For instance, in the article linked above:

Vice President Cheney yesterday accused Russia of cracking down on religious and political rights and using its energy reserves as “tools of intimidation or blackmail.”

It was a hard slap at Russian President Vladimir V. Putin as the United States seeks Russia’s cooperation in punishing Iran…

Russian officials reacted angrily.

I ask you to parse this. Do we honestly think that Cheney is that stupid? Borish? Yes. Selfish? Yes. Evil? Probably. But Stupid?

I posit that the White House is not “seeking Russia’s cooperation in punishing Iran.” They are trying to deliberately sabotage such shit so these military planners have an thinly veiled excuse for invasion.

Saddam lets nuclear inspectors in. We pull them out so we can invade claiming we are enforcing UN resolutions as justification (rationalization) for war. We’ll do the same thing to Iran and everyone knows it.

If I were the Republican party, I’d step up the war rhetoric up until just before the election and then make peace. This way gas prices will go down and I might be able to mitigate the loss in the House and Senate. I wonder if these guys are so smart as to do that. What is so surprising is that they have become so entrenched in their ideology that I entertain this question at all.

Remember “You don’t introduce new products in August” so it is important to compare this timeline with that of Iraq war.

Great post!

I do not deny that the implications of a plan to bomb or nuke Iran—in fact, I find it quite believable especially given the source (New Yorker) and a careful reading of the denial actually said. My belief is that I think this is trial balloon that will fail because the country has grown too weary of starting another unfinished war. Plans to cause a retaliatory response against the U.S. to engender escalation (a la Japanese WW2), while contemplated by these idiot neo-cons, will not have the results they hope.

While some engage in a spirited defense of Sy Hersh (as if the guy who broke Kennedy’s infidelities, My Lai, and Abu Ghaib needs any defense for his “truthiness”). I prefer to note that if you read the actual words, they aren’t exactly denying anything said in the article.

My belief that the key, if any, will be on swaying public opinion before any operation, which is highly unlikely. Betting on a scenario that plays out like this: 1) Bomb Iran; 2) expect Iran to retaliate in Iraq; 3) use U.S. troop deaths in Iraq to mobilize the American public for war in Iran has a game theory problem. Minimax says that Iran would not response with (2)—this is no different than Saddam destroying his chemical and biological stores until he could threaten with nuclear. For instance, Iran can play the victim to the U.N., it can more heavily fund the Iraqi Shiites, it can use the bombing to get sympathy from the Arabs (I believe Iran is mostly ethnically Persian), etc. Also (3) would be hard to play up without total control of media’s portrayal of it—something not guaranteed this time, as it was just after 9/11 and Afghanistan.

I think it far more likely they are testing the waters with a “war in Iran” story to see if the U.S. public might be willing to go with it, and if such a thing would influence the midterm election in their favor. I think the response to it is not to their liking which is why these right wingers are trying to distance themselves from it.

BTW, Juan Cole explains why Iran’s nuclear capability is not an imminent threat. Unlike Cole, to me, it seems Iran has figured out a glaring gap in the U.N.’s non-proliferation strategy: to seek civilian nuclear power before addressing the issue of nuclear weapons. All it requires is a lot of patience, which I think Iran has.

I wasn’t aware of that until I saw Fahrenheit 9/11. The exception I had was contrasting Bush’s reaction to that of Rudy Giuliani, Bill Clinton, or even the common man on the three days that followed 9/11 and preceded his “bullhorn moment.”