While self-limited by way of the specifics it adheres to and those it defines as outside its scope, nonetheless an important report worth a careful perusal:

US military, if not political, readiness for a war using minimum ground forces indicates that the current seeming inaction surrounding Iran is misleading. The United States retains the ability – despite difficulties in Iraq – to undertake major military operations against Iran. Whether the political will exists to follow such a course of action is known only to a few senior figures in the Bush administration.

General Wesley Clark claims that he became aware of the Bush Administration’s instructions concerning the overthrow of the Iranian regime in September 2001. He states that he was told this in the Pentagon by a serving General holding the order in his hand.

“He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

[snip]

The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days, if not hours, of President George Bush giving the order.

This report is focussed on the prospect of the possible attempted destruction of the Iranian regime and state by the United States and its allies. It neither examines the realities of Iran’s nuclear programme, the negotiations between Iran and the international community nor does it examine in detail the human, political, economic and environmental consequences of such an attack. Nevertheless a number of conclusions can be reached.

1. If the attack is “successful” and the US reasserts its global military dominance and reduces Iran to the status of an oil-rich failed state, then the risks to humanity in general and to the states of the Middle East are grave indeed.

The two world wars of 1914-18 and 1939-1945, the creation of nuclear weapons, and the advent of global warming have created successive lessons that humanity and states cannot prosper or survive long unless they hold their security in common-sharing sovereignty and power to ensure both survival and prosperity.

A “successful” US attack, without UN authorisation, would return the world to the state that existed in the period before the war of 1914-18, but with nuclear weapons.

The self-styled realists argue that this is an inevitable and manageable world, the naivety of imagining a nuclear armed world without nuclear war is utopian in the extreme.

States and regimes in the region may consider that in the short-run they would benefit from the implosion of Iran and the eclipse of Shi’a power. However, the threat from within from disaffected elements outraged at further unabashed Western militarism is likely to threaten crowns and republics alike. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths have had no electoral cost to American and British leaders, the same number of Iranian deaths may have equally little impact in the West, but it is unimaginable that it would not cause far greater spurs to anger than already exist in the region.

The impact of on Turkey of an autonomous Iranian and Iraqi territory of Kurdistan is hard to overestimate.

2. If the attack is pursued with the skill of the Iraq campaign then we face major and unpredictable escalation arising from the fallacy of attempting to make “the last move” on the political game board. Should Iranians rally to their battered state regardless of their, then what has been seen in Iraq will merely become an overture to a larger regional war, and one where a blip in oil prices becomes a prolonged global recession. Regional instability that might follow “victory” will be magnified. The Shakespearean quote, “cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war” expresses the simple rule that wars, like fires are far easier to start than to contain or put out.

3. The potential for a major regional war over Iran should give greater impetus to all sides to avoid conflict and act on previously agreed objectives for security in the region as a whole. In this respect the UNSC (687, 1540) objective of establishing a WMD Free Zone in the Middle East should be given far greater political investment by all parties. .pdf file

Related:

Former CIA analyst and Deputy Director for Transportation Security, Antiterrorism Assistance Training, and Special Operations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, Larry Johnson, does not agree with the report’s findings.

“The report seems to accept without question that US air force and navy bombers could effectively destroy Iran and they seem to ignore the fact that US use of air power in Iraq has failed to destroy all major military, political, economic and transport capabilities,” said Johnson late Monday after the embargo on the study had been lifted.

“But at least in their conclusions they still acknowledge that Iran, if attacked, would be able to retaliate. Yet they are vague in terms of detailing the extent of the damage that the Iran is capable of inflicting on the US and fairly assessing what those risks are.”

There is also the situation of US soldiers in Iraq and the supply routes that would have to be protected to ensure that US forces had what they needed. Plesch explains that “”firepower is an effective means of securing supply routes during conventional war and in conventional war a higher loss rate is expected.”

“However as we say do not assume that the Iraqi Shiia will rally to Tehran – the quietist Shiia tradition favoured by Sistani may regard itself as justified if imploding Iranian power can be argued to reduce US problems in Iraq, not increase them.” Article

No surprise.

The Bush administration is signaling that it plans to turn again to a legal tool, the “state secrets” privilege, to try to stop a suit against a Belgian banking cooperative that secretly supplied millions of private financial records to the United States government, court documents show.

The suit against the consortium, known as Swift, threatens to disrupt the operations of a vital national security program and to disclose “highly classified information” if it continues, the Justice Department has said in court filings.

[snip]

Administration officials have defended the program as an important tool in the war on terror. European banking regulators and privacy advocates were quick to denounce the program as improper and possibly illegal.

The pressure resulted in an agreement this year by Swift and United States officials to tighten restrictions for using the data.

Two American banking customers also sued Swift on invasion-of-privacy grounds. Legal and financial analysts had expected that the suit would have been thrown out because American banking privacy laws are considered much laxer than those in much of Europe.

But the chief judge in Federal District Court in Chicago, James F. Holderman, ruled in June that he would allow the suit to proceed, partly on grounds of claims of a Fourth Amendment violation and his finding that Swift’s arguments on that point were “unpersuasive.”

[snip]

The administration has turned to the privilege much more frequently than past administrations. According to a report due out this weekend by an advocacy group, OpenTheGovernment.org, the administration has used it 39 times in the last six years, compared with 59 times in the 24 years before that.

[snip]

Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, said: “What seems clear is that until a year or two ago, the judges rarely even questioned it when the government raised the ‘state secrets’ claim. It was a neutron bomb – no plaintiffs left standing.

“But we’re now seeing that judges are starting to actually look behind the government’s secrecy claims and see what’s really there.” Article

Maybe the Deprtment of Justice can hold a telethon

These reports do keep popping back to the surface.

Recent reports by the FBI and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command show that gang-related activity in the U.S. military is increasing. The FBI report concludes the increase poses a threat to law enforcement officials and national security.

Some experts point to looser recruiting standards, implemented in recent years as the Army struggles to meet recruiting goals, and the increase in waivers given to recruits with criminal records as a factor behind gang presence in the ranks.

Each year since 2003, an increasing number of applicants with records of everything from traffic violations to felony convictions have been allowed to enlist in the Army under “moral waivers.” In fiscal 2006, 7.9 percent of all recruits received moral waivers, compared with 4.6 percent in 2003, according to Recruiting Command.

So far this year, more than 9,000 recruits have received moral waivers to join the service. That’s 11 percent of all new enlistees in fiscal 2007, which ends Sept. 30.

Army officials could not say whether any gang members or former gang members were allowed into the ranks under waivers. But at least one expert said it stands to reason that if you open the door to more people with criminal backgrounds, some of them will have gang affiliations.

[snip]

The CID official attributed the increase in gang-related reports and investigations to a recently adopted uniform method in identifying such activity.

“We do not see it as a rampant problem, but we’re not denying it,” said a senior official with Army Criminal Investigation Command, who asked not to be identified. “It’s a low threat, but it’s a serious problem. We’ve never denied that it exists.” Article