Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?
Is the U.S. Stepping Up Preparations for a Possible Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facilities?
By JONATHAN KARL
Oct. 6, 2009—

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-preparing-bomb-iran/story?id=8765343

Is the U.S. stepping up preparations for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities?

The Pentagon is always making plans, but based on a little-noticed funding request recently sent to Congress, the answer to that question appears to be yes.

First, some background: Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. Back then, the Pentagon cited an "urgent operational need" for the new weapon.

Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.

The comptroller said the Pentagon planned to spend $19.1 million to procure four of the bombs, $28.3 million to accelerate the bomb's "development and testing", and $21 million to accelerate the integration of the bomb onto B-2 stealth bombers.

'Urgent Operational Need'

The notification was tucked inside a 93-page "reprogramming" request that included a couple hundred other more mundane items.

Why now? The notification says simply, "The Department has an Urgent Operational Need (UON) for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high threat environments. The MOP is the weapon of choice to meet the requirements of the UON." It further states that the request is endorsed by Pacific Command (which has responsibility over North Korea) and Central Command (which has responsibility over Iran).

Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?

The request was quietly approved. On Friday, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to provide "Massive Penetrator Ordnance Integration" on B-2 aircraft.

This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran.

I don't remember if it was here or elsewhere that I saw the first reports of assembling more of these "bunker busters". I found an article stating that these are intended for Israel since they don't have any. I don't wanna resource the info but I gained the opinion at the time,that Israel will attack Iran's nuke facilities. That info may be on my site. This info may add some immediacy to the situation. Israel has done this before and I believe will do it again. I would.

meemoon wrote:I don't remember if it was here or elsewhere that I saw the first reports of assembling more of these "bunker busters". I found an article stating that these are intended for Israel since they don't have any. I don't wanna resource the info but I gained the opinion at the time,that Israel will attack Iran's nuke facilities. That info may be on my site. This info may add some immediacy to the situation. Israel has done this before and I believe will do it again. I would.

i think my memory serves me ok on this, many months ago Israel bought i think 1000 bunker busters but they were of the smaller variety,as is all the US would sell, and would take many strikes to achieve anything and may not, the article did say we were not selling them our largest bunker busters ,the larger ones before this one which this one is not operational yet,worktime take care

"i think my memory serves me ok on this, many months ago Israel bought i think 1000 bunker busters but they were of the smaller variety,as is all the US would sell, and would take many strikes to achieve anything and may not, the article did say we were not selling them our largest bunker busters ,the larger ones before this one which this one is not operational yet,worktime take care." // This sounds 'bout right. Here's some pure spekkalashun: A nuclear Iran would still not be stupid enough to directly attack the USA or any of our forces anywhere nor do I think they would attack Israel with nukes. But the Israelis won't allow their crazy neighbor to sit on the porch with a loaded shotgun yelling out threats. I wouldn't and neither would you. I don't know what I would do,but I wouldn't feel any need to stick by the rules.

well marc, we already see tension with israel in the fact obama wants to stop the settlement building around i think west bank, but israel i believe is continuing, i feel Israel misses bush. that a given,