It always comes back to Cheney. As Steve Clemons reports:

The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted…

It is not that Cheney wants to bomb Iran and Bush doesn't, it is that Cheney is saying that Bush is making a mistake and thus needs to have the choices before him narrowed.

Oh, yes we will hear assurances from Condi and others that we are not seeking war but engaging in “diplomacy” with Iran, but as Elliot Abrams told a Jewish group the other day about Condi’s trips to the region, there’s was never really anything to it – those trips were “just process” to keep the Europeans and moderate Arab countries “on the team” and to give the impression that we were promoting “peace.”

The same will be true of our pretense of “engaging” Iran – it will be “just process” until we go to war under some false or exaggerated pretense that they’re now concocting. At least that's their plan.

I don’t see (at this point) anyone either in the administration or outside of it that has the ability or the power to stop the “crazies” next war with Iran. With all the leading GOP candidates now lining up with the crazies (cheered on by our media), it makes saner heads within the administration (at the CIA, State Department) much less effective in their attempts to oppose the war. And they are in the best position to stop it.

Going to war with Iran has, unfortunately, now become a “partisan” issue, and the Republicans have become the “crazy” party.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002145.php

http://www.forward.com/articles/top-bush-adviser-says-rice-s-push-for-mideast-p/

This president's foray into Iraq is not a military disaster, it's a political disaster. The military has performed as we have come to expect our troops to perform - very well.

Oh, but it is a military disaster – look what it’s done to our military, which is now hopelessly overextended, less able to recruit qualified candidates and unable to properly care for those who have been needlessly harmed by putting them into an essentially “non-military” role of policing a civil war.

I see what you’re saying, but the political and strategic disaster that Bush put the military into has led to a military disaster as well.

Talk to some of our troops just back from Iraq who couldn’t wait to get out military – people who thought that when they went in that the military would be a lifelong career for them, but changed their minds when they saw the incompetence of the political leadership that the military was forced to support.

The political, strategic disaster has led to a military disaster as well.

One item that is never mentioned in this discussion is the estimate of how many innocent civilians would die as an immediate result of these military strikes? Just how many people will die if we “bomb, bomb, bomb” Iran?

Where are the estimates of that?

Does Joe Lieberman even take that into consideration? Bombing seems to be his “first option” that is inevitable, not a “last resort.” Joe and the neo-cons talk about this as if this is a purely technical operation, or a video game, with no real human beings involved.

Is that, perhaps, because many of these people advocating bombing Iran have completely dehumanized the Iranian people?

It’s too bad the New York Times didn’t elaborate why this is considered an “act of madness” by so many.

Not long ago, Glenn Greenwald mentioned that outside of the restricted format of Hannity & Colmes, that Alan Colmes (on his radio show) is a well informed and an excellent interviewer. Sadly, the viewers of Fox News would never know this because he is completely dominated by Hannity in a format that always frames any given issue from Hannity’s perspective.

I get this same feeling about this entire debate about bombing Iran. Although the NYT points out that there are very “few remaining hawks inside the administration” it nevertheless frames the entire debate from their perspective.

Although the Times reports that Rice seems to be winning this debate “so far” that would never be apparent from by viewing our corporate media where the views of Lieberman, Kristol, Bolton and Podhoretz dominate the debate, and the other side can’t seem get in word otherwise.

This article is a case in point. It’s like they set up the debate, but let the Hannity-like-hawks interrupt, bully and intimidate the opposing view, which is never allowed to explain why bombing Iran would be “madness.”

That’s the way this entire debate is almost always framed. Not only is one side not given equal time to present their point of view, but the framing of the debate itself (from a pro-bombing, fear-mongering perspective) puts anyone disagreeing with the neo-cons automatically in a weak, defensive position by first having to refute the falsehoods in the questions.

How is our new Manichean mindset – which justifies torture, genocide, a gulag of secret prisons, pre-emptive invasions of countries that present no threat to us to bring them under our sphere of influence, and a police state mentality at home – different than the mindset of the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union?

Haven’t we, like them, adopted an “ends justifies the means” mentality? And haven’t we become the “evil empire” in the eyes of most of the world?

These are the questions that we are afraid to ask, let alone answer; but until we do, nothing will change except for the worse. It’s past time to move beyond the pious posturing and the mindless moral rectitude that we are inherently “good” and take a good hard look at who we’ve become and where we are going.