Danger

Thursday the Bush Administration, with the help of Joe Lieberdouche -co-sponsored bill, has for the first time in U.S. history designated a foreign nation's army as a "terrorist group" and announced a number of unilateral steps (just like with the Iraq War build-up) to ratchet up the pressure on Iran and, as many believe, purposely move us closer to war with that country, which has never attacked us.

I'd like to believe that the sanctions will work, Iran will stop enriching uranium, Ahmadinejad will stop threatening Israel, and no blood -- Persian or American -- will be spilt.

But I don't.

Here's Condi announcing it on TV -- wearing black, as for a funeral. She claims she's talk to the Iranian government anytime about anything, as long as they cease processing uranium, which of course is the deal-killing precondition. Maybe she believes her own bullshit, but when she speaks "directly to the Iranian people" at the end, it's Pollyannic at best, disingenuous at worst, probably somewhere in-between in a limp zone.

Just about the only thing that might keep Cheney from getting this war, too, is pressure from other countries due to the massive oil market shortfalls that would erupt once he started us bombing, and the Iranian government struck back. This is where I can see us getting the suitcase bomb in a big city.

But, of course, this is exactly what his oil buddies want. Oil at $200 per barrel. Nothing raises a price like scarcity.

Spread the chaos. Maybe get Rudy "Waterboarding" Giuliani elected with the renewed fearscape, or saddle a Democratic President with the draft.

One wonders if the twin Cheney/Bush foreign policy disasters between Turkey and the Kurds, and in Pakistan are going to slow their shot at a U.S.-Iran war, or maybe accelerate it. (Yes, spread the chaos.) For those still rational among us, it is as Juan Cole concludes in a brilliant Salon summary/essay:

Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf. The secular Baath Party in Iraq was replaced by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni Salafi fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. The pressure the Bush administration put on the Pakistani military government to combat Muslim militants in that country weakened the legitimacy of Musharraf, whom the Pakistani public increasingly viewed as an oppressive American puppet. Iraqi Kurdistan's willingness to give safe haven to the PKK alienated Turkey from both the new Iraqi government and its American patrons. Search-and-destroy missions in Afghanistan have predictably turned increasing numbers of Pushtun villagers against the United States, NATO and Karzai. The thunder of the bomb in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his "war on terror."

Please, Lord, don't let them take us all down with them.