Here’s a good analysis from Bill Arkin at the Washington Post:
A war with Iran started purposefully or by accident, will be a mess. What is happening now though is not just an administration prudently preparing for the unfortunate against an aggressive and crazed state, it is also aggressive and crazed, driven by groupthink and a closed circle of bears.
The public needs to know first, that this planning includes preemptive plans that the President could approve and implement with 12 hours notice. Congress should take notice of the fact that there is a real war plan — CONPLAN 8022 — and it could be implemented tomorrow.
Second, the public needs to know that the train has left the station on bigger war planning, that a ground war — despite the Post claim yesterday that a land invasion “is not contemplated” — is also being prepared. It is a real war plan; I’ve heard CONPLAN 1025.
Economic collapse is the only thing that will stop the US from being such a bully. The problem with accelerating this scenario is that it affects all of us directly. If we nuke Iran then, as Billmon says, “we’d truly be through the looking glass.”
When I was a nomadic Deadhead in the ’80’s I thought I was learning about sound and music and tribes and love and dancing and joy and groupmind and ecstasy and interconnectedness and Dionysius. Instead, maybe the key skills learned were how to live out of a car and scrounge by in a barter economy on a few dollars a day, traveling from city to city. Could be useful later this year. (Don’t tell my clients.)