In this week's New Yorker Seymour Hersh has another article about preparations for war with Iran. It's a subject that he is now reporting about on a monthly basis.
Now he is talking about the relationship between the Lebanon situation and how, in the opinion of many of Hersh's contacts, that situation was looked at as a trial run for Iran. It was felt that trying to wipe out Hezbollah's underground fortifications would be a test of how to do the same with Iran's underground installations. Perhaps fortunately for the world, the Lebanese war is not going very well for Israel, our surrogate. In fact, it seems to have unified the Arab world. Such a reaction would cause the rational person to think twice about the plan. Whether this will deter the crusaders for democracy in the administration is the question.
One of Hersh's sources, a Pentagon consultant, says that the use of intelligence vis-a-vis Iran reminds him of the run-up to Iraq, "...all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top - at the insistence of the White House - and is not being analyzed at all, or scarcely. It's an awful policy and violates all of the NSA strictures, and if you complain about it you're out."
Israel has bet a lot on being very, very tough in this war. Is it working? An answer to this question is, in fact, a question posed by a European intelligence officer, "How do you scare people who love martyrdom?"
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