Stephen Hadley looks concerned in this NY Times photo doesn’t he?
People might think that an article titled “U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003” might slow down the rush to go to war with Iran. But I don’t think that will be the case. I think that the administration will make the case for stopping Iran as this critical point before they can realize their ambition to become a nuclear weapon state.
For some reason the administration is bent on going to war with Iran. I personally don’t get it. Afghanistan made sense to me since there were people there that killed almost 3,000 of our citizens.
The war in Iraq never made sense to me. The country was in horrible shape after 12 years of sanctions. The sanctions definitely did not have the desired effect since the big shots in Saddam’s circle got wealthy and the country suffered. But they did not attack us and there were other places in the world that were selling nuclear and ballistic missile technology. Saddam was an evil tyrant alright but there are a lot of those around the world.
I think the case for a war in Iran will be based on similar reasoning as it was for Iraq. I don’t think it matters what the reality is, just that Cheney and President Bush are out to do this. I think they’ll attack and just spend time debating congress about what “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States” means.
Just now I read that President Bush is still claiming that “Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” and I don’t think this National Intelligence Estimate will do anything but embolden the President.
I wonder how it will start? I can picture the Iranians pulling another stunt in the Persian Gulf just to provoke an escalation. This would be really interesting to watch the politics if it were not this country.
