So you thought Iraq was bad? Look forward to Iran. Read the recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, Preparing the Battlefield.

A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization.)

Well, you gotta say that these here war hawks are at least consistent.

One would have thought that the non-news about nukes in Iran would settle things, but no - bad ideas in this administration just keep coming back for another round of attention.

McClatchy newspapers are reporting that bombing Iran nuclear facilities is back on the table . Clearly this isn't going to go away as a Washington pet project. I swear that the McClatchy reporters are some of the few journalists in the country who appear to be awake and breathing.

With Gen Fallon's retirement there is a greater fear of war with Iran in many peoples minds.  We are already deeply mired in Iraq and a war with Iran would be cataclysmically stupid.  British M.P. George Galloway debates with a caller regarding the matter. (7 min)

"Iran is in the eye of the storm," he says, noting that regional neighbor Pakistan and arch-foe Israel both have nuclear weapons, though neither are signatories like Iran of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. "It is the duty of every government to equip itself to defend itself. Any state in Iran's position should go after the latest military technology."

Since the NIE report, US officials have raised the bar for Iran's compliance, insisting that Tehran acknowledge that it once had a nuclear weapons program. The new US intelligence described in the IAEA report includes designs for a 400-meter shaft for remotely testing explosives from six miles away, which "would be relevant" to weapons research."   excert from article by Scott Peterson

These are the very same tactics used by the US and Britian to eventually invade Iraq.  They constantly demanded more.  When orginal requests were satisfied, they implied, lied and demanded more compliance.  Basically, there wasn't a way for Iraq to comply since at each juncture the US and Britian would "raise the bar".

A short 6 min. video of American foreign policy in Iran.  JustForeignPolicy is a non profit organization working to effect a grassroots change in America's foreign policy.

JustForeignPolicy: "Stephen Kinzer, the award winning author and former foreign correspondent for the New York Times rejects this argument. He, along with a diverse group of other experts on Iran, Congressional leaders and military experts are traveling across the country to counter the message from Washington and to present options for a more rational foreign policy towards Iran."

February 19: Chicago, IL
6:30 pm at the Northwestern University Chicago Campus in Thorne Auditorium, Arthur Rubloff Building, 375 E. Chicago Avenue
Sponsored by The Pluralism Fund, the North Suburban Peace Initiative, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the No War on Iran Coalition. 

Bush and his gay-hating pigs can always be counted on to if not lead, at least emulate, the worst of the world's bigotries.

from Doug Ireland at Z-Net:

President George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not agree on much, but tragically they may find common ground about the disposability of Hassan Parhizkar's life.

Since November 7, a mild-mannered 40-year-old gay Iranian businessman from Rockville, Maryland has been sitting in jail in the Frederick County, Maryland Detention Center, housed with common criminals, in the living hell of limbo between the freedom he has known since he came to the United States as a young man 17 years ago and the certain persecution, imprisonment, or worse that will be his fate as a gay man if he is sent back to Iran.

A deportation order to send him back to Iran has been issued, and any day he could be put on a plane back to Tehran, where he was born.

"I am very afraid, and so very frustrated," Hassan Parhizkar told me in a truncated, collect telephone call from jail.

Via Mal Contends -

Rational Americans look on with concern like passengers on the Titanic as a hare-brained, messianic president enmeshed in a neocon ideological bubble sends signals of a coming strike against Iran.

A ex-military source working in a Midwest industry in a position to observe qualitative changes in military traffic on American rails and highways notes an increase in military-related traffic like that that has preceded military excursions into Iraq twice.

The source believes a strike against Iran is coming.

But as many have noted, such a strike is lunacy.

As Joseph L. Galloway writes in McClatchy (Inexorable March Toward War With Iran?):

... The more thoughtful military and civilian advisers can rattle off a dozen reasons why an American attack on Iran at this juncture would be foolish in the extreme and risk setting the Middle East afire.

Just some of those reasons would include:

Via MAL Contends — Update: Hillary Clinton Supports Resolution Prohibiting Funding for Military Action Against Iran

- via MAL Contends

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Israeli Air Force is training to bomb Iran.

That's great, the air strike, predicted by many in the reality-based community, is likely to kill many innocent civilians in Iran and destabilize much of the world.

But the neo-con Israeli and American hawks know from experience that war works well, right?

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) has been training on long-range flights, including refueling in mid-flight, in preparation for potential strikes against Iranian nuclear targets.

The training program has been taking place for some time but has only been released for publication Friday, the Ma'ariv daily reported.