Mr Bombastic

By Cernig

D'you think he might be compensating for something?

WASHINGTON, September 13 (RIA Novosti) - The U.S. has a 14-ton super bomb more destructive than the vacuum bomb just tested by Russia, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

The statement was made by retired Lt. General McInerney, chairman of the Iran Policy Committee, and former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

McInerney said the U.S. has "a new massive ordnance penetrator that's 30,000 pounds, that really penetrates ... Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can't penetrate."

He also said the new Russian bomb was not a "penetrator."

It's scary to think that someone with such an obvious complex about the size of his own WMD was ever in charge of military weaponry. It's equally as scary that such a man is, as Novosti correctly notes:

the chairman of the Iran Policy Committee co-chaired by James Woolsey, former CIA director, William A. Nitze, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Richard Schifter, former Assistant Secretary of State, and Professor Raymond Tanter, former Personal Representative of the Secretary of Defense to arms control talks in Europe.

The Iran Policy Committee are, in equal measure, neoconseravtive warmongers and shills for the Islamomarxist MeK terror group.

It comes as no surprise, then, to discover that McInerney made his weapon-envy comment in the context of using that massive bomb on Iran.

On Tuesday, the Fox News television channel said: "A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime.".

Commenting on the report, McInerney said: "Since Germany has backed out of helping economically, we do not have any other choice. ... They've forced us into the military option."

McInerney described some possible military campaign scenarios and said: "The one I favor the most, of course, is an air campaign," he continued.

He said that bombing would be launched by 65-70 stealth bombers and 400 bombers of other types.

"Forty-eight hours duration, hitting 2500 aimed points to take out their [Iranian] nuclear facilities, their air defense facilities, their air force, their navy, their Shahab-3 retaliatory missiles, and finally their command and control. And then let the Iranian people take their country back," the general said describing the campaign, adding it would be "easy."

The Bush administration has since said the FOX report is untrue but is probably quite happy to have the myth of an "easy" Iran attack out there. After all, administration officials helped the neocons at the Heritage Foundation set that myth up in the first place. Alex Debat's standard of consultancy is obviously alive and well over at FOX too.

McInerney isn't even the worst or most influential of the neocon "crazies" (as IAEA director Mohammed el-Baradei refers to them), but he is symptomatic of a deeply disturbed network of foreign policy Very Serious People who are clearly connected to the Cheney wing of the White House and who are never called out for their past failings or current war-hyping by the mainstream media. And so the cry goes up yet again: "Why, oh why, can't we have a better press corps?"