U.S. military chiefs get ready for attack on Iran

The nation's top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force. "It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," he said at a Pentagon news conference....

In a speech Monday at West Point, Gates said Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons." He said a war with Iran would be "disastrous on a number of levels. But the military option must be kept on the table given the destabilizing policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat."

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who was nominated this week to head all U.S. forces in the Middle East, is preparing a briefing soon to lay out detailed evidence of increased Iranian involvement in Iraq, Mullen said. The briefing will detail, for example, the discovery in Iraq of weapons that were very recently manufactured in Iran, he said. "The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago. It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way," Mullen said.

He said recent unrest in the southern Iraqi city of Basra had highlighted a "level of involvement" by Iran that had not been understood by the U.S. military previously. "It became very, very visible in ways that we hadn't seen before," he said.

More here

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More Brookes News

The US needs a good dose of supply-side economics: By drawing attention to the destructive effects of heavy capital gains taxes, supply-siders are have brought to light another economic fact: if you want less of a product, penalise it. As capital gains are profits that can be directed to investment, penalizing them produces less investment which in turn has a detrimental effect on real wage
George Soros, economic illiteracy and monetary policy: Soros is obviously a very successful currency speculator, but he is no theoretician or deep thinker. He has only demonstrated the adage that you do not need to be clever to make lots of money
Dan Rather: Cuba's useful idiot: Dan Rather has been long-time supporter of Castro's brutal dictatorship, continually running interference for it. Rather recently gave Americans another thoroughly dishonest account of conditions on the Castro brothers' island estate, once again revealing how corrupt the mainstream media are
It's not about saving the planet: it's about control: In the 1970s the imminent catastrophe of the day was 'global cooling'. Isn't it ironic that the same phenomenon now used to explain how the world is undergoing catastrophic warming was earlier claimed to be the source of unmanageable global cooling?
"We have met the enemy and they is us": In the past year the Democratic majority cut funding for the border fence, opened the door to illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded services and overturned a GOP proposal to prevent taxpayer-funded federal benefitsfrom being awarded to illegal immigrants
Israel: time to "Leave Egypt": Israel is on a front line of the war between Arab-Muslim expansionism and Western democracy. This war has already shifted to America and Europe
"Gay" activists risk your life - tolerate it!: Current U.S. health regulations prohibit men who have sex with men (MSM) from donating blood. Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) categorically confirm that if MSM were permitted to give blood, the general population would be placed at risk

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ELSEWHERE

British Leftist government Takes From the Poor: "This was another bad week for Gordon Brown. Not even a year in office, the Prime Minister has already been in the soup for mishandling a banking crisis and for chickening out on early elections and an EU Constitution referendum. Now the Tories are taunting the Labour leader - who had made fighting poverty his No. 1 issue - as a tax oppressor of the poor. The charge has stuck and stung. Mr. Brown was forced Wednesday by backbenchers in his own party to mollify more than five million low-wage earners and pensioners who have seen their income taxes double to 20% this month. Even worse for a Labour leader, the tax hikes, which he passed last year when he was still Chancellor of the Exchequer but which came into force only this month, coincided with tax cuts for the middle class."

Politicians want it both ways: "It's infuriating how all three presidential candidates prattle on about the need to fight global warming while also complaining about the high price of gasoline. The candidates treat CO2 emissions as a social issue like gay marriage, with no economic ramifications. In the real world, barring a massive buildup of nuclear plants, reducing carbon dioxide emissions means consuming less energy and that means raising prices a lot, either directly with a tax or indirectly with a cap-and-trade permitting system."

Black members of the U.S. military once again outrage Japan: "Prosecutors charged a US sailor today in the stabbing death of a taxi driver, one of a series of alleged crimes by American service members that has stirred anger in Japan. Olatunbosun Ugbogu, a 22-year-old Nigerian citizen serving in the US Navy, was charged with stabbing the driver to death near a US naval base in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, on March 19, the court said in a statement. The killing followed a string of accusations against American servicemen in Japan, stoking criticism of the 50,000 US troops in the country and calls for tougher military anti-crime measures. In a separate case, a US military policeman on the southern island of Okinawa was indicted today in an assault and robbery of a Japanese taxi driver in March, Kyodo News agency reported. The officer has been handed over to Japanese authorities. The sailor in Yokosuka today faced two charges: one of robbery and murder, and one of illegal possession of a weapon. Japanese police have said that he confessed to the crime."

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A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is a recent example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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