StratCom and the Plan To
Attack Iran
By Tim Rinne
02/16/07 "NFP" --- - Reports of a possible U.S. air
assault against Iranian nuclear facilities have been
circulating in the media for more than a year and a half
now. Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi (The American
Conservative, 8/1/05), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Seymour Hersh (New Yorker Magazine, 4/17/06) and most
recently, investigative reporter Craig Unger in the
March 2007 Vanity Fair, have all warned of the White
House’s plans for an air- and sea-based strike against
Iran.
But such an assault has been in the planning since
before November 2003, when U.S. Strategic Command in
Omaha, Nebraska completed its preparations for waging
offensive and preemptive strikes against Iran and North
Korea (William Arkin, Washington Post, 5/15/05). Under
“CONPLAN 8022″ (Contingency Plan 8022), the Omaha-based
command center is now commissioned to strike anywhere in
the world within minutes of detecting a target deemed a
threat to the United States’ national security. And the
projected attack against Iran-which could well include
nuclear as well as conventional weapons-will be planned,
launched and coordinated by StratCom.
For over half a century, this remote Air Force Base in
the American heartland served strictly as the command
center for the U.S.’s nuclear deterrent. After 9/11,
however, StratCom underwent a massive transformation of
its role and mission, becoming in effect the ‘war room’
for waging the White House’s “War on Terror.” StratCom
retained its historic responsibility for overseeing the
largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world. But it
acquired the additional charges of “full-spectrum global
strike” (staging offensive, preemptive attacks);
combating weapons of mass destruction; space and
computer warfare; ballistic missile defense; and
surveillance and reconnaissance (the “warrantless
wiretaps” conducted by the National Security Agency, for
instance, were a StratCom project).
According to the Vanity Fair article, StratCom could be
ready to launch a “massive” aerial attack against the
hundreds of nuclear facilities in Iran as soon as the
end of this month (February). The possibility of using
tactical nuclear weapons to penetrate the reinforced
bunkers protecting the Iranian nuclear research
facilities is also apparently real.
Today, U.S. Strategic Command in suburban Omaha,
Nebraska is the most dangerous place on the face of the
earth. Thwarting this wrong-headed and potentially
catastrophic assault on Iran by StratCom will require
nothing less than a mobilization by the world community.
The Bush/Cheney Administration must be publicly
challenged in the court of world opinion, and
international media coverage of StratCom’s leading role
is integral to rallying opposition.
Can you imagine the public reaction-particularly in the
Muslim world-if the war plans taking shape at StratCom
were common knowledge?
Here we have the command center for the world’s largest
nuclear arsenal orchestrating an unprovoked attack
(possibly even with nuclear weapons) on a Muslim nation,
in order to keep that country from even developing
nuclear energy for civilian purposes, for fear it might
someday make a bomb.
This is a morally hideous double standard. And StratCom
in particular is begging to be turned into a ‘bully
pulpit,’ from which opponents can expose this
hypocritical behavior.
It will be absolutely illegal under international law if
the United States again launches an unprovoked attack
against a Muslim nation-like it did with Iraq. But if
the U.S. were to also use tactical nuclear weapons, it
would be only the second time in over 61 years that a
nuclear weapon has been used militarily. And on each of
those occasions, it will have been the United States
that used them.
The role and mission of StratCom has changed so
dramatically in the past five years that most of the
world community has no idea of what is currently going
on there. At this critical moment in history, the
international media could provide no greater service to
the nations of the earth than to publicize the deadly
and destabilizing acts being plotted at StratCom.
But if the media is going to do it, they need to act
quickly, before something irrevocable in human events
occurs.
Tim Rinne
NFP State Coordinator
