Darkhawk28
Diamond Member
Not saying that, but I'm not calling him a liar either. He may have been right and he may not have. But, the pieces fit and the desire for the invasion was building in the rhetoric and the media.
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Scott Ritter: US plans June attack on Iran , US "cooked" Jan 30 Elections
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Not saying that, but I'm not calling him a liar either. He may have been right and he may not have. But, the pieces fit and the desire for the invasion was building in the rhetoric and the media.
umbrella39
Lifer
Debunked? :roll: Accepted perhaps, debunked, hardly. I'm sure they'll get their chance soon enough to show how they can turn those keystroking skills into something more useful to the cause they so adamantly support.
cKGunslinger
Lifer
I think the bigger issue is that Ritter, the OP, and several others adamantly claimed over and over that this was going to happen, and now that it appears that it isn't, instead of admitting that he may be wrong, wer'e hearing all kinds of stories about conspiracies to keep him quiet, to change months- or years-old plans to make some nobody look bad, etc.
Do you have some proof that Bush changed plans? Is that really somehow more believable than Ritter being an incompetant tool?
I think Occam's Razor applies in this case.
Proletariat
Diamond Member
Damn someone got owned.
Darkhawk28
Diamond Member
Actually Occam's Razor would suggest that Bush pushed back the date. Too many people would've had to been wrong (not just Ritter, but his sources as well). The most logical conclusion, considering his attitudes and policies, would be that Bush pushed back the date.
cKGunslinger
Lifer
Do you really want to rehash it here in this thread, too? I say debunked as several posters presented well-presented reasons why the argument is specious at best, and no one came to refute it.
And what kind of deep, insightful replies to we get in return?
No no no - it's cause Ritter tipped Iran off, and therefore it wouldn't have been a SURPRISE!!!!
Of course, we've telegraphed every attack in modern history. Surprise is no longer considered necessary, or even useful, when you can just build overwhelming force and a superior plan.
We could keep this post active for another 6 months, with another 6 months of predictions from AOL-Ritter, and you'd still have the same excuses forthcoming.
umbrella39
Lifer
Had an invasion happened in June, would Ritter have been right or just a real good guesser? I know for a fact I would not have jumped into this thread and pointed fingers at the conservatives on the board saying, see Ritter was right, nah nah nah. Because he wouldn't have been right, he would have been just lucky to have called the month.
At the end of the day, we still have real troops dying in Iraq daily. Try and keep that in perspective. I am proud of the men on this board who can cheer that we did not in fact invade Iran. That is a good thing, but not for the reason they some seem to be cheering. The cheering seems to be that they were able to bookmark a thread and poke fun at it when the predictions did not come true. Granted, the OP left himself open for ridicule when July 1st rolled around. I for one and very f'ing thankful we have not invaded Iran. I have 2 boys that are steadily approaching their 18th birthdays and want to keep them alive to see their 19th. I hope we can keep recruitment numbers up like they were this month and I hope we keep out of Iran until they have proven to be a threat to us. I would hate like hell for their to be another draft and hearing that we are not invading another country is good news to all of us I hope.
CKGS, do you think an invasion of Iran is just way too out there -or- is it something you think is inevitible before the 2008 presidential elections like I do?
At the end of the day, we still have real troops dying in Iraq daily. Try and keep that in perspective. I am proud of the men on this board who can cheer that we did not in fact invade Iran. That is a good thing, but not for the reason they some seem to be cheering. The cheering seems to be that they were able to bookmark a thread and poke fun at it when the predictions did not come true. Granted, the OP left himself open for ridicule when July 1st rolled around. I for one and very f'ing thankful we have not invaded Iran. I have 2 boys that are steadily approaching their 18th birthdays and want to keep them alive to see their 19th. I hope we can keep recruitment numbers up like they were this month and I hope we keep out of Iran until they have proven to be a threat to us. I would hate like hell for their to be another draft and hearing that we are not invading another country is good news to all of us I hope.
CKGS, do you think an invasion of Iran is just way too out there -or- is it something you think is inevitible before the 2008 presidential elections like I do?
Darkhawk28
Diamond Member
Sigh. By proving Ritter right, it would've legitmized Ritter's other claims, which would've been far more damaging. Another point is that the support of the Iraq war has plummetted, not just in the public but on Capitol Hill as well. It would've been near impossible to get approval for another war.
cKGunslinger
Lifer
*shrug* I'll give you that it may be 50/50, but our hunches lean different ways.
Darkhawk28
Diamond Member
Any invasion in Iran will be fraught with political game-playing.
cKGunslinger
Lifer
Me. I'd say just about anything is a possibility, but I'm not the one creating threads here to make predictions 6 months in advance.
