Via Informed Comment:

The question of US intelligence on Iran is very much an item of interest these days. Sy Hersh’s revelation that the U.S. military is doing operational planning for a possible nuclear strike on Iran to preempt a civilian nuclear program that is still years away from the possibility of building a nuclear weapon caused a firestorm (pardon the imagery) of interest. Of course, a superpower does a lot of planning, and evey option is considered. But the Penatgon tried to remove the option of using tactical nukes from operational plans for Iran, but where ordered not to by the White House.

We are of course talking about a direct, preemptive targeting of a non-nuclear nation that presents no threat to Americans and would cause massive civilian casualties. This is causing a lot of tension between the military leadership and the civilian leadership, with the possibility of several senior command officers retiring in protest. The bellicosity of the Bush Administration is stunning and may be pushing nuclear proliferation rather than containing it, and may harm prospects for peaceful reform in Iran, especially should there be a military strike by America or Israel.

Veteran CIA Middle East analyst Ray Close reacted to rumors that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may have already sent Special Operations forces into Iran on intelligence missions. (One clarification: in popular parlance we speak of CIA "agents." But in the intelligence world, an "agent" is actually a local person recruited by an intelligence field officer.)

Close writes:

I attended a forum with the five GOP candidates for Congress in CD 8 today.

A couple of take-away points:

None of the GOP candidates differ significantly from current GOP orthodoxy; they are all so lost in their own ideological funk, they can’t smell the limburger of voter discontent under their noses. As such, I don’t believe that any of the them can possibly overcome the disaffection within the Repulican Party to prevail in CD 8 despite a 20K voter registration edge. Independent voters will rule this election and will hand it to the Democrats.

The standout of the whole bunch is certainly Steve Huffman. He’s endorsed by Kolbe, which plays as both political capital, and political liability. He’s also the annointed of the GOP money men. Despite a few bright points in Huffman’s performance – such as acknowledging that the growing trend toward ending employer health insurance plans constitutes the major public health policy challenge we face (rather than tort reform and health savings accounts – the panaceas embraced by all the others) – his answers mark him as just as clueless as his fellows on every other issue, though possibly more generally competent.

The most popular of the bunch among the groundlings and the Right wing of the GOP is clearly Randy Graf. His supporters were massively predominant among the 100-150 people who bothered turning out for the event. He remains, rightly, the great white hope of the Democratic party. Hell, I even recommend donating to his campaign to keep him in the game. My opinion was only confirmed by his performance in this forum.

Hellon is dead in the water. Talks like he’s half-asleep. The establishment wants him out, and he’s got no traction with the activist types. He has no original ideas to recommend him to either the money men, or the values voters. His main pitch seems to be that he’ll bring backroom politics into office and that some Independents and Democrats might consider supporting him. And that he won’t live long enough to get cozy with the devils in D.C.

Antenori is a dark horse man of action who may do surprisingly well among security voters, and might eat into Graf’s base. He’s articulate and has a very macho bio, and is a direct answer to vets like Latas and Rodriguez running on the Dem ticket. Seems to support public schools, unlike many of these other goons. He also vows transparency in his stewardship of the office – he will open his meeting schedule to public scrutiny. If the GOP voters had any brains, this is pobably the guy they would choose.

Mike Jenkins is just a loud-mouthed crackpot. Talks about self in third person. Frightens children.