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I'm not sure that Bush and Rove have the huevos to actually do this, but it's worth repeating in case it is true.
The rumour is that the attack on Iran that I mooted for after a Bush win, is actually being planned as a pre-election gambit. Rumsfeld visited the USS John F. Kennedy in the Gulf on October 9th and briefed its (new) commander. Also briefed were representatives of some of the lesser members of the "coalition of the killing" - excluding Australia, Britain and almost all other first-world "CotW" countries, who disagree with the plan.
The plan: to bomb the Iranian nuclear facility at Bushehr, as well as striking an underground research facility at Natanz and another at Isfahan. A "decapitation strike" of major Iranian mullahs is also apparently being contemplated - which will mean bombing mosques.
That would invite a retaliatory strike by Iran, using their Shahab missiles which are capable of reaching Israel. And of course Iraq's Shi'a population will be in absolute uproar, as will most of the Muslim world - but bush and his cronies will not care so long as they win the election.
This is - so the story goes - part of the reason why British forces have been relocated from Basra (where they've been doing a good job) to relieve US forces around Baghdad; it frees up US forces for an incursion to secure Iranian oil installations near Abadan.
If this is true, it will have to happen in the next few days. It will also be a disaster because Iranian insurgents will simply pick off oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, which will be imposible to defend.
But it is also almost guaranteed to result in a Bush election victory - and for that reason I would not discount it; after all, Clinton was prepared to bomb both Kosovo and Iraq just to stop people from talking about Monica Lewinsky for a week.
Lastly - don't anybody do any sort of internet search for explosives or anything of that sort; the public is already being "prepped" for the next scare campaign "sweep" - read today's Age non-story about the consequences of a large bomb being detonated in the middle of an Australian city... the bloke is quite explicit at saying that folks would download the required expertise from the Web.
