Listening to the pundits on Fox News, you have to wonder what bubbles they reside in when they are not lying through their teeth. Because Germany is not agreeing to participate in economic sanctions against Iran, Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney argues that the only course of action left is to bomb Iran.
“Since Germany has backed out of helping economically, we do not have any other choice. … They’ve forced us into the military option.”
He goes on.
I think the option should initially be tit-for-tat,” McInerney went on. “For every explosively formed projectile from Iran that goes off in Iraq, two go off in Iran, no questions asked.”
So is the attack on Iran about Iran’s so called nuclear weapons program, or is it about attacks on US forces inside Iraq? A subtlety that McInerney apparently fails to comprehend.
McInerney is also convinced that air strikes alone would be another “cake walk”, oblivious to the fact that US forces have been bombing Iraq and Afghanistan for 5 years and still haven’t finished whatever it is they are trying to achieve.
“The one I favor the most, of course, is an air campaign,” he continued. “Forty-eight hours duration, hitting 2500 aimed points to take out their nuclear facilities, their air defense facilities, their air force, their navy, their Shahab-3 retaliatory missiles, and finally their command and control. And then let the Iranian people take their country back.”
McInerney described such a bombing campaign as “easy” and spoke enthusiastically of the weaponry involved, including “a new massive ordnance penetrator that’s 30,000 pounds, that really penetrates … Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can’t penetrate.”
I wonder if the 48 hours prediction will be as accurate as Rumsfeld’s “It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months” prediction?