Seymour Hersh And Attacking Iran

The recent brouhaha created by Seymor Hersh in the New Yorker where he states the U.S. is possibly drawing up plans to nuke the pants off Iran have not only caused gasoline prices to jump $2 per barrel, but has kicked off a firestorm of criticism.

And this hot air is being spewed over nothing.

This is not a news story. The U.S. military has a plan somewhere in the Pentagon to attack every country on the face of the earth. Canada, Mexico, France, you name it. It's called contingency planning and the point of it is to be ready just in case something bizarre happens and for some reason we have to drop the 82nd Airborne into Portugal.

The fact that the military is dedicating resources to take out Iran's budding nuclear program is only news to those totally unfamiliar with how military institutions around the world operate. And of course those writers who want to sell magazines, like Hersch.

It takes a long time to draw up an operational plan for a major attack, so it only makes sense to have a staff do the work ahead of time. The same way a newspaper writes obituaries for famous people well before they die. How else can the New York Times have a full page of coverage on Jerry Garcia's death ready when he dies right before deadline. A paper has the whole thing ready to go "in the can," as we say in the business, then all you need is a graph explaining how the person finally died and you are good to go.

Without citing unamed sources or making one phone call I can tell you that there are plans for invading Iran, bombing Iran, nuking Iran and every imaginable combination of these three acts sitting in Donald Rumsfeld's desk draw.

Hersh and the New Yorker have done nothing more then help boost gasoline prices along with its circulation. To bad for the New Yorker that I can no longer afford my subscription because it costs me $30 to fill up my Saturn.