As of late I have experienced massive and repeated doses of déjà vu (literally, “already seen”) as the neocons do a repeat and few seem to notice or care. “Any air campaign should … be coupled with aggressive and persistent efforts to topple the regime from within,” writes Lobe, quoting the National Review, a repeat taken from the Iraqi invasion playbook, and “almost certainly written by Michael Ledeen of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute,” a primary neocon combine, guilty of unspeakable crimes against Iraqi children, grandmothers, and even cancer patients in targeted Iraqi hospitals. “Accordingly, it should hit not just the nuclear facilities, but also the symbols of state oppression: the intelligence ministry, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard, the guard towers of the notorious Evin Prison.” Ledeen didn’t bother to mention Iran’s power, communications, water, sewage treatment, and health facilities (add, as well, commercial and business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential areas, historical sites, private vehicles and civilian government offices), all targeted by Bush Senior and Minor in Iraq and certainly on the target list of the coming shock and awe campaign to be directed against Iran.

For the Straussian neocons, the CFRite Richard Haass and former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, are squeamish wimps because they urge diplomacy instead of shock and awe. Talk of diplomacy is “anathema to the hawks, who have long depicted any move to engage Iran as equivalent to the appeasement policies toward Hitler of France and Britain in the run-up to World War II,” another absurdity taken from the lead-up to the Iraqi invasion, not that many people notice—especially not the scribes and hacks of the corporate media. “Is the America of 2006 more willing to thwart the unacceptable than the France of 1936?” asked the creepy little neocon Kristol, who went on to call for “stepping up intelligence activities, covert operations, special operations, and the like” against Iran, in other words subverting the government and blowing things up and killing civilians, behavior the United States is well-versed in (and the Iranians have first-hand experience with, as the CIA conducted a “covert operation” against its democratically elected government back in 1953).

Thomas McInerney, writing for the treasonous Weekly Standard, gives us a nauseating preview of things to come. “What would an effective military response look like? It would consist of a powerful air campaign led by 60 stealth aircraft (B-2s, F-117s, F-22s) and more than 400 nonstealth strike aircraft, including B-52s, B-1s, F-15s, F-16s, Tornados, and F-18s. Roughly 150 refueling tankers and other support aircraft would be deployed, along with 100 unmanned aerial vehicles for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and 500 cruise missiles. In other words, overwhelming force would be used,” and of course and “overwhelming” number of Iranians will die from explosions, trauma, suffocation, shrapnel, fire, collapsed walls and roofs, etc. “This coalition air campaign would hit more than 1,500 aim points. Among the weapons would be the new 28,000-pound bunker busters, 5,000-pound bunker penetrators, 2,000-pound bunker busters, 1,000-pound general purpose bombs, and 500-pound GP bombs. A B-2 bomber, to give one example, can drop 80 of these 500-pound bombs independently targeted at 80 different aim points.”

McInerney declares that a “major covert operation utilizing Iranian exiles and dissident forces” in the wake of such a horrific attack “would be based on the Afghan model that led to the fall of the Taliban in 2001.” Somebody please tell Mr. McInerney to stow his crack pipe—Iran is certainly not Afghanistan and, besides, one glance at the current situation in Afghanistan reveals the Taliban are not only making significant gains, they pretty much control the country outside of Kabul. One such “dissident group” is of course Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a cultish group that believes Marxism is compatible with Islam. If the neocons believe the Iranian people will follow MEK, they are dreaming of tossed rose petals again.

Of course, in order to stick, the mullahs of Iran must be demonized to the nth degree. “What we are dealing with is a politer, more refined, more cautious, vastly more mendacious version of bin Ladenism,” writes Reuel Marc Gerecht, PNAC flunky, former CIA analyst, and Kagan-Kristol collaborator (or partner in crime). “It is best that such men not have nukes, and that we do everything in our power, including preventive military strikes, to stop this from happening.” Never mind that the only country to ever actually use nukes was the United States, incinerating and irradiating around 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was “best that such men not have nukes,” not that we can expect neocons to reach such a conclusion—or for that matter the corporate media.