- "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" began in 1918
as a comic strip featuring unusual, hard-to-believe facts from around the
world. Today it is a Web site for a global community that combs cyberspace
for events so strange and unusual it is often hard to believe they are
taking place. These days, you don't have to go further afield than Washington
, D.C.
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- The neo-conservatives (neocons) who gave us the "cakewalk"
prediction for Iraq before the war are now plugging "a walk in the
park" in Iran -- i.e., a U.S. bombing campaign to consign the mullahs'
nuclear ambitions to oblivion, or at least to retard the advent of an Iranian
bomb for a few years, hoping that in the interim good democrats would rise
up and send the clerics and their Revolutionary Guards packing.
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- Two Washington-based representatives of a global Fortune
100 company told their visiting senior executive this week a bombing campaign
of Iran 's nuclear facilities "is inevitable while Mr. Bush is in
the White House." The incredulous CEO thought his Washington eyes
and ears were overstating the case. They assured him they were deadly serious.
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- Leading neocon Richard Perle, who led the intellectual
charge for the ill-fated invasion of Iraq , believes two B-2 bombers, each
with 16 independently targeted weapons systems, could punch out Iran 's
nuclear lights. No Air Force expert we could find agreed. But the Pentagon's
Air Force generals believe it can be done -- and successfully -- with a
much larger operation, including five nights of bombing, some 400 aim points,
75 requiring deep penetration ordnance. Time magazine estimates 1,500 such
aim points, or "viable targets," related to Iran 's widely scattered
nuclear development complex. The Navy, with its carrier task forces and
ship-launched cruise missiles, does not share the same degree of certainty.
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- No one has worked more assiduously for military action
than Michael Ledeen, a neocon field marshal, who writes frequently about
the "horrors" of Iran 's mullahocracy. His National Review Online
commentary Nov. 1 was headlined "Delay." Mr. Ledeen has grown
impatient over Mr. Bush's dangerous postponement of what he considers inevitable.
"If the president knows Iran is waging war on us," wrote Mr.
Ledeen, "he is obliged to respond; the only appropriate question is
about the method, not the substance. If he does not know, then he should
remove those officials who were obliged to tell him, and get some people
who will tell the truth."
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- The truth has become an increasingly rare commodity in
Washington . Mr. Ledeen concludes the president knows the truth, but thinks
he may lack the political capital to directly challenge the mullahs. More
likely, Mr. Bush's thinking has changed when confronted by the intelligence
community's assessment of Iran 's retaliatory capabilities. They are described
as "formidable." These include mining the Strait of Hormuz ,
the channel for two-fifths of the world's oil traffic, which would send
oil prices skyrocketing to $200 per barrel almost overnight.
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- Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia 's ambassador to
the U.S. , headed his country's intelligence service for 25 years. He warns
that an attack against Iran would turn "the whole Persian Gulf into
an inferno of exploding fuel tanks and shot-up facilities." Earlier
this month, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards test-fired dozens of missiles,
including the long-range Shahab-3 (1,242 miles), Shahab-2 (cluster warhead
of 1,400 bomblets), solid-fuel Zalzals, Zolfaghar73, Z-3, and SCUD-Bs,
all timed to follow by two days the completion of U.S.-led allied naval
maneuvers in the Gulf that Tehran described as "adventurist."
Warships from Australia , Britain , France , Italy , Bahrain and the U.S.
participated.
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- Dubbed "Great Prophet," Iran 's 10-day war
games were designed "to show our deterrent and defensive power to
trans-regional enemies, and we hope they will understand the message,"
said Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi.
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- Iran also has control over Hezbollah whose terrorist
arm has already reached all the way to Argentina (in the mid-1990s) and
whose sleeper cells, from Saudi Arabia's eastern oil fields where Shi'ites
are the majority, to North America, are still feigning sleep.
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- Russia and China have made clear they will not be part
of any tough sanction regime against Iran . They both have strong commercial
ties to Iran . Tehran is paying Russia $700 million for 29 air defense
missile systems. China signed a 10-year, $100 billion oil deal with Iran
.
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- What the neocons dismiss as the "nervous nellies"
of the intelligence community may have slipped in to President Bush's morning
brief a subversive quote or two from conservative historian Paul Johnson,
e.g., "Statesmen should never plunge into the future ... without first
examining what guidance the past could supply?"
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- Mr. Ledeen, who acts as spokesman for Iran 's suppressed
democratic forces, says, "The first step is to embrace the unpleasant
fact that we are at war with Iran , and it is long past time to respond."
The Iraqi debacle, along with the fading image of the U.S. as the world's
sole superpower, as well as of Israel as the regional superpower, evidently
persuaded President Bush to further disappoint the neocons. The Iraq Study
Group's (ISG) James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton wanted neocon idol
Donald Rumsfeld replaced as defense secretary before going public with
their findings.
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- The new defense secretary, former CIA Director Robert
M. Gates, a close friend of Mr. Baker, and also a member of ISG, has long
favored direct talks with "Axis of Evil" charter member Iran
. Mr. Baker, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Gates are now on the same wavelength.
They believe bombing Iran would be an unmitigated disaster for U.S. interests
the world over. The alternative is to explore a geopolitical deal with
a country that has legitimate security interests.
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- The neocons' ideas for a walk in the Iranian park are
still very much alive in Israel , whose very existence has been threatened
by the mullahocracy. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will make clear to Mr.
Bush today during a White House visit that Israel is not prepared to live
with an Iranian nuclear weapon.
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- Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington
Times and of United Press International.
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