Gasp!- "US began planning full-scale war against Iran before Iraq"

Maybe this report will be shocking for anyone who hasn't learned that planning for war goes on all the time. Fodder for the naive, I guess.

The US Army had begun conducting an analysis for a full-scale war with Iran involving missile strikes, a land invasion and a naval operation to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz much before its forces went to war with Iraq in early 2003, a former intelligence expert said Sunday.

His comments come close on the heels of President George W. Bush dismissing news reports that his administration "has been working on contingency plans for war -- particularly talk of the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons against Tehran" -- as wild speculation.

Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also called them "fantasyland" and declared that "it just isn`t useful" to talk about contingency planning, Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.

The plan called TIRANNT or "theater Iran near term," was coupled with a mock scenario for a Marine Corps invasion and a simulation of the Iranian missile force, William Arkin, who served as the US Army`s top intelligence mind on West Berlin in 1970s and predicted the American operations against Iraq, wrote in the "Washington Post."

US and British planners conducted a Caspian Sea war game around the same time and Bush directed the Strategic Command to draw up a global strike war plan for an attack against Iranian weapons of mass destruction, he said.

And, you know, before WWII, we had plans for a war with Japan, too, see here. War plans existed for a lot of other things, too, as noted here. What do the Boy Scouts say? "Be prepared."