Mutually Assured Dementia

Madness, I tell you... madness!

Billmon takes up the Nukes for Iran story which has all-too familiar parallels with the Iraq fiasco in an article called Mutually Assured Dementia. Digby has this to say about Billmon's piece:

I don't think I'm a panic artist. At least I never have been. But after the last few years I have to say that Billmon's dark prediction sounds entirely believable to me. This Iran thing scares the hell out of me, and I'm not sure what anyone can do about it.

This president has asserted a doctrine of presidential infallibility. He does not believe that he can be stopped. And the way things are going I think he may think he has nothing to lose. There has been a sense of craziness in the air ever since 9/11, but it's just taken a very, very surreal turn.

Bilmon begins with...

Maybe it's just me, but I've been at least a little bit surprised by the relatively muted reaction to the news that the Cheney Administration and its Pentagon underlings are racing to put the finishing touches on plans for attacking Iran – plans which may include the first wartime use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki.

I mean, what exactly does it take to get a rise out of the media industrial complex these days? A nuclear first strike against a major Middle Eastern oil producer doesn't ring the bell? Must every story have a missing white woman in it before the cable news guys will start taking it seriously?

I suppose I could understand it if all we had was Sy Hersh's word that the administration is planning another "pre-emptive" war in the Middle East. After all, we're talking about the same reporter who peddled all those crazy, unsubstantiated allegations about torture at Abu Ghraib prison. You can't be too careful with a journalistic loose cannon like that.

But now that Sy's Iranian nightmare – including the nuclear aspect of it – has been confirmed by the semi-official media, you'd think we could expect a little more ruckus about it

Bilmon's dark speculation about what the day after would be like is depressingly believable. Go read it all here. I give the final word to my buddy, Digby:

This is deja vu all over again. But Bush no longer has the option of bluffing even if he wants to. He tossed that in the toilet along with America's integrity and reputation back in the summer and fall of 2002. After the Iraq debacle, bellicose saber rattling has the perverse effect of bringing about the event it's designed to avert.

There can be no doubt that Iran believes we are planning a strike and there is every reason to fear that Bush's threats will push them to make decisions that will force the US into the corner that Fallows predicts. The only question is, as Sy Hersh reports, whether the military will go along this time.

After five years of disasterous foreign policy, the Bush administration has left this country with almost none of the tools it used to have to shape world events. He pushed arrogant military unilateralism for years and now he's stuck with it as his only option. We are weaker as a world power, we have no moral authority and nobody trusts this government's intentions. The US now exists in a universe of vastly reduced maneuverability because of what he's done and not just because of our stretched military. Our credibility is in shreds.

Kevin says that World Wars have started over less than this and that's absolutely true. Bush may have pushed this country to the point where the only option it has is military force because nobody believes a word our government says. This may be the scariest moment we've faced since 9/11.


Update: Just to scare everybody witless even more on a Tuesday morning, Josh Marshall writes:

It is also not too early to point out that the evidence is there for the confluence of two destructive and disastrous forces -- hawks in the administration's Cheney faction whose instinctive bellicosity is only matched by their actual incompetence (a fatal mixture if there ever was one), and the president's chief political aides who see the build up to an Iran confrontation as the most promising way to contest the mid-term elections. Both those groups are strongly motivated for war. And who is naive enough to imagine a contrary force within the administration strong enough to put on the brakes?

Not me. These people are like cornered animals desperate to recapture that bullhorn moment and redeem their failed ideology. It's a very, very dangerous combo.

Oh and is everyone aware that Dick Cheney's daughter is "freedom agenda co-ordinator" and "democracy czar" in charge of the Iran propaganda group at the State Department? She is. I knew that would make you feel better.


Did I hear something about Cheney accusing Joe and Valerie Wilson of nepotism? I didn't think so.