



Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has directed StratCom military strategists to draw up plans for a preemptive attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. With its expanded mission responsibilities, including “Global Strike,” the Omaha-based command center is now charged with using both conventional and nuclear weapons to combat terrorism and the WMD threat anywhere in the world.
Working in conjunction with Central Command, the Pentagon’s military arm in the Muslim world, StratCom has begun “identifying targets, assessing weapons-loads and working on logistics for an operation” in the event Iran refuses to stop its nuclear energy program, Britain’s Sunday Telegraph reported February 12. The preliminary plan is said to call for aerial bombardment by longdistance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000 lbs. of precision weapons (including the latest bunker-busting devices), backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks. Last month President Bush reaffirmed his view that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “would not be tolerated.”
While StratCom was already hard at work planning the next war, Fr. John McCaslin, a retired Omaha priest and NFP member, joined long-time activist Frank Cordaro and two other Catholic Workers in ‘crossing the line’ into StratCom as part of the annual “Holy Innocents” action December 28 (see photo). Arrested by StratCom officials for their illegal trespass, McCaslin and Cordaro were both scheduled to appear before Federal Judge F.A. Gossett in Omaha late last month. If found guilty, each faces six months in jail for their criminal conduct.