Iran is not Iraq

Every day it appears clearer that Iran is on the verge of developing or acquiring nuclear weapons, the fourth regional non-hyperpuissance to do so (after Israel, Pakistan and India, all of whom just happen to be US allies of the moment).

Thus, the Bushites are planning to attack the Iranians, "to convince them this is more and more serious." Of course, missed by the Bushites is that the issue became "more and more serious" because while Tehran yearned and learned, Dubya fiddled, hoping to gain imperial glory by invading a fourth-rate country with a fifth-rate military, accomplishing a mission that seems to have been the fulfilling of a vendetta against a single man, and plunging a poor but relatively stable country into a bloody civil war.

Well, let them plan. I hope though, that for the sake of our service persons they plan far better than they did for Iraq, as unlike that fifth-rate military power, the Iranians have a very real and very capable military. And, as bogged down as the US is in Iraq, a decision by the Iranians to retaliate and widen such a conflict into a full-scale war does note bode well for the US. (Neither does possible Iranian economic retaliation -- the turning off of the oil spigots).

Ah, but, why be a bringer of doom and gloom, I should look on the bright side: with Bush and Cheney and Rummy and Rice in on the planning surely all will go well, and we will be treated to another aircraft carrier photo-op, Mission Accomplished II.

Oh, one other question keeps nagging at the back of my mind: "what about North Korea?"

(See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12225188/ )