‘Twelve hours: one circuit of the sun from horizon to
horizon, one course of the moon from dusk to dawn. What was once a natural
measurement for the daily round of human life is now a doom-laden interval
between the voicing of an autocrat's brutal whim and the infliction of mass
annihilation halfway around the world. 

Twelve hours is the maximum time
necessary for American bombers to gear up and launch an unprovoked sneak attack
– a Pearl Harbor in reverse – against Iran, the
Washington Post reports. The plan for this "global
strike," which includes a very viable "nuclear option," was
approved months ago, and is now in operation. The planes are already on
continuous alert, making "nuclear delivery" practice runs along the
Iranian border, as Sy Hersh
reports in the New Yorker, and waiting only for the signal from
President George W. Bush to drop their payloads of conventional and nuclear
weapons on some 400 targets spread throughout the condemned land. 

And when this attack comes –
either as a stand-alone "knock-out blow" or else as the precursor to
a full-scale, regime-changing invasion, like the earlier aggression in Iraq –
there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no hearings, no public debate.
The already issued orders governing the operation put the decision solely in
the hands of the president: he picks up the phone, he says, "Go" –
and in twelve hours' time, up to a million Iranians will be dead.’ 

Time's Arrow: The Coming
Nuclear Epiphany In Persia