The Public Ain't Buying

But just because Bush isn't planning an attack doesn't mean it's out of the question.

"[T]here are several not-unrelated scenarios under which it might happen, if the neocon wing of the party, led by Vice President Cheney, succeeds in reasserting itself, or if there is some kind of 'accidental,' perhaps contrived, confrontation."

An "engineered provocation" would effectively be an "end run" around "the president's diplomatic, intelligence and military decision-making apparatus," Clemons writes. "It would most likely be triggered by one or both of the two people who would see their political fortunes rise through a new conflict -- Cheney and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"That kind of war is much more probable and very much worth worrying about."

Via TomDispatch, Peter Galbraith writes in the New York Review of Books about how ironic it is for Bush to warn of an Iranian threat should the United States withdraw from Iraq.

Here's what Bush told the American Legion on Aug. 29: "For all those who ask whether the fight in Iraq is worth it, imagine an Iraq where militia groups backed by Iran control large parts of the country."

But Bush, writes Galbraith, has himself "facilitated the very event he warned would be a disastrous consequence of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq: the takeover of a large part of the country by an Iranian-backed militia."

Galbraith also writes that the war in Iraq has undercut the effectiveness of diplomacy with Iran, but that a military approach wouldn't work either: "Sustained air strikes probably could halt Iran's nuclear program. . . . But the risks from air strikes are great. Many of the potential targets are in populated places, endangering civilians both from errant bombs and the possible dispersal of radioactive material. The rest of the world would condemn the attacks and there would likely be a virulent anti-U.S. reaction in the Islamic world. In retaliation, Iran could wreak havoc on the world economy (and its own) by withholding oil from the global market and by military action to close the Persian Gulf shipping lanes.

"The main risk to the U.S. comes in Iraq. Faced with choosing between the U.S. and Iran, Iraq's government may not choose its liberator. And even if the Iraqi government did not openly cooperate with the Iranians, pro-Iranian elements in the U.S.-armed military and police almost certainly would facilitate attacks on U.S. troops by pro-Iranian Iraqi militia or by Iranian forces infiltrated across Iraq's porous border."

And here's another reason not to trust the neocons: "Before the Iraq war began, its neoconservative architects argued that conferring power on Iraq's Shiites would serve to undermine Iran because Iraq's Shiites, controlling the faith's two holiest cities, would, in the words of then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, be 'an independent source of authority for the Shia religion emerging in a country that is democratic and pro-Western.' Further, they argued, Iran could never dominate Iraq, because the Iraqi Shiites are Arabs and the Iranian Shiites Persian. It was a theory that, unfortunately, had no connection to reality."

Bush's Deficit Whopper

Defending himself from an attack from former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan yesterday, Bush uncorked a real whopper.

Bush has in the past found all sorts of artful ways to suggest that his tax cuts have been good for the economy and for government revenues -- without going so far as actually asserting that they paid for themselves or that they reduced the federal budget deficit.