During the debate prior to the 2002 congressional vote on whether to authorize the invasion of Iraq, Cheney told a VFW convention that Saddam had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror...Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the US or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."

Substitute Ahmadinejad for Saddam, Iran for Iraq, and 2007 for 2002. Don't substitute the speaker.

Lets remember some history:

When the Palestinian-ISraeli peace process was ascendant, there were a lot of questions about the future of AIPAC, which was buffetted by scandal and infighting, and had alienated both the Israeli govt of Rabin (who came to Washington and explicitly told AIPAC to buzz off) and Bush the Elder. There were several high-profile resignations, and the ISraeli FM explicitly stated that AIPAC did not represent Israeli interests. By then AIPAC had already swung wildly to the Right and was out of step with even Jewish opinion in the US. It was, in short, pursuing its own agenda, apart from Israel's and apart from American Jews, and in a death spiral.

AIPAC, however, found its raison d'etre in Iran, specifically when the Conoco deal went down. They rallied behind the sanctions and Martin Indyk's "dual containment" policy and the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act.

As Walt and Mearsheimer have written, Iran-bashing is now simply an industry in its own right. These people will not lay off calling for a war on Iran - it is their bread and butter. And they may get it - because they're the tail wagging the dog.

Also, lets not forget why Israel would want a war with Iran: not because of any actual "threat" posed by Iran to ISrael (factually, it is Israel that threatens Iran in both capacity and intent) but because Israel doesn't want to lose its status in the Mideast to an ascendant Iran:

As Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance - The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007.)
has written:

"[I]t wasn’t Iran that turned the Israeli-Iranian cold war warm – it was Israel . . . The Israeli reversal on Iran was partially motivated by the fear that its strategic importance would diminish significantly in the post-cold war middle east if the then president (1989-97) Hashemi Rafsanjani’s outreach to the Bush Sr administration was successful."

In short, it would be contrary to Israeli interests if the US and Iran started to get along, because ISrael may be left in the cold now that there's no COld War to justify the "special relationship" between Israel and the US (nor the billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel.)

Selling Iran as an imminent nuclear threat would be hard to do convincingly. Many believe that war against Iran, if it is commenced, will begin with strikes against Iranian elements alleged to have been used against Coalition forces in Iraq; I think of such contemplated strikes as Round 1 (which I hope never starts). Any significant Iranian response to those strikes, even if not directed at Coalition forces in Iraq, could be claimed as justification for the main offensive against Iran (Round 2), which would include known and suspected nuclear development sites in the target list.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on Sunday, September 16 as a guest of FOX News Sunday, stated, “..., I think that the general view is we can manage this problem through better operations inside Iraq and on the border with Iran, that we can take care of the Iranian threat or deal with the Iranian threat inside the borders of Iraq — don't need to go across the border into Iran.” And so I wonder this: Are there two opposing camps within the Bush administration, hawks aligned with Cheney and cautionary voices aligned with Gates?

Given the success of the hawks in 2003, the above statement by Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday, September 16, is not entirely comforting.

Anybody not worried about possible war with Iran has to ignorant or deluded. It is like not worrying about a category 5 hurricane approaching the Atlantic coast because your beach front home has only a 10% chance of lying in its path.

Nobody knows except Bush and his psychiatrist. It would be an obvious irrational and self destructive move. But we are being led by narcissist and probable active alcoholic who has failed miserably in his job and is still seeking that one glorious move that would reverse all his earlier bad moves.

Logic is the wrong tool to apply when forecasting Bush's plans. Neither he nor Cheney act logically (otherwise we would have been out of Iraq log ago).

Psychology or voodoo may be the right tools. (Am an expert in neither).

I certainly hope war with Iran is not inevitable. The way I see it, and posted in my last blog entry here, there seem to be two viable reason why the Bush Administration would want to go to war with Iran: Tehran's nuclear ambitions, and the supposedly sending of Quds Forces into Iraq.

Regarding the first, I'm hoping the U.N. can maintain more even-headed negotiations with Iran. So far, the U.S. has somewhat deferred unilateralism, and is letting the U.N. handle much of the negotiations.

Regarding the second, recent news reports as well as testimony by General Petraeus himself indicate that there are not Quds Force members in Iran at this time. The problem with the second reason is that the MSM doesn't appear to be picking this up, or challenging the Administration. 

