The critical requirement of avoiding aircrew casualties or prisoners means that a key component of US action would be a strong dependence on the B-2 long-range stealth-bomber. This plane can carry sixteen individually-targeted, highly accurate bombs; thus, a single aircraft can attack sixteen separate targets in just one operation. The basing of the B-2 far from the region is useful in preserving secrecy, but the plane's dependence on specialised servicing equipment to maintain its "stealth" radar-avoidance ability puts the only four bases worldwide where these are available at an absolute premium.

These four bases are in the United States itself, Guam (Pacific), Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean), and RAF Fairford (Gloucestershire, England). The stealth support facilities already available in the first three locations were joined by Fairford, a major United States air force (Usaf) standby base, in December 2004. This serves as a forward operating facility, especially for heavy bombers such as the B-1B, the B-2 and the B-52. In the approach to the Iraq war, Usaf's 457th air expeditionary wing was based at Fairford; fourteen B-52s flew in from Minot (North Dakota) and deployed there for seven weeks while conducting more than a hundred bombing sorties over Iraq.

Fairford underwent a major two-year development and reconstruction programme, completed in May 2002. Another building project started barely a year later to equip the base with a specialised hangar to accommodate the B-2; the fifteen months since its it came into operation have seen occasional visits by individual planes (the B-2's immense costs and specialised facilities means that only twenty-one have been built and perhaps only fifteen can be deployed at any one time).

The need for an element of surprise in any attack on Iran makes it difficult to gauge exactly when it might be imminent. Fairford offers the possibility of two tangible advance signals. The first is a more coordinated presence of B-2s at the base. It is probable that training for an attack would involve deployments of B-2 aircraft there for a few days at a time, to familiarise air and ground crew with the details of combat operations from a new base. It is likely that the first such exercise took place last week when three B-2s flew into Fairford within a few days in what appears to be the first orchestrated deployment of this kind. This may well be an indicator of training now underway.

The second signal is a sudden increase in base security at Fairford, including the policing of an extended cordon and closure of local roads to minimise any external observation of activities there. If and when that happens, the countdown to war with Iran will almost certainly be well underway. The moment may arrive at any time in the next year or more, quite possibly when it is least expected.

These people are bent on attacking Iran. Of the three legs of the triad : Oil has enjoyed its best profits ever from George's "adventure" in the Middle East and now it's "please sir may I have some more?"; the Israeli far-right has sown death, destruction and chaos in Iraq and would now love to sow the same in Iran; the War lobby, well... need I say more.

All three of thes players has reaped enormous gains from the war in Iraq. None of these players thinks they, personally, really have anything to lose from an attack on Iran.

Analyses based upon the downside for the rest of the world from an attack on Iran are not on the same page as the triad. They just do not care about Iraq or Iraqis, Iran or Iranians, or even about Israelor Israelis. That they have never cared about America or Americans should be as obvious as our American federal debt and our 2354 dead and 17269 wounded.

Britain's Snow is right when he says that an attack on Iran is nuts.

These nuts have reaped billions so far and are ready to keep on keepin' on 'til 20 Jan 2009.