Real Men Go to Tehran

Pure unadulterated Digby:

Accidental? Really?

Andrea Mitchell just said:

As the civil war grows deadlier by the day, the Bush administration is increasingly blaming Iran.

I feel, once again, as if I'm watching this take place under water. It's all there, I can see it, but it's all a bit distorted and everything is moving in slow motion. I'm screaming, but it comes out muffled and imprecise. The Bush administration is provoking a war with Iran, in real time, on television and we are just watching it happen.

I also just heard CNN reporting that the administration plans to avoid a repeat of Colin Powell's presentation to the UN that "was convincing but turned out to be inaccurate." Whatever. They don't care. These people have absolutely no credibility and they are counting on the news media to be their slack-jawed(and war-ratings hungry) selves --- and the nation to be paralyzed and unbelieving until it's too late.

If this country allows the Bush administration to run their game again and start yet another war, we'd better get ready to see our lives change in some fundamental ways. The world will not forgive us --- and we shouldn't forgive ourselves. This is very, very serious.

Arthur Silber prescribes some very strong medicine for Democrats to stop this thing in his post Time Has Run Out -- and the Choice Is Yours. I'm afraid he's right and I'm also almost certain that it will not happen.


Update: Scott Ritter has some suggestions about how to avoid this war. not that anyone will listen. He was right about Iraq and has expertise in the region of WMD so nobody should listen to him. (He weird.)

H/T to reader CR.

It's Madness...! Read Arthur Silber's post and Scott Ritter's as they are bang-on. I wrote about leadership in my post about Barrack Obama and these two articles hammer that same point.

Silber:

If ... the Democrats showed some leadership, there is one other issue they desperately need to address: Iran.

They should rescind the Iraq authorization of force resolution (Lindorff's reference is to the earlier one, passed right after 9/11 -- both should be burned to a crisp), since Bush uses the authorizations to maintain that he already has authority to attack Iran (and anyone else he chooses). And they should pass resolutions stating that, if Bush attacks Iran in the absence of a Congressional Declaration of War (remember those?), that will be grounds for immediate impeachment.

And they should draft articles of impeachment NOW, just in case they need them. And they should publish them in every major newspaper, and read them on television every night.

I have still more specifics, but that should get them going.

It simply is not true there's nothing the Democrats can do to stop the drive toward a wider war. For God's sake, they control Congress now. There's plenty they can do -- if they want to, and if they want to lead. The actions outlined above are critical; all of them together would throw a huge roadblock in the path of this criminal administration.

But do the Democrats want to lead in this manner, and take on the responsibility of educating the American public about the incomprehensible dangers that would be unleashed if we were to attack Iran?

Ritter:

Until American politicians from either party show that they care more about the lives of the men and women in the armed forces who operate in harm's way than they do about their own political fortunes, we will remain in Iraq. It takes courage to stand up against this war when the tide of public opinion continues to hold out hope for victory. "Doing the right thing" is a thing of the past, it seems. "Doing the politically expedient thing" is the current trend. The American public may have articulated frustration with the course of events in Iraq, but this feeling is derived more from a frustration at being defeated than from any moral outrage over getting involved in a war that didn't need to be fought in the first place. Congress takes its cues from the American people, and until the American people are as outraged over the mere fact we are in Iraq as they are over the rising costs of the conflict--human, moral and financial--then Congress will continue to dither.

If I were to address a Democrat Theme Team equivalent, I would focus my effort on trying to impress them with the issue that will cost them political power down the road. This issue is Iran. While President Bush, a Republican, remains Commander in Chief, a Democrat-controlled Congress shares responsibility on war and peace from this point on. The conflict in Iraq, although ongoing, is a product of the Republican-controlled past. The looming conflict with Iran, however, will be assessed as a product of a Democrat-controlled present and future. If Iraq destroyed the Republican Party, Iran will destroy the Democrats.

I would strongly urge Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, to hold real hearings on Iran. Not the mealy-mouthed Joe Biden-led hearings we witnessed on Iraq in July-August 2002, where he and his colleagues rubