The Massachusetts Spy Volume CCXXXVI, Number 130  June 16, 2006 

The U.S. invasion of Iran -- another pushover
As Saddam Hussein proved in 1980's, with U.S. backing, an invasion of Iran would be a pushover.

Dispatches from the War Fronts

101.1ST HOT AIR
FORCE STRIKES
A NEW TARGET

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with
Press Correspondent A.J. Liebling

Fresh from their triumphs far away from the slaughterhouses of Afghanistan and Iraq, the stalwart gasbags of the 101.1st Hot Air Force have drawn a bead on their latest target: Iran.

In dank radio studios, quiet editorial board offices and the white-hot sound stages of Schlox News, the crack troops of the 101.1st Hot Air Force have launched their first strike in their campaign to send their gardeners' children to fight in Iran, and the tab to your grandchildren.

The Hot Air Force swung into action hard upon the entirely predictable news that the Iranian regime, unable to keep from laughing at the spectacle of the world's only superpower pinned to the Iraqi mat by a bloody civil war orchestrated by – Iran, was ramping up its nuclear weapons program. Reality-based intelligence, always in critically short supply in the Hot Air Force, suggests that the Iranians may be able to fashion a crude weapon by 2015. But according to the 101.1st's analysts, Iran should be ready to drop a nuke on the Tyson's Corner Center anytime from last year to next Tuesday.

In mounting its Iran air offensive, the Hot Air Force may not be able to mount the same kind of vigorous air war that reduced opponents of Bush's Excellent Iraq Adventure to smithereens and ex-Senators. One key member of the Hot Air Force Iraqi Brain Trust, Col. Tom Friedman, has decided, like Franco's Spain, to sit this one out.

Fortunately, the Hot Air Force can continue to count on Col. Fred Hiatt, who was never taken in by Saddam Hussein's wily denials of weapons of mass destruction and who wrote in the Washington Post that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in a year or less, thereby delivering the precise rhetorical ordnance called for by the HAF's battle plan.

The specter of a "nuculur" (as the HAF's Commander-in-Chief would put it) Iran before next Shemini Yatzereth was not just an errant hot air strike by Col. Hiatt. Other HAF stalwarts have poured on supporting barrages from their microphones and teleprompters.

For example, from his Manhattan aerie, only 5,000 miles from the troops he dispatched to do his bidding in Iraq, HAF Chief of Staff (whose duties include unleashing the fighting words of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page) Paul Gigot, having previously stated that Iran would have nuclear weapons by 2005, called the "crisis" "urgent," although he regretted that his continuing efforts to bring the murderers of Vincent Foster to justice would prevent him from getting anywhere near a real battlefield.

The Chaplain of the Hot Air Force, the Very Rev. Pat Robertson, who was unable to serve his country in Korea because his Senator father pulled him off the troopship, told his believers that Iran had nukes already, as predicted in the Book of Reactionary Revelations. Meanwhile, Technical Sergeant Morton Kondracke, deployed on Capitol Hill, moved the date of Armageddon back a year to 2007.

With Stage One of the 101.1st's battle-tested war plan – spreading ominous rumors based on unsourced intelligence – having been executed flawlessly, it's now time for HAF'ers to start Phase II: calling for the violent overthrow of whatever government we don't like through the supposedly cheap and foolproof combination of returning exiles, targeted air strikes, and clouds of hot air to neutralize all opposition on this side of the ocean. Hey, it's worked before.

Schlox News mouthpiece Lt. John Gibson speculated that the world would soon be begging the U.S. to nuke Iran. Also on Schlox, retired Gen. Bat Guano told the Loofah King that "targeted" airstrikes could ensure victory, just like Iraq. Meanwhile, safe in his bunker at CNN Center, Corporal Glenn Beck told the nation it was time to "nuke the bastards."

Some military observers wonder if the 101.1st Hot Air Force can reprise its dramatic triumph in Iraq, in which it goaded a country to sacrifice several thousand of its finest, subject thousands more to gruesome injury and incur over half a trillion dollars in debt without any cost to HAF personnel or benefit to anyone else. "You'd think the Hot Air Force would face stiffer opposition this time on the airwaves and in op-ed pages," one military observer mused. "But they emerged victorious in Vietnam and Iraq. I wouldn't bet against these guys making it a hat trick."

For more information on the 101.1st's Iranian hot air attack, click here.

For a gripping account of the Hot Air Force's lightening strike into Baghdad, click here.

WHY WE FIGHT, UM, MAKE THAT WHY WE DON'T CUT AND RUN

Inspectors Find More Torture at Iraqi Jails
Top General's Pledge To Protect Prisoners 'Not Being Followed'

BAGHDAD -- Last Nov. 13, U.S. soldiers found 173 incarcerated men, some of them emaciated and showing signs of torture, in a secret bunker in an Interior Ministry compound in central Baghdad. The soldiers immediately transferred the men to a separate detention facility to protect them from further abuse, the U.S. military reported.

Since then, there have been at least six joint U.S.-Iraqi inspections of detention centers, most of them run by Iraq's Shiite Muslim-dominated Interior Ministry. Two sources involved with the inspections, one Iraqi official and one U.S. official, said abuse of prisoners was found at all the sites visited through February. U.S. military authorities confirmed that signs of severe abuse were observed at two of the detention centers.

But U.S. troops have not responded by removing all the detainees, as they did in November. Instead, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, only a handful of the most severely abused detainees at a single site were removed for medical treatment. Prisoners at two other sites were removed to alleviate overcrowding. U.S. and Iraqi authorities left the rest where they were.

This practice of leaving the detainees in place has raised concerns that detainees now face additional threats. It has also prompted fresh questions from the inspectors about whether the United States has honored a pledge by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that U.S. troops would attempt to stop inhumane treatment if they saw it. . . . .

The Iraqi official familiar with the joint inspections said detainees who are not moved to other facilities are left vulnerable. "They tell us, 'If you leave us here, they will kill us,' " said the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because, he said, he and other Iraqis involved with inspections had received death threats.

The U.S. official involved in the inspections, who would not be identified by name, described in an e-mail the abuse found during some of the visits since the Nov. 13 raid: "Numerous bruises on the arms, legs and feet. A lot of the Iraqis had separated shoulders and problems with their hands and fingers too. You could also see strap marks on some of their backs." . . .

Curry added in a statement: "At one of the sites, thirteen detainees showed signs of abuse that required immediate medical care. The signs of abuse included broken bones, indications that they had been beaten with hoses and wires, signs that they had been hung from the ceiling, and cigarette burns. These individuals were transferred to a nearby Iraqi detention facility and provided medical care. Most of the abuse appeared to have occurred prior to arriving at that site.

"There were several cases of physical abuse at one other inspection site. These included evidence of scars, missing toenails, dislocated shoulders, severe bruising, and cigarette burns. At the time of the inspection, most of the apparent injuries were months old; however, there were indications that three cases of abuse occurred within a week of the inspection. No detainee required immediate hospitalization for injuries at that site," Curry said. . . .

Curry's statement confirmed abuse depicted in accounts and photographs given earlier to The Washington Post by the U.S. and Iraqi officials involved in the inspections, including the dislocated shoulders that the officials said were caused by hanging detainees from ceilings. . .

–  The Washington Post, Apr. 24, 2006, via washingtonpost.com.