This is Not a Drill ???

Whiskey Bar: Billmon says: "This is Not a Drill"

Billmon accepts the premise that Bush intends to make a massive strike against Iran. He cites, in addition to Seymour Hersh's piece in the New Yorker, a N.Y. Times op-ed, by Richard Clarke and Steven Simon, quoting,

. . . the current level of activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling.

I have to admit that I simply cannot get my brain to accept the premise that Bush would launch what would, in effect, be a war, without the usual political drama. OK, maybe we are being treated to the usual political drama -- moronic pundits and politicians, including Democrats, reciting stock phrases and trying to look suitably sober and serious. But, I just do not feel it.

Billmon says Bush is not going to go to Congress for permission, because he does not have the political capital to get it, and his Administration has swallowed its own bogus theory of the unitary executive so thoroughly that it thinks it does not need Congressional permission for an act of war.

I just do not "feel" it. The scenario does not seem plausible to me. Invading Iraq seemed plausible to me at the time; I realized that incompetence and corruption would make a hash of it, but it seemed plausible. I understood the motivation; I understood how people could really believe that this was a necessary and logical step, even though it wasn't, really.

Striking at Iran does not have that "feel" to me. Iran, maybe, might get nuclear weapons a few years from now. Striking at Iran now will accomplish what, exactly? Can we possibly topple the Iranian regime, replacing it with a regime, which will not want nuclear weapons? The answer to that is clearly, no.

If struck now, Iran will simply try harder to acquire nuclear weapons. And, in the meantime, the gloves will be off. Geography gives Iran the ability to strike at the United States in Iraq and the Persian Gulf, an ability that we cannot eradicate. Attack them, and they will attack us there. Relentlessly. Forever and ever.

Even as big a moron as Bush is, surely he can see that?

I just do not see it actually happening.