Okay, So We're Only Up To WWIII?

It's all fortunately still just rhetoric, but the increasing bellicoseness of it (see highlights the Sunday shows this week) is cause for concern. It was all just rhetoric with Iraq 5 years ago, after all. Here's President Bush raising the stakes and lowering the bar yesterday-

"If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it'd be a dangerous threat to world peace," Bush said at White House press conference today. "So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested" in preventing Iran from gaining that capability.

Matt Yglesias notes that the exact quote used by the President was this: "So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

Holy shit! World wars just aren't what they used to be, are they?



[PS- Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, warns the U.S. against an attack. And tensions grow wider.]