Bush reportedly eager to strike Iran

Articles like Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece are cropping up like kudzu. And they're all eerily similar to pre-Iraq war pieces. The intelligence is sketchy, but it's likely that Iran is years away from acquiring the technology for nuclear weapons. But the Boy-King in the Plastic Bubble appears convinced that another Iraq-style strategy is what's needed. Send in a small force, overthrow the government, and the grateful populace will welcome us as liberators and unite to form a theocracy. Oh, and hail Bush as their savior. Third time's the charm, right?

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

Bush wants a legacy. He's blown it as far as stopping Al Qaeda. Aghanistan and Iraq are in chaos. But how can he sell war on a third front to a nation that's exhausted, broke, and increasingly views him as the president who cried wolf? Especially considering that we will face stronger and more united international opposition than ever. Even if the public doesn't give a damn what our allies think, it means that we'll be shouldering the cost in money and lives all by ourselves. Will even his most fervent supporters in Congress be willing to risk their political futures by continuing to push his 'war spending + tax cuts' economic model? They're already worried about losing the majority because of unhappy constituents back home-- and three more years of increased energy, health and education costs, thousands more dead American troops, and another $200 billion in national debt isn't going to help.

Has the president gone mad? The nation is in a perilous economic position, looked at unfavorably by even our closest allies, the previously fractured Middle East is increasingly united in a common hatred of the US and Israel, and terrorist recruitment is by all accounts skyrocketing. And he thinks that more spending, more unilateralism, and more violence in the Middle East is the best solution?