Ever since Casey & Baker made their deal with Iran in 1980, their mullahs & ours have growled at each other. They ramp it up when its convenient, cool it down when it suits them & generally have had a long and productive relationship based on common goals & shared ideals.

My unwillingness to accept the likelihood of an attack on Iran is simply based on the expectation that they - the theocrats in both countries - will continue the relationship on its old terms, and have no real beef. Sure there's a history of phony wars blowing up into real ones, and to some extent we do become what we pretend to be, but for now the utter absurdity & pointlessness of initiating a fresh disaster against a large & powerful country inclines me to place my worries elsewhere.

Also, with regard to Cheney, you have to consider what the oil industry wants. The oil industry is very happy with things as they are.

I'm pretty certain you've hear of him, but in light of your recent commentary on the defense establishment and the role that think tanks play, I would highly recommend the work of George Lakoff, especially his 2004 book 'Don't Think of an Elephant'.

If you aren't aware of his work, Lakoff is a linguist and Cognitive Scientist who has worked extensively on the idea of 'frames'- the mental constructions people have built around words- and the role this idea plays in political communications. Lakoff speaks about the right's concerted effort, through indefinitely funded thinktanks, to saturate the media with right-wing commentary and to promote right-wing ideas with the public. He ties this effort in with the social-networking essential to political movements, the idea of 'farming' human/intellectual assets within a movement, and the the application of framing to Progressive politics, to use these long term right-wing tactics against them.

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/

Downpuppy, your points are entirely valid, but I don't think they should keep you from being afraid of the inevitable shooting war with Iran. Remember, the grownups are no longer in charge here. Under GWB there is no such thing as a "gentleman's agreement", nor is there respect for (or, hell, even basic understanding of) the unwritten rules of cold wars and backroom diplomacy.

It is precisely for that reason that I fear the worst.

I remain convinced that Bush won't bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran--the military and much of his party in Congress would go nuts; senior Republicans have told me that bipartisan impeachment hearings would be inevitable--but that doesn't mean Bush won't continue to try to provoke the Iranians into some sort of military mistake.

I'm sure we all feel better now. If Joe says it, it must be true.

Even if a cowardly Congress did manage to summon up the courage to re-write both AUMFs would that stop Bush? I don’t think so. They’d find some obscure loophole or technicality to justify what they did “legally” and rely on the propaganda machine to reinforce it. Congress, for all practical purposes, has been rendered “quaint” when it comes to foreign policy.

I think that the GOP base has become so extreme on this that there will be no appeal to the center by whoever the nominee is on this issue and they’ll leave themselves no choice but roll the dice and bet that a “hot war” with Iran, if conducted at the right time, will cause enough chaos, terror and fear, that it just might tilt the election over to the GOP.

Their numbers are so bad right now – they’ve got nothing to lose. And the rhetoric has been so extreme for so long now, that they’ve given themselves very few other options. This declaration undermines the hopes for any diplomacy, and gives the message to Iran that we will accept nothing less than regime change and submission to our will.

It is a victory for Cheney over any relative “moderates” that remain in the administration. I don’t think the question is whether they’ll bomb Iran, only when, and I don’t see anyone, including the military establishment, able to stop them.

I’ve still got “hope” that we won’t do this, but I see nothing to base it upon. The situation is looking just too much like the prelude to our “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq.

between the war on terror and the new war on immigrants. I'd only add that golden oldie, the war on drugs, to the list.

What all these "wars" have in common is that they are unwinnable, and that's precisely the point. A "war" that can potentially go on forever means endlessly increasing budgets and powers for the bureaucrats fighting it.

And, just to make really sure we don't "win" and put the "warriors" out of work, deliberately choose totally inappropriate tools: using the military to fight terrorism, which is a police problem, using the police to fight drug use, which is a public health problem, using the police AND military to fight immigration, which is an economic problem.

My, how cynical I've become.

This caught my eye because of a couple of recent FISA related items, notably, a sudden "giv'em an inch" move to make the (so-called) temporary 6 mos "modernization" of FISA permanent; in concert with ...

- the tip-toeing departure of Dennis Hastert on the heels of Alberto Gonzales taking on new powers (and attempting to tidy matters in Iraq), and of course,

- congressional oversight closing in on several White House / DOJ / Rove scandals

[...] The day after Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card ran to John Ashcroft's hospital room to have him overrule acting attorney general James Comey's determination that the

administration's warrantless surveillance program was illegal, the White House gave a briefing on the super-secret program to none other than Tom DeLay.

[...] The White House typically limited Congressional notification about the program to the bipartisan political leadership of the House and Senate and the heads of the Congressional intelligence committees -- the so-called Gang of Eight. DeLay, then the top House Republican, has no intelligence experience, and just the day before, at the White House, House Speaker Dennis Hastert received a briefing about the program, making DeLay's presence the next day redundant. (Tom DeLay Briefed on Warrantless Surveillance ... by Spencer Ackerman, 08/15/07 (click my handle to jump to item), via http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/)

Tom DeLay??? WTF??? If there's any name that would worsen my sense of what's going on with FISA -- and at this point I'm in the suburbs of my rather extensive imagination -- it's that one.