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jhaber,

Why would they be so eager to bomb a few targets, no doubt knowing it wouldn't take out Iran's military or political capabilities, when they can't follow it up with a ground force we no longer have available?

Plenty of boots available, now that the Iraqi Interior Ministry wants to kick Blackwater USA out of Iraq.  There aren't many facets of the public sphere left to privatize, other than the military.

Any attack on Iran would be insane but I don't doubt that Bush, et al are insane enough to try it. Many voices need to raised publicly to make clear that an attack of any kind on Iran is totally unacceptable. We need more people like Wes Clark and Gen. Abizaed to start speaking out about the saber rattling bullshit over Iran and a realistic response to it.

Our idiotic foreign meddling the past 50 years put the mullahs in power in Iran more than anything else, yet we continue to try the same genuinely foolish approach of the superior, imperialistic and paternalistic western power admonishing the inferior Islamic nation about its behavior and so on. It is so stupid and counterproductive that it's enough to make one sick!

We should long ago have dropped the unjustifiable hostility toward Iran, face the fact that derailing democracy and installing and backing the the Shah for 25 years was a fatal error to our ambition to dominate that country and try to make amends with the current government in the hope that someday when their people demand and get a more responsive, democratic and open government we will have laid the groundwork for a productive relationship with them at that time. In the meantime we could be having cool, but cooperative where needs be relations with that government as we did with the USSR during the Cold War. Instead, we just keep howling about how the government of Iran misbehaves instead of being obedient and keep threatening military responses to political problems. Real smart approach.

Re: no matter a patriotic public instinct to support the president in time of war.

Which explains why LBJ and Truman were so popular when they left office.

President Bush's misuse of the term war notwithstanding, the Bush administration has found identifying with the troops to be quite expedient as a political tool. Being Commander-in-Chief is the ultimate in military authority; the authority of the presidency, however, due to the President's having been elected, makes his office one part of civilian control of the military, Congress being the other part. Bush adroitly called upon General Petraeus to be both his mouthpiece and the public face of the troops engaged in Iraq. In doing so, Bush did not hurt himself politically, relatively speaking, while deflecting some of the criticism that would have been directed at an administration spokesman not in uniform. The thinking obviously is that Congress, the media, and the public will mostly try to avoid even the appearance of not supporting the troops.

What's been done to rein in President Bush? Identifying with the troops has been successful for him. Using the troops in pursuance of his stated goals, badly flawed as they have been and are, has not been successful.

Why would they be so eager to bomb a few targets, no doubt knowing it wouldn't take out Iran's military or political capabilities, when they can't follow it up with a ground force we no longer have available?

What I worry about is that they might be convinced they don't need to follow up because they think all of the various allies they have been cultivating inside Iran are going to finish off the regime after the US gets things started.

You don't have to read all this or even think to know the answer is "No!" It was before Iraq also.

Only the noise of people like this and the administration even make the question worth asking.

No! No! No!

It's obvious.

And you need another lesson since Iraq?

Idiots. One and all.

But what about oil, Eric?  I mean Greenspan came right out and said it in his new book - Bush went to Iraq for oil.  And now we have Bush-buddy Ray Hunt signing on with the Kurds - in violation of the fledgling Iraq constitution and probably hijacking any hope of a coalition government in Iraq.  Does Bush et al care?  I don't think so..deals like Hunt got was the whole point in the first place - all this freedom, democracy, wmds, etc. is pure pretext.

I don't see any evidence that Iran would be different.  I do see, however, Russia putting the kaibosh on any plans to attack Iran.

Neoboho

All ytou have to do is read the PNAC position papers from the 1990s. Like Mein Kampf, they detail the neocon plans to remilitarize the US society and to turn the world into a one-superpower-state. They are explicit about making war first in Iraq, then Iran, then Syria. If there's anything Cheney and Bush have demonstrated, it's a complete indifference to public opinion, human decency, or even the national interest. There's no question in my mind that they will launch an attack against Iran. War is their ideology. They love it.

Bush has traded his English Setter for a French Poodle.

Sarkozy ran on a right-wing platform, and was able to beat a very week field through the politics of divisiveness and the promise of Americanization (funny as that may seem). The French I know think he's a joke, and, imo, the recent 'backing' of the US is merely the result of his summer vacation with Georgie, where promises were made in exchange for Sarkozy's filling in for the 'coalition of the willling.'