A little sunlight reaches into the Cheney crypt - Israel, the US, Iran, and bombing

It's finally getting a little coverage, although, buried in a Newsweek story on the Syrian airstrike and one AFP article is hardly the light it deserves.

US Vice President Richard Cheney has considered provoking an exchange of military strikes between Iran and Israel in order to give the United States a pretext to attack Iran, Newsweek magazine reported in its Monday issue.

And, I didn't know that Wurmser had been sent to "spend more time with his family." (I'm guessing his crime was mentioning the Cheney plan in public, not promoting it.)

One official who pushed a particularly hawkish line on Iran was David Wurmser, who had served since 2003 as Cheney's Middle East adviser, the report said.

A spokeswoman at Cheney's office confirmed to Newsweek that Wurmser left his position last month to "spend more time with his family."

A few months before he quit, Wurmser told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz -- and perhaps other sites -- in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out, the magazine reported.

I still think this should be a huge front page story. The Vice Presdent "has considered" working with a foreign government to subvert a president's policy.

Also: The Newsweek story looking at a possible Israeli bombing raid on Iran is worth a read as it calculates the Israeli math.

And though Olmert may not believe Israeli warplanes can get to all the targets, he might be willing to gamble on even a limited success. "No one in their right mind thinks that there's a clinical way to totally destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities," says the well-placed Israeli source. "You strike at some and set the project back. You play for time and hope Ahmadinejad will eventually fall."

Alternatively, Israel might count on Tehran to retaliate against American targets as well, drawing in the superpower. To avoid that outcome, Gardiner believes, Washington must prevent Israel from attacking in the first place. "The United States does not want to turn the possibility of a general war in the Middle East over to the decision making in Israel," he says. Does not want to, certainly—but might not have a choice.

One more in the area: Reuters has a piece where an Iranian military official talks about the possible Iranian retalitations against the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.