panetta's unclear language

Submitted by myth (Germany), Feb 9, 2012 at 12:25

Panetta's language seems ambiguous to me: "strong" and "likelihood" don't go together well. What is he talking about when he says "there is"? This sentence has no subject to begin with. Exactly what true verb does "is" exactly translate into? Contrary to that ambiguity the next sentence shines a light of clearity: "Israel will strike Iran" A clear subject-predicate-object sequence. Looking at the subjects in the sentences I read: Israel acts, Iran is acted upon, the US stays passive and even unmentioned by language.

"April May or June" leaves me with a question. Does Panetta have details about mission planning to go for those three distinct months? Would that be Israeli or US mission planning? "as early as April" would have been a less confusing statement.

To use the word "Iran" as the target suggests the idea that Israel would go after the Iranian government, or even the Iranian people. Israel would go after neither of the two. A strike would target nuclear-arms facilities exclusively. That is completely different from what Panetta is saying. Iran, on the other hand, verbally attacks all of Israel. Panetta reverses Israel's and Iran's scale of ambitions in the conflict.

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