U.S. Considers Nuclear Option...

The New Yorker magazine is reporting in it's April 17 issue that the military has presented a plan to the White House that calls for the use of bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapons, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites in Iran.

A key target for a nuclear strike would be Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz in the south, some two hundred miles from Tehran.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.

"That's the name they're using," the report quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying.

A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying that "this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war."

But the former senior intelligence official said the attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the military, and some officers have talked about resigning after an attempt to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans in Iran failed, according to the report.

"There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries," the magazine quotes the Pentagon adviser as saying.

"If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle," the adviser is quoted as telling The New Yorker.

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