ShadesOfGrey
Golden Member
Darkhawk28 posted:
Is this what passes as "logical" on this forum? I mean I've read quite a few threads and been astonished by what people try to pass of as logic but this one takes the cake so far. So because your opinion of Bush's policies means that Ritter is right even though it's now fact he is wrong? Huh?
Is this what passes as "logical" on this forum? I mean I've read quite a few threads and been astonished by what people try to pass of as logic but this one takes the cake so far. So because your opinion of Bush's policies means that Ritter is right even though it's now fact he is wrong? Huh?
cKGunslinger
Lifer
Umm... the OP specifically asked for this thread to be resurrected so he could show us all how right he was.
Now of course, he did bury that in a heap of self-victimization and doomsday prophecy, so I can see how you could have missed this.
You actually think Bush knows or cares about some dickhead GI who thinks he knows things and obviously doesn't? 99% of America doesn't even know who Ritter is, or care. He is a nobody, and what he says as no effect on anyone, besides maybe some of the libbies on this board.
Zebo
Elite Member
ritter says we're already at war?
The US War with Iran has Already Begun
by Scott Ritter
Americans, along with the rest of the world, are starting to wake up to the uncomfortable fact that President George Bush not only lied to them about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the ostensible excuse for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of that country by US forces), but also about the very process that led to war.
On 16 October 2002, President Bush told the American people that "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope that the use of force will not become necessary."
We know now that this statement was itself a lie, that the president, by late August 2002, had, in fact, signed off on the 'execute' orders authorising the US military to begin active military operations inside Iraq, and that these orders were being implemented as early as September 2002, when the US Air Force, assisted by the British Royal Air Force, began expanding its bombardment of targets inside and outside the so-called no-fly zone in Iraq.
These operations were designed to degrade Iraqi air defence and command and control capabilities. They also paved the way for the insertion of US Special Operations units, who were conducting strategic reconnaissance, and later direct action, operations against specific targets inside Iraq, prior to the 19 March 2003 commencement of hostilities.
President Bush had signed a covert finding in late spring 2002, which authorised the CIA and US Special Operations forces to dispatch clandestine units into Iraq for the purpose of removing Saddam Hussein from power.
The fact is that the Iraq war had begun by the beginning of summer 2002, if not earlier.
The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence gathering phase. This timeline of events has ramifications that go beyond historical trivia or political investigation into the events of the past.
It represents a record of precedent on the part of the Bush administration which must be acknowledged when considering the ongoing events regarding US-Iran relations. As was the case with Iraq pre-March 2003, the Bush administration today speaks of "diplomacy" and a desire for a "peaceful" resolution to the Iranian question.
But the facts speak of another agenda, that of war and the forceful removal of the theocratic regime, currently wielding the reigns of power in Tehran.
As with Iraq, the president has paved the way for the conditioning of the American public and an all-too-compliant media to accept at face value the merits of a regime change policy regarding Iran, linking the regime of the Mullah's to an "axis of evil" (together with the newly "liberated" Iraq and North Korea), and speaking of the absolute requirement for the spread of "democracy" to the Iranian people.
"Liberation" and the spread of "democracy" have become none-too-subtle code words within the neo-conservative cabal that formulates and executes American foreign policy today for militarism and war.
By the intensity of the "liberation/democracy" rhetoric alone, Americans should be put on notice that Iran is well-fixed in the cross-hairs as the next target for the illegal policy of regime change being implemented by the Bush administration.
But Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran.
As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool's dream.
The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.
The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.
President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran.
The most visible of these is the CIA-backed actions recently undertaken by the Mujahadeen el-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group, once run by Saddam Hussein's dreaded intelligence services, but now working exclusively for the CIA's Directorate of Operations.
It is bitter irony that the CIA is using a group still labelled as a terrorist organisation, a group trained in the art of explosive assassination by the same intelligence units of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, who are slaughtering American soldiers in Iraq today, to carry out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq.
Perhaps the adage of "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" has finally been embraced by the White House, exposing as utter hypocrisy the entire underlying notions governing the ongoing global war on terror.
But the CIA-backed campaign of MEK terror bombings in Iran are not the only action ongoing against Iran.
To the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, the US military is preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that will foretell a major land-based campaign designed to capture Tehran.
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's interest in Azerbaijan may have escaped the blinkered Western media, but Russia and the Caucasus nations understand only too well that the die has been cast regarding Azerbaijan's role in the upcoming war with Iran.
