Kidding! We kid the Obama people! We kid because we love! Ha-ha. We wouldn't vote for Nader if he peed a Starbucks double shot espresso roast with syrup and ice. As for Gabby Hayes, don't even ask.

But we are concerned. You could call us the campaign concern troll. Maybe we should start our own Obama Facebook group. Some sh*t really needs to be trolled, so a trolling we will go. Merrily we troll along. The object of our disaffection tonight is one Anthony Lake, who tries to make clear that the Obama Administration will be ready to go to war with Iran, if need be. Those last three words can bring us to a world of hurt.

Lake hypes the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Is that a threat like, say, a nuclear-armed Communist China? North Korea? Islamicist-infested Pakistan? Those threats seem to remain at a low simmer. For Iran, however, possession of a nuclear weapon is not strictly required. Getting "on the edge of developing" one -- Lake's words -- is sufficient cause for alarm.

Now the hallmark of the Obama foreign policy is to free our mindset, our ass will follow. What exactly is the old mindset? More than ever, I really want to know. Apparently it is the importance of employing diplomacy and sanctions to shift Iranian policy, assuming there is a policy to shift in the first place. Opinions differ on the commitment of Iran to getting nukes, though it seems to working out well for North Korea.

The power of sanctions seems iffy. Sanctions didn't prevent an invasion of Iraq. They haven't led Cuba to wave the white flag. Israel has been subject to sanctions, no weak knees over there. Burma, no dice. On the other hand they seem to have had some impact on South Africa. In this case, the disinterest of our allies in the EU, let alone other non-trivial nations around the world, makes sanctions that much more dubious.

What is clear about sanctions is that they demonize their object for the entertainment of the home folks. That makes it easier to move to the next level. We are already being desensitized to the use of covert operations -- also known as acts of war, thus far an undeclared one.

Then we have this bit:

[Lake] stressed that Mr Obama, even after withdrawing troops from Iraq over 16 months, as he has promised, would maintain "a residual presence for clearly defined missions". These would include military training and "preparedness to go back in if there are specific acts of genocidal violence"

Residuals can be any size. If you subtract one from a thousand, the residual is 999. And there is also the interesting formulation, "specific acts of genocidal violence." The only example of the latter that makes sense is when the Death Star obliterated Alderaan. It takes a lot of acts to make a genocide. What's really meant is that specific acts that are merely brutal and heinous can be assigned the status of a casus belli.

Lake continues:

"That is not 'cut and run and let's just see what happens'," Mr Lake said. "It seems to me a very responsible strategy."

So it seems that Lake believes the Bush Administration was correct that somebody -- we should ask Lake who -- was propagating 'cut and run.'

And finally -- because I have to get up in seven hours -- there is this:

Highlighting a parallel with his first posting as assistant to Henry Cabot Lodge, a US ambassador to 1960s Saigon, he said: "It is common sense that we could not leave Vietnam successfully unless we left behind a government in Saigon that could govern successfully.

"It seems obvious in retrospect; it was not obvious enough to too many politicians at the time. In Iraq it's the same problem."

Here you have a formula for one hundred years in you-know-where. Those are my concerns. I'm voting Obama, in a concerned way.