Reading "Target: Iran," the recent Weekly Standard essay by Thomas McInerney, former assistant vice chief of the U.S. Air Force, it's difficult not to imagine the author panting – his face flushed, his pupils dilated, sweat beading on his upper lip, hair sprouting on his palms – as he describes a possible US military strike on Iran. Like so many other military analysts, McInerney is positively concupiscent as he revels in the “techno-porn” of the anticipated assault (feel free to skim over this section, just to get the gist):

“What would an effective military [attack on Iran] 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.... 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.

This force would give the coalition an enormous destructive capability, since all the bombs in the campaign feature precision guidance, ranging from Joint Direct Attack Munitions ... to laser-guided, electro-optical, or electronically guided High Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles ... for suppression of Iranian surface-to-air missiles. This array of precision weapons and support aircraft would allow the initial attacks to be completed in 36 to 48 hours.”

My first reaction on reading those words (well, my second, since my first was the same embarrassed disgust I would feel were I to interrupt a glassy-eyed peep show customer) was to recall the scene in Airplane in which Ted Striker, on the eve of the disastrous attack on Macho Grande, gives his girlfriend Elaine a detailed description of the mission – aircraft, pilots, flight vectors, targets, and so on. When Elaine anxiously asks, “When will you be back?” Jack stolidly replies: “I can't tell you; that's classified.”

In the fields the bodies burning, as the war machine keeps churning; death and hatred to mankind, poisoning their brainwashed minds....

Like the rest of the Bushevik media chorus, Weekly Standard is not above accusing critics of the war of “aiding the enemy” by “undermining morale” and “sending the wrong signal to the enemy.” Yet they see nothing amiss in publishing an article by a brass-bottomed Pentagon retiree that disgorges practically everything the Iranians would want to know about a prospective US military strike.

If Seymour Hersh or some other legitimate journalist were to have reported exactly what McInerney did, the Standard most likely would have demanded that he be put on trial for espionage. Quondam Standard contributor William Bennett, the unbearably sanctimonious wobble-bottom who appointed himself our nation's moralist-in-chief, recently suggested that the reporters recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for revealing the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping program should be imprisoned for espionage. Well, Blackjack Bill, here's a second bite at the apple: Why don't you drop a dime on McInerney for tipping off the Mullahs about possible US battle plans?

Elsewhere in the same issue, Reuel Marc Gerecht mimics the tormented ambivalence displayed by Shakespeare's melancholy Dane as he ponders the question, “To Bomb or Not to Bomb?” Gee, isn't the suspense terrific?

After an article of nearly Talmudic length and detail, Gerecht reaches the conclusion that “the burden of proof ought to be on those who favor accommodating a nuclear Iran” -- which is to say, of course, that war, perhaps even involving a nuclear first strike, is the sober and responsible option. “Those who are unwilling to accommodate it, however, need to be honest and admit that diplomacy and sanctions and covert operations probably won't succeed, and that we may have to fight a war--perhaps sooner rather than later--to stop such evil men from obtaining the worst weapons we know,” he concludes, deaf to the irony of the fact that he is obliquely endorsing what could be aggressive nuclear war against a country that does not threaten his own (assuming, of course, that the country Gerecht wants to protect is the United States – hardly a safe assumption where the Weekly Standard and other neo-Trotskyite journals are concerned).

Gerecht is to be given credit for making a very key admission: “If we bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, we cannot fully verify the damage we've done without a land invasion. And Iranian terrorist reprisals against our troops, if sustained and deadly, might force us to consider the unthinkable: a large-scale land invasion of the Islamic Republic.”

Where, exactly, would we get the troops to carry out and sustain “a large-scale land invasion” of Iran?

That question brings us to the recent New York Times op-ed column by Iraq war veteran Paul Kane, who is identified in his bio as a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government who is “writing a book about national service and sacrifice.”

That alone should be sufficient to tell you what Kane is proposing.

“President Bush should ... consult with Congress about reinstituting selective national service by lottery for all young males and females,” writes Kane. “After 9/11, President Bush missed an opportunity to ask America's citizenry to make sacrifices in the form of military service, homeland defense and conservation that many would have accepted. Instead, he asked people to continue shopping to prop up the flagging economy. We should not fumble the opportunity now to begin selective service again, while the Iranians and others are watching. It may be our last best chance to avoid war with Iran.”

Howzatagain?!?

The only way “to avoid war with Iran” is to enact the eighth plank of the Communist Manifesto by imposing universal slavery on American youth.

Ah.

This is supposed to impress the Mullahs – the charming folks who sent countless tens of thousands of Iranian child conscripts to the front during the Iran-Iraq war, often armed with nothing more than a key that was supposed to open the door to paradise?

Politicians hide themselves away, they only started the war; why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor. Time will tell on their power minds, making war just for fun.

Treating people just like pawns in chess -- Wait ’till their judgment day comes, yeah!

As Bush's approval ratings hit rock bottom and start to dig, he is withdrawing ever further into his institutional cocoon, where he's surrounded by sycophants and opportunists who feed his messianic delusions. As he admitted this week, Bush is perfectly capable of contemplating an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran – and feeding thousand of young Americans into the war of occupation and attrition that would inevitably follow.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is, by all appearances, a diseased maniac, which makes him a perfect figurehead for the regime in Tehran. But in terms of possessing both the means and the willingness to inflict apocalyptic death and mayhem on the world, Bush and the clique he represents lapped Ahmadinejad and his handlers long ago.

As Israeli military analyst Martin Van Creveld, perhaps the most respected scholar in his field, points out, Tehran can be deterred – but apparently Washington cannot:

“Given the balance of forces, it cannot be argued that a nuclear Iran will threaten the United States. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fulminations to the contrary, the Islamic Republic will not even be a threat to Israel. The latter has long had what it needs to deter an Iranian attack. Should deterrence fail, Jerusalem can quickly turn Tehran into a radioactive desert — a fact of which Iranians are fully aware. Iran's other neighbors, such as Russia, Pakistan and India, can look after themselves. As it is, they seem much less alarmed by developments in Iran than they do by those thousands of miles away in Washington.”

Van Creveld has famously described the Iraq war as the greatest strategic blunder of the Christian era, in large measure because it destroyed any regional check on Iran – which sets the stage for another war that would compound that catastrophe. But that's all right; as long as Washington can keep adding zeroes to our national debt, find foreigners willing to buy our T-bills, and round up young people to feed into the war machine, things will be just ducky.

So here's the deal: Unless you want your kids to be drafted and sent off on demented wars of “liberation” singing “Glory, glory Halliburton!” -- you had better get busy.

Do you know who your Congressman is? Find out. Let him know what you think. Get twenty of your local friends and neighbors to do likewise. For the House of Representatives, Judgment Day is in November. I think the electorate should give them a foretaste of what they can expect if they don't repent in sackcloth and ashes.

No more War Pigs have the power, Hand of God has struck the hour. Day of judgment, God is calling, on their knees the War Pigs crawling. Begging mercies for their sins, Satan, laughing, spreads his wings....

(Credit: O. Osbourne et. al)