War on Iraq   comments_image Comments  Military's Opposition
Pushed Bush Away From Massive Iran Strike  Centcom Commander's
threatened resignation was seen as a major obstacle to an all-
out attack.   • submit to reddit   • submit to reddit  The
George W. Bush administration's shift from the military option
of a massive strategic attack against Iran to a surgical strike
against selected targets associated with the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported by Seymour Hersh in
the New Yorker earlier this month, appears to have been prompted
not by new alarm at Iran's role in Iraq but by the explicit
opposition of the nation's top military leaders to an unprovoked
attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.  The reorientation of the
military threat was first signaled by passages on Iran in Bush's
Jan. 10 speech and followed by only a few weeks a decisive
rejection by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of a strategic attack on
Iran's nuclear facilities.  Although scarcely mentioned in press
reports of the speech, which w