http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/blog/2007/09/hersh_bush_administration_shif.htmlHersh: Bush administration shifting Iran attack plansby Mark Silva
Seymour Hersh, the prize-winning journalist who has written of the Bush administration’s inside planning for an assault against Iran, returns with a new look in The New Yorker magazine at what he calls a shifting strategy -- a changing of the "target.'
While the Bush administration insists that it wants to resolve its differences with Iran diplomatically – yet holds out the caveat that “all options are on the table'' – Hersh says the strategy toward Iran has shifted from one that justifies a strategic assault against the country’s suspected developing nuclear weaponry program to one of attacking the forces and chain of weapon-supplies that Iran is providing for insurgents inside Iraq.
“The strategy is, it's a targeting change,’’ Hersh said on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer today. “We're threatening Iran. We've been doing it constantly. But instead of saying to the American people, instead of saying internally it's going to be about nuclear weapons, it's now going to be about getting the guys that are killing our boys.
“We're going to hit the border facilities, the facilities inside Iraq we think are training terrorists,’’ Hersh asserted “We're going to hit the facilities we think are supplying some of the explosive devices into Iraq. This is the administration's position.’’
Hersh also maintains that Bush will not leave office without settling the question of Iran’s nuclear designs – while Tehran insists it is developing only nuclear power, the U.S. and allies see the beginning of a bomb, though still several years from fruition, most outside analysts agree.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, also interviewed by Biltzer today, suggested that the distinguished journalist, Hersh, has been “wrong’’ before about his predictions of U.S. designs for an invasion of Iran. But he did agree – “it is a fact,’’ he said – that Iran and others are supplying weapons inside Iraq, not perhaps so much as a means of destabilizing the government of Iraq but as a way of confronting American forces. Iraq, he says, has told Iran to reconsider its strategy.
Here are some excerpts from the interview with Zebari on CNN’s Late Edition, followed by excerpts from the interview with Hersh:
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