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108 comments on World events roundup

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LevinK on March 8, 2006 - 6:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Source?

Usually I dismiss the "US suicidal in Iran" scenario, but this thing sounds scary. You woke up the paranoid part of me and now I start to wonder why indeed everybody is striving to build inventories in this country... we'll see.

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TrueKaiser on March 8, 2006 - 7:52pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
USS Ronald Reagan deployed to the gulf.
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/06/front2453788.107638889.html

ac-130's moved to iraq bases.
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/cctimes/news/world/14016966.htm?source=rss&channel=cctimes_world

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LevinK on March 9, 2006 - 10:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A gunship against insurgents planting mines on roads and blowing up marketplaces? Are they kidding?


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Jack Greene on March 9, 2006 - 10:50am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
LevinK,

It is obviously NOT there for roadside bombers.

Remember last fall when Iran ordered three of their divisions to be ready to move into Iraq in the event of an American attack on Iran. They may decide not to that in the event of an American attack, but the military wants that asset.

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LevinK on March 9, 2006 - 11:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
So you take the war with Iran as granted? We'd all better head for the mountains then.

The AC-130 against insurgents was not my statement:

The U.S. Air Force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes -- the lethal "flying gunships" of the Vietnam War -- to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance
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Jack Greene on March 9, 2006 - 9:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
LevinK,

No, I do not take war with Iran as inevitable, even if we think it will only be for 2-3 days. I think the USA will stand down and Israel will do the bombing out of a sense of self-preservation, but the repercussions will spill over into cutting off Persian Gulf oil for a period of time.

But we want those big planes there as insurance.

The USA military has a lot of power, even if we do not talk about Nukes, though France does.

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GreyZone on March 8, 2006 - 8:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If you follow military deployments, the Navy has gone from under 70% "under way" or "deployed" to 86% deployed and underway in the last month and a half. And most of those have been to/around the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. You can follow Navy deployment information weekly, if you wish.
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tom deplume on March 9, 2006 - 11:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This is sabre rattling. If these assets were really going to attack Iran we would know not about it.
There is the probability that these are replacements for units and ships nearing the end of a duty cycle. But then I have too often overestimated the intelligence of Dubya.
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GreyZone on March 9, 2006 - 12:37pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
You can't hide large scale deployments in an open society. It cannot be done. You can confuse people by making it appear they might be going somewhere else, but everyone knows when a full aircraft carrier of seamen are gone from their home port so there is no point in trying to pretend that they are not deployed. As someone who has followed deployments since I left the military 20+ years ago, I disagree completely with your assertion that we would not know about it. We would indeed know about it, just as public deployment information made the Iraq invasion obvious as well as the first Gulf war. The only excuse for not knowing about it is simply failing to observe the publicly available information. This neither tells us if Bush will attack Iran or not but those forces are deployed.

If you had watched the "underway" list over the last 45 days you would realize that there are now 3 different complete Marine expeditionary groups in the Persian Gulf region. That page only lists the "underway" assets and once they arrive "on station" the name of the ship or other asset is removed from the page. However, I've watched three complete Marine expeditionary groups go to the Persian Gulf and not return yet.

Do I think this is saber rattling? Yes, but those forces are real, in place, and have the firepower to at least start something even if they can't finish it.

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jacob on March 10, 2006 - 10:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Remember the Mongol hordes...  Forecasting a pending invasion of a town worked in their favor.  It was a great pyschological warfare tool.
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