U.S. Central Command's Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and special operations forces components, along with military forces from Egypt and twelve other nations, will participate in Bright Star 05/06, a joint/combined training exercise in Egypt.
Bright Star 05/06, the 12th in a series, is scheduled to take place Sept. 10 through Oct. 3, 2005.
So we aren't as busy as in 2003? Interesting.
I'm convinced we are going to topple the mullah regime in Iran rather than let them get nuclear weapons to threaten our safety.
I trust the President was serious about the Axis of Evil and I assume that the lack of public talk about overthrowing the mullahs is due to the family shame of calling on Iraq's Shias to rise up yet doing nothing in 1991. This President will not repeat that moral failure. This President will therefore not say anything to prompt a revolt that we can't support. With our Strategic Petroleum Reserve full at the end of August, we're in as good a position as we can be in to take on Iran. With luck, we can exploit the widespread opposition to the mullahs and put the mullahs out on the street relatively quickly. We've had three years since Iran's designation as one of the Axis of Evil to prepare for a revolt inside Iran. I assume we've used this time.
Were I King and I wanted to destroy the mullahs, I'd have to figure out a way to mass the forces to support a revolt without drawing attention to the deployment.
So consider the following:
- To support mid-September elections in Afghanistan we've increased our troop strength even as NATO has increased its strength to take on more responsibilities from us. When the elections are over, we will potentially have a brigade or so free that is still inside Afghanistan on Iran's eastern border.
- Mid-October is when Iraq's elections are being held. We are increasing our troop strength a bit for this event. These troops will still be there once the elections are over.
- Saddam's trial will start in mid-October. The simultaneous elections and trial of a murderous dictator who terrorized Iraq and who incidentally was responsible for hundreds of thousands of dead Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War will be two events we'd like the Iranians to notice.
- Iraqi forces are coming on line to free up American troops. We are on the offensive in al Anbar province but I don't see that many Army troops out that way. It seems like a Marine show. Are the Army troops freed up sitting ready to intervene in Iran while the Marines noisily demonstrate in the west of Iraq?
- Add the Bright Star exercises that will end by early October that could be the excuse to bring in the odds and ends into the theater that we'd need to support a regime change in Iran. I find it odd that an exercise that we had to cancel in 2003 is now no stress on our forces. When our troops start to leave Egypt, they might quietly head to the Gulf region.
Look, I could be way off. I thought a major force would hit Baghdad from Jordan in the Iraq War in 2003. I was wrong. Our small effort took over the west while the main effort did come from Kuwait. I predicted a major operation in East Africa and the Horn for summer 2004. Since I'm looking for action in Iran it is easy for me to take little facts or what I think are facts and put them into the picture I've painted. I don't see the facts that contradict this view.
But if we were to hit Iran, we would have to hide our preparations in broad daylight. That is one lesson I learned from the run up to the Iraq War--we can't hide major troop deployments. We can only make what people see seem innocent.
Or, this could all be innocent. We'll see.
