The Drums of War

In the back of my mind these days I hear the drums of war beginning to take up the beat once again. The administration is already building a case for going into Iran, either with what they call "surgical strikes" or with a full scale invasion.

I think somehow our illustrious leader imagines that we can go in and bomb one or two sites as the Israelis did in Libya and that will eliminate the Iranian nuclear program. From what I have read, we know of about two dozen nuclear sites of one sort or another in Iran. That undoubtedly means there are at least another dozen or so we don't have a clue about. The bottom line there is that we cannot actually get it all in one fell swoop.

In addition, the administration seems to believe that if they were to do this, that Iran would just roll over and play dead. That's not likely to happen with convenient targets (namely U.S. military) just over the open border in Iraq. The Iranian leader is a nutcase who believes we are coming up on the end of the world and that he wants to speed that up. This is the guy who considers it perfectly logical and sane to write dialogue on post it notes and toss them down a well and imagine that he is conversing with a long dead holy man. This is the guy we're depending on to act logically and sanely if we attack him.

There is every indication that much of what we're being fed by the administration currently is a crock, much along the lines of the WMD stockpiles and nuclear programs in Iraq before the war. The nuclear regulatory agency says that the Iranian program is years further behind than the US is claiming. So far on such matters, they haven't been wrong and we haven't been right even a single time. Much of what is being written these days also dwells on the fact that the Iranian people are not nearly as disaffected as the expatriate community would have us believe. That is the same as we discovered to our chagrin in Iraq as well.

With the midterms coming up and a presidential election only two years away, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if Bush picks another war just to see Republicans remain in power. I mean, they cannot point to anything they've done in the form of legislation that would make people want to keep them. So maybe embroiling us in yet another war would somehow do the trick. *sigh*