If the damage was minimal and the Iranian leaders were smart, they would say the bombed facilities were totally destroyed and then resume their enrichment in secret after a short delay to make repairs. Seems like that would make another strike less likely, at least until someone here figured out the truth.

If the damage was minimal and the Iranian leaders were smart, they would say the bombed facilities were totally destroyed and then resume their enrichment in secret after a short delay to make repairs. Seems like that would make another strike less likely, at least until someone here figured out the truth.

A lot of political statements are made for internal consumption. The Iranian leader has to show his people that he is still in charge, and that may be more important than preventing another strike. Similarly our govt needs to claim the strike was a success for the same reason. Getting at the real information is nearly impossible.



If the damage was minimal and the Iranian leaders were smart, they would say the bombed facilities were totally destroyed and then resume their enrichment in secret after a short delay to make repairs. Seems like that would make another strike less likely, at least until someone here figured out the truth.

If the damage was minimal and the Iranian leaders were smart, they would say the bombed facilities were totally destroyed and then resume their enrichment in secret after a short delay to make repairs. Seems like that would make another strike less likely, at least until someone here figured out the truth.

You basically repeated what I said...

Yes I was agreeing with you.

I'd say in certain parts of the world, the majority of statements are made for particular audiences and in many cases the message going out and the message for internal consumption were 180 out. As the leader of one Middle East nation was going on and on about how we were violating their sovereignty with our military operations, I was training their pilots to fly the F-16s we were providing them. As our politicians went on and on about how we were protecting Kurds from Saddam, there were days when we had to abort our airborne CAPs over the Kurds so our host nation could roll in and bomb them unimpeded.

Prior to military retirement, when the stuff being talked about on tv was what I was working on, so I really knew the real story, literally nothing that I saw discussed on tv was correct. Whether it be from the journalists, politicians, etc.

I used to say that I never once took any official action based on what the President or any General/Admiral said in a public setting, because what's said for public consumption and what's said internally are often in disagreement. And, we never attributed intel assessments to what their foreign leadership said.

Whether it was purposeful like "we don't have combat forces in X or Y", or our own ops being attributed to host nation forces to make them appear stronger than they were, or covering for mistakes (Pat Tillman or the Kunduz hospital strike cover stories), or accidentally misrepresented, it was all wrong.

And, it was never for any "noble" reasons like security (you don't have to lie to protect classified....they actually teach to not do that), it was for politics, etc. One of the few examples I can mention on this forum is from the Bosnian War in '96. As soon as the Dayton Peace Accords were signed in Dec '95, I was sent into the region. Eventually, part of my job was tracking everything we sent in and out. Because the President was still campaigning on the fact that we'd be out by the 1-year point, at some point we realized we needed to turn the train around because we only had so much lift to re-deploy and be out by Nov '96. Around April/May, we got a message through our 2-Star commander from SACEUR Gen Clark; we won't be out in a year, don't even make contingency plans for us to be put in a year. By the way, that info is classified. Then, we'd watch CNN International on satellite tv and see the President campaigning on the fact that we're going to be out in a year. That was only the first of hundreds of examples I have, and the higher my rank the more I saw.

What ever happened to "we can neither confirm nor deny."

14 of some of the most powerful conventional precision guided 30,000 pound bombs and numerous tomahawks were dumped on extremely sensitive and fragile labs and equipment??? And anyone believes that the damage was minimal?

I guess the reinforcements could be better than thought, or the sensitive equipment was not where people think it was. But I can only imagine what kind of shock wave traveled through that place.

That's exactly what we'd suspect, so we have other multi-source ways to monitor activity in and around the facility. That wouldn't be so easy for them to accomplish. We've spent the last 20+ years doing exactly that; after we took out an objective, we always monitored closely to see if the impact on their ops matched our expectations.

That's kind of the problem. Sure, we have evidence at the surface, but we're only guessing at what happened in the concrete structures way underground. The Israelis may know more, heck the CIA may know more, but without the actual data from them (assuming it exists), there are no guarantees. The possibilities range from one end of the spectrum to the other.

The folks who might know aren't talking and everything else is largely someone's interpretation or spin.

Well the President said it was obliterated. So either he is lying, or someone misinformed him at great peril. If you want to know what Trump thinks ask him. So I would take it at face value. Iran chose not to take his words at face value and did not turn out so well.

It's probably better to just repeat what they said....

That's kind of the problem. Sure, we have evidence at the surface, but we're only guessing at what happened in the concrete structures way underground. The Israelis may know more, heck the CIA may know more, but without the actual data from them (assuming it exists), there are no guarantees. The possibilities range from one end of the spectrum to the other.

The folks who might know aren't talking and everything else is largely someone's interpretation or spin.

There is doubt and then there cock certainty it didn’t work followed by purposeful obscurataion.

This would be the latter.

Obscure away. It is such a logical, rational method.

No one even knows how to deep the bunker busters go. We don’t know how much concrete and dirt there fore know one knows anything. Yet someone knows something you how can something come from nothing.

Let’s revisit this in a bit.

You might find this unbelievable, yet it is possible someone our government may still have the integrity to tell us the truth. Anyone in our government would be foolish to not tell us. Like most lies the problems just get worse. If they missed, then whenthey have to do the mission again they look like fools.

My bet is the nuclear facilities are badly busted. They are left with creating a dirty bomb at worse for quite awhile. While a dirty bomb would cause some carnage, it will not result in Israel being destroyed and decimated Lille a traditional nuclear weapon would. That counts for a win for the home team.