Reply #33: Agree. It Will Take A 'Gulf Of Tonkin' Incident, Directly Attributable

[Strelnikov_]

to them.

Even an air assault carries a risk orders of magnitude greater than the Iraq invasion.

Iraq had a broken military with no means to project power beyond their borders.

Iran has an intact military with an ability to project power beyond its borders adequate to effect most of the worlds petroleum and natural gas export market.

A ground invasion of Iran will require raising a draftee army of 1M+.


I see the current action as a 'Falklands Fleet Action Redux'

The current fleet action has nothing to do with an imminent attack on Iran. It has everything to do with:

1) Ensuring a GOP victory in November. Remember the Falklands fleet action. The breathless reporting, the tension, the TV ratings. Same thing again. From mid-October up to the election this will be the serial story 24/7.

2) Following the GOP victory, the tensions with Iran will be used as the reason for run-up in petroleum product prices (Note 1).

3) The ratcheting up of tensions as units of the fleet bop around the Gulf will greatly increase the chance of a 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident providing the political leverage for continuing their strategy of turmoil and hegemony over the energy producing regions of the Middle East (Note 2).

Note 1: Phases 1 and 2 appear to conflict. However, with the duration of Phase 1 being relatively short, and with my understanding now of how they are artificially depressing the price of gasoline, I feel they will be successful in keeping the gasoline prices down until after the election.

Note 2: No action, by a sane military leadership, can be undertaken against Iran (including a bombing campaign) without a major increase in troop levels if for no other reason to be prepared for contingencies.

An Iranian unit damages or sinks a U.S. Naval, the Maximum Leader can then go in front of Congress, say that we are victims of an unprovoked attack, like Pearl Harbor, and call for a draft to raise sufficient military strength to deal with the rogue nation of Iran.

The purpose of the 'War On Terror' and all of it's subsidiaries are related to Peak Oil as follows:

- By maintaining a constant state of tension, high petroleum prices can be explained away as a temporary spike due to politics. This way, the publics attention can kept from the accelerating supply problems worldwide, thus preventing them from starting to make other arrangements for a post-carbon world (they can't have the addicts kicking too soon).

- Whoever controls the remaining (cheap) petroleum reserves stands to make a fortune in the years immediately following the peak of production. Even the most optimistic scenarios indicate it would take twenty years to mitigate the loss of petroleum production following peak. During this period of transition, the 'addicts' will have no choice but to pay, and pay, and pay.