Ive gotten several emails

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I’ve gotten several emails in response to the earlier post on whether military action against Iran may happen before the election. Most have focused on the political dynamic, but I’m most interested in the nuts and bolts of whether we are in a position to pull such a thing off logistically.

TPM Reader GH thinks not:

Iranians have aced us in a major respect. The largest bunkerbuster we have is good for maybe 100 feet of compacted earth. Iranians have been burying sensitive installations, including about 45 nuclear processing sites, under 200 feet of layered dirt and concrete. We simply cannot, at this time, do a damn thing about it. But a much larger bomb is under development with a contract end date of about a year from now. Assume we can beat that, still leaves us somewhere next summer.

Our support capacity is stretched to breaking. All the airlift (C5 and C17) is pretty well engaged in Iraq and Iran. Can’t insert troops you cannot support. Critical hardware (up armored humvees, Strykers, etc) all in use. Hard to scrape up the hardware, even if you activated all the reserves, etc. Shades of WWII, where guys trained with broomsticks, because we did not have enough rifles. This country’s logistics capacity is awesome, but it is not “poof” overnight . . .

Still, we have been gearing up for this for a long time. Look at the federal authorization bill over the last few years. Many $ on intel assets in and around the area. We have so many satellites flying over, that there are traffic jams. There is the political drumbeat, which signals preparation of the populace, and the need for Repugs to be the party in control in time of war. Americans do not like to change horses in wars.

Such a war would be no fun, for sure, but I have no confidence these clowns will get it right. Likely they will start shooting just as soon as they can get it loaded. And that is about a year off, minimum.

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