Nuking Order Would Be First U.S. Casualty
President Bush continues reserving the option of nuking Iran's underground installations in order to heal the Iranians of their ambition to develop nuclear energy. His obsession with destroying bunkered facilities makes sense. They're the only place on earth US weaponry can't reach. But unless the US military possesses a secret nuclear bunker buster in defiance of recognized laws of physics, known munitions and their delivery modes cannot reach and destroy deep earth installations such as Iran's Natanz.
Existing bunker busters are gravity bombs. Dropped from a plane, they rely on gravity for propulsion. You might not mind one dropped on a nasty case of crab grass (far from you) but they will always remain inadequate to cleanly reach a deep subterranean target. Yet the seductiveness of the bunker buster idea lives in the fantasy that like a bullet shot through jelly it will reach and pulverize a target deep in the earth.
On second thought, planners could forgo fantasy and accept reality in its stead. In this case the strategy would be to keep dropping these BB's atop one another, burrowing doggedly into the ground, followed by conventional weapons attacks. That's one way to give physics the shaft. But does the resulting nuclear fallout not bother the Bush administration?
Headscarves offer scant protection from a toxic surging cloud sweeping like a dust storm along Iran's plains. Maybe like Midwest tornado chasers, the White House folks would like to go watch it. See whole houses, cows, hookah pipes convulsed by a famished twister just like the one in The Wizard of Oz. Oh, and see loads of people as well whirled in their mighty swizzle stick's leavening. After all, bunkers are generally located in or near urban places.
Maybe the President's foreign policy consiglieri including silken-tongued Condi Rice can convince the man who would give the order, that fallout is like what occasionally happens between him and The First Lady; the only downside for Iranians being bearded guys and dolls sleeping in separate beds a few nights. But for skin burned Iranians, fallout will smart like a super coiled smack in the face.
Just one junior sized Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator popped 15 yards below ground throws millions of cubic yards of radioactive dirt. Is that the effect the White House theorizes will bring Iranian masses to revolt against their mullah leadership after being shake and baked by the USA?
According to US civilian war planners, Iranian President, "Madman" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would become public enemy #1 to freedom seeking Iranians. But in salons where they don't drink the rose colored cool aid served at The White House, it's pie in the sky.
Or could the point of the "Iran Liberation" logic just be cleaver psychological warfare intended to bully the madman into submission just like the "madman" Saddam. "We can destroy you" rhetoric however doesn't seem to be sending Mahmoud What's-his-name into a spider hole. Perhaps leaky US intelligence services imbedded with Russian and Chinese assets maintain the Iranian leadership apprised of the real US algorithm.
For the favor of extending Chinese and Russian energy inroads into Iran, and geostrategic alliances from which to deal with Iran's neighboring countries, the former help the latter as needed. And the arrangement is free of the moralizing that comes from the new Uncle Sam headmaster with a stick attached to any US alliance per the Bush Doctrine.
For Iran, with benefactors like the Chinese, Russians et al, US deterrence of the bullying kind isn't intimidating as it was anon given that they get it's thoughts as easy as buying Hallmark greeting cards. No wonder that after each of Ahmadinejad's calculated lunatic ravings, he sends "eat cake" messages to Iranian opposition. He reaps the revenge of the Commies by way of Rasputin alacrity within the palace of The Islamic Republic.
Does the Bush White House not take pause from their endless patchwork maneuverings to control Iraq and Central Asia, and wonder if ordering a sure to fail, illegal act of aggression against Iran will be fully supported by the US military? Does the White House ignore that such an order would be met with elements of mutiny? Does the President reside on earth or hover an inch above?
Ultimately, George W. Bush lives in a Roveian universe, a sane arena where elections must be won. The unmapable web of consequences released by the order to bomb would maroon the President's party and the majority of voters on separate beds 'till 2019, while history accords G.W. Bush Richter scale approval numbers. Gamble losing majority government on the dishonestly generated notion that Iranians will respond differently than Texans under similar circumstances? Was the Ayatollah Khomenini a standup comic?
Still, it’s a nuke saddled mission President Bush rattles at Iran that would include taking out command centers, missile, air and submarine basis and the Bushehr power plant. For the White House, a small-scale demonstration such as bombing Natanz would be insufficient to tick off the Iranian people against their elected government and overthrow the regime in response to being marauded by the United States.
Those Persians will surely get hot and bothered being nuked by the US, but it's tortured logic to think Iranians thus liberated will turn against their own. After all, the Bush White House might recall they continued digging a tomb for America in Iraq in '04, yet Americans reelected them.