August 28, 2007 (LPAC)--Two British think tankers have produced an 80-page report arguing that the United States has the military capability to destroy Iran's nuclear program, its industrial base and its government infrastructure in a matter of days, if not hours, through a massive bombing campaign, that has already been set in place, and could be activated at any moment, by orders from President Bush.

The paper, "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East," was written by Daniel Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London; and Martin Butcher, former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC). The report, first released on Aug. 27, has already come under harsh criticism from some U.S. military and intelligence specialists, who charge that the study makes utopian assumptions about the effectiveness of air power, when the American "shock and awe" bombing campaign did far less damage in Iraq than initially claimed. The critics, including former CIA and U.S. Army counter-terrorism specialist Larry Johnson, also charged that the report vastly underestimated Iran's asymmetric retaliatory capabilities.

The British report was first revealed on Aug. 28 on the website www.rawstory.com, which summarized the document: "The US has made military preparations to destroy Iran's WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicizing the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran's actions." The Plesch-Butcher study claims that the U.S. has bombers and long-range missiles capable of destroying 10,000 targets in "a few hours." They say that the United States, perhaps with the assistance of Great Britain and Israel, could turn Iran into a "failed state" without using nuclear weapons; however, the report warned that if some of Iran's nuclear sites prove too hardened to knock out with conventional weapons, the "military logic and doctrine" may prompt "the use of nukes if all other means fail."

The Plesch-Butcher document focused special attention on Global Strike, the STRATCOM (Strategic Command) scheme for launching instantaneous missile and bomber attacks on targets all over the world. That capability, according to the authors, was in place as of December 2005.