Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Arkin on Iran war planning

The Washington Post blogger William M. Arkin has a piece up about the plans being drawn up by the Pentagon for war with Iran. He faults the Hersh article in The New Yorker for relying too heavily on alleged experts talking about the planning happening and not enough about the plans themselves. Yesterday, Arkin discussed a couple of actual plan names. Today he discusses a War Game put together by the Clinton administration in 1992. Tomorrow Arkin promises to bring us current plans. From yesterday's piece:

A war with Iran started purposefully or by accident, will be a mess. What is happening now though is not just an administration prudently preparing for the unfortunate against an aggressive and crazed state, it is also aggressive and crazed, driven by groupthink and a closed circle of bears.

The public needs to know first, that this planning includes preemptive plans that the President could approve and implement with 12 hours notice. Congress should take notice of the fact that there is a real war plan -- CONPLAN 8022 -- and it could be implemented tomorrow.

Second, the public needs to know that the train has left the station on bigger war planning, that a ground war -- despite the Post claim yesterday that a land invasion "is not contemplated" -- is also being prepared. It is a real war plan; I've heard CONPLAN 1025.


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