We Don't Want The Smoking Gun To Come In The Form of A...

The Bush administration's Iran warmongering continues. The saddest part is that Americans are reacting as if they didn't just hear this exact same rhetoric (sometimes practically word for word) three and a half years ago. Never underestimate the ability of the public to have the same shit shoved up their ass every election cycle and refuse to blink.

Washington Post: U.S. Campaign Is Aimed at Iran's Leaders-
Uneasy About Tehran's Nuclear Plans, Bush Administration Tries to Build Opposition to Theocracy

...President Bush and his team have been huddling in closed-door meetings on Iran, summoning scholars for advice, investing in opposition activities, creating an Iran office in Washington and opening listening posts abroad dedicated to the efforts against Tehran.

The internal administration debate that raged in the first term between those who advocated more engagement with Iran and those who preferred more confrontation appears in the second term to be largely settled in favor of the latter. Although administration officials do not use the term "regime change" in public, that in effect is the goal they outline as they aim to build resistance to the theocracy...

Hmmm. With one of the original members of the White House Iraq Group facing prison and another ready to end an election bid amid scandal, are they bringing in new guns for this marketing campaign? Perhaps outsource the job to Dubai?

Clearly, Iran is a major area of concern, but the White House's aggressive stance will only backfire once again. No one advocates a "pretty please" attitude toward Iran, but there's aggressive diplomacy and there's, yep, warmongering. This administration does not want a diplomatic solution. They want war and, as we saw with Iraq, they will do anything to get it. Considering they are currently fighting two wars (and have failed to win either), it is literally insane that anyone is letting them getting away with beating the drums for another.

So why is no one pointing this is out?!

Well, Juan Cole is, if only he had the audience of a major newspaper...
TruthDig: Fishing for a Pretext in Iran

...If the Supreme Jurisprudent of theocratic Iran has given a fatwa against nukes, if the president of the country has renounced them and called for others to do so, if the International Atomic Energy Agency has found no evidence of a military nuclear weapons program, and if Iran is at least 10 years from having a bomb even if it is trying to get one, then why is there a diplomatic crisis around this issue between the United States and Iran in 2006?

The answer is that the Iranian nuclear issue is déjà vu all over again. As it did with regard to the Baath regime in Iraq, the militarily aggressive Bush administration wants to overthrow the government in Tehran. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, now in a coma, urged the U.S. to hit Iran as soon as it had taken care of Saddam Hussein. The Israelis have a grudge against it because it helped end their military occupation and land grab in southern Lebanon by giving aid to the Shiite Hezbollah organization, the only Arab force ever to succeed in regaining occupied land from Israel by military means. But Iran does not form a conventional military threat to Israel. ...

Cole presents a very balanced view of the situation in Iran.

Balance not being something the White House appreciates.

[PS- Meanwhile, the President wishes to connect Iran with roadside bombs in Iraq.]