The ethnic links between the Azeri of northern Iran and Azerbaijan were long exploited by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and this vehicle for internal manipulation has been seized upon by CIA paramilitary operatives and US Special Operations units who are training with Azerbaijan forces to form special units capable of operating inside Iran for the purpose of intelligence gathering, direct action, and mobilising indigenous opposition to the Mullahs in Tehran.
But this is only one use the US has planned for Azerbaijan. American military aircraft, operating from forward bases in Azerbaijan, will have a much shorter distance to fly when striking targets in and around Tehran.
In fact, US air power should be able to maintain a nearly 24-hour a day presence over Tehran airspace once military hostilities commence.
No longer will the United States need to consider employment of Cold War-dated plans which called for moving on Tehran from the Arab Gulf cities of Chah Bahar and Bandar Abbas. US Marine Corps units will be able to secure these towns in order to protect the vital Straits of Hormuz, but the need to advance inland has been eliminated.
A much shorter route to Tehran now exists - the coastal highway running along the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan to Tehran.
US military planners have already begun war games calling for the deployment of multi-divisional forces into Azerbaijan.
Logistical planning is well advanced concerning the basing of US air and ground power in Azerbaijan.
Given the fact that the bulk of the logistical support and command and control capability required to wage a war with Iran is already forward deployed in the region thanks to the massive US presence in Iraq, the build-up time for a war with Iran will be significantly reduced compared to even the accelerated time tables witnessed with Iraq in 2002-2003.
America and the Western nations continue to be fixated on the ongoing tragedy and debacle that is Iraq. Much needed debate on the reasoning behind the war with Iraq and the failed post-war occupation of Iraq is finally starting to spring up in the United States and elsewhere.
Normally, this would represent a good turn of events. But with everyone's heads rooted in the events of the past, many are missing out on the crime that is about to be repeated by the Bush administration in Iran - an illegal war of aggression, based on false premise, carried out with little regard to either the people of Iran or the United States.
Most Americans, together with the mainstream American media, are blind to the tell-tale signs of war, waiting, instead, for some formal declaration of hostility, a made-for-TV moment such as was witnessed on 19 March 2003.
We now know that the war had started much earlier. Likewise, history will show that the US-led war with Iran will not have begun once a similar formal statement is offered by the Bush administration, but, rather, had already been under way since June 2005, when the CIA began its programme of MEK-executed terror bombings in Iran.
Scott Ritter is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998, and author of Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy, to be published by I B Tauris in October 2005.
The US War with Iran has Already Begun
by Scott Ritter
Americans, along with the rest of the world, are starting to wake up to the uncomfortable fact that President George Bush not only lied to them about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the ostensible excuse for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of that country by US forces), but also about the very process that led to war.
On 16 October 2002, President Bush told the American people that "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope that the use of force will not become necessary."
We know now that this statement was itself a lie, that the president, by late August 2002, had, in fact, signed off on the 'execute' orders authorising the US military to begin active military operations inside Iraq, and that these orders were being implemented as early as September 2002, when the US Air Force, assisted by the British Royal Air Force, began expanding its bombardment of targets inside and outside the so-called no-fly zone in Iraq.
These operations were designed to degrade Iraqi air defence and command and control capabilities. They also paved the way for the insertion of US Special Operations units, who were conducting strategic reconnaissance, and later direct action, operations against specific targets inside Iraq, prior to the 19 March 2003 commencement of hostilities.
President Bush had signed a covert finding in late spring 2002, which authorised the CIA and US Special Operations forces to dispatch clandestine units into Iraq for the purpose of removing Saddam Hussein from power.
The fact is that the Iraq war had begun by the beginning of summer 2002, if not earlier.
The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence gathering phase. This timeline of events has ramifications that go beyond historical trivia or political investigation into the events of the past.
It represents a record of precedent on the part of the Bush administration which must be acknowledged when considering the ongoing events regarding US-Iran relations. As was the case with Iraq pre-March 2003, the Bush administration today speaks of "diplomacy" and a desire for a "peaceful" resolution to the Iranian question.
But the facts speak of another agenda, that of war and the forceful removal of the theocratic regime, currently wielding the reigns of power in Tehran.
As with Iraq, the president has paved the way for the conditioning of the American public and an all-too-compliant media to accept at face value the merits of a regime change policy regarding Iran, linking the regime of the Mullah's to an "axis of evil" (together with the newly "liberated" Iraq and North Korea), and speaking of the absolute requirement for the spread of "democracy" to the Iranian people.
"Liberation" and the spread of "democracy" have become none-too-subtle code words within the neo-conservative cabal that formulates and executes American foreign policy today for militarism and war.
By the intensity of the "liberation/democracy" rhetoric alone, Americans should be put on notice that Iran is well-fixed in the cross-hairs as the next target for the illegal policy of regime change being implemented by the Bush administration.
But Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran.
As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool's dream.
The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.
The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.
President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran.
The most visible of these is the CIA-backed actions recently undertaken by the Mujahadeen el-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group, once run by Saddam Hussein's dreaded intelligence services, but now working exclusively for the CIA's Directorate of Operations.
It is bitter irony that the CIA is using a group still labelled as a terrorist organisation, a group trained in the art of explosive assassination by the same intelligence units of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, who are slaughtering American soldiers in Iraq today, to carry out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq.
Perhaps the adage of "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" has finally been embraced by the White House, exposing as utter hypocrisy the entire underlying notions governing the ongoing global war on terror.
But the CIA-backed campaign of MEK terror bombings in Iran are not the only action ongoing against Iran.
To the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, the US military is preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that will foretell a major land-based campaign designed to capture Tehran.
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's interest in Azerbaijan may have escaped the blinkered Western media, but Russia and the Caucasus nations understand only too well that the die has been cast regarding Azerbaijan's role in the upcoming war with Iran.
The ethnic links between the Azeri of northern Iran and Azerbaijan were long exploited by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and this vehicle for internal manipulation has been seized upon by CIA paramilitary operatives and US Special Operations units who are training with Azerbaijan forces to form special units capable of operating inside Iran for the purpose of intelligence gathering, direct action, and mobilising indigenous opposition to the Mullahs in Tehran.
But this is only one use the US has planned for Azerbaijan. American military aircraft, operating from forward bases in Azerbaijan, will have a much shorter distance to fly when striking targets in and around Tehran.
In fact, US air power should be able to maintain a nearly 24-hour a day presence over Tehran airspace once military hostilities commence.
No longer will the United States need to consider employment of Cold War-dated plans which called for moving on Tehran from the Arab Gulf cities of Chah Bahar and Bandar Abbas. US Marine Corps units will be able to secure these towns in order to protect the vital Straits of Hormuz, but the need to advance inland has been eliminated.
A much shorter route to Tehran now exists - the coastal highway running along the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan to Tehran.
US military planners have already begun war games calling for the deployment of multi-divisional forces into Azerbaijan.
Logistical planning is well advanced concerning the basing of US air and ground power in Azerbaijan.
Given the fact that the bulk of the logistical support and command and control capability required to wage a war with Iran is already forward deployed in the region thanks to the massive US presence in Iraq, the build-up time for a war with Iran will be significantly reduced compared to even the accelerated time tables witnessed with Iraq in 2002-2003.
America and the Western nations continue to be fixated on the ongoing tragedy and debacle that is Iraq. Much needed debate on the reasoning behind the war with Iraq and the failed post-war occupation of Iraq is finally starting to spring up in the United States and elsewhere.
Normally, this would represent a good turn of events. But with everyone's heads rooted in the events of the past, many are missing out on the crime that is about to be repeated by the Bush administration in Iran - an illegal war of aggression, based on false premise, carried out with little regard to either the people of Iran or the United States.
Most Americans, together with the mainstream American media, are blind to the tell-tale signs of war, waiting, instead, for some formal declaration of hostility, a made-for-TV moment such as was witnessed on 19 March 2003.
We now know that the war had started much earlier. Likewise, history will show that the US-led war with Iran will not have begun once a similar formal statement is offered by the Bush administration, but, rather, had already been under way since June 2005, when the CIA began its programme of MEK-executed terror bombings in Iran.
Scott Ritter is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998, and author of Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy, to be published by I B Tauris in October 2005.
TastesLikeChicken
Lifer
cKGunslinger
Lifer
LOL - I suppose if you are the one who gets to decide when a war starts, and not the President or Congress, it's pretty trivial to make "accurate" predictions.
BTW - got a link to that?
cKGunslinger
Lifer
I suppose it's still June is some parts of the world..
Ritter announced it, therefore scaring Bush into not doing it😛
Maybe he will announce that we are now going after Syria or NK before the end of the year.
cKGunslinger
Lifer
Back from the holidays and checking in. Flipping through the news and this site real quick seems to indicate no attacks on Iran yet.
I was about to give you the benefit of the doubt that you were still on holiday as well, but your profile indicates you last visted today. Still waiting to see that difference..
I was about to give you the benefit of the doubt that you were still on holiday as well, but your profile indicates you last visted today. Still waiting to see that difference..
I am sure that with one phone call, Bush could initiate hostilities with any of the above mentions countries.
As some have insinuated, that he would willing generate a scenario to justify actions.
Since this has not happened, it would seen that some of the "sky is falling" crowd is still munching on crow and their mouths are too full to apologize.
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