," he insisted. "There's no change in our policy."
But like many others, Takeyh is more confused than convinced. "For the first time in this melodrama," he says, "the Iranians are easier to understand than the Americans. I don't get it."
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Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1595126,00.html
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3/1/2007, 8:59 pm
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NamVet2
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Re: Generals and admirals WILL RESIGN if Bush orders attack on Iran
Even though the last article "makes no mentions" of the threatened mass-resignations, I think we can be quite certain that the exhibited "change of attitude" by the politicians toward Iran had been brought about because of these dead-serious and open threats by the active-duty generals and admirals, combined with the call by Mary Wright for the troops themselves to "refuse to follow illegal orders" if handed down by Bush to attack Iran.
Of course I am not ruling out that Bush himself still intends to start a war with Iran, but it's obvious that he'll get little if any support and cooperation from other U.S. politicians and military "top brass," much less from our allies (with the possible exception of Australia).
This situation bears close and attentive watching, since it could well "trigger" WWIII unless Bush actually gets stymied in his plans.
Greg
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3/4/2007, 8:52 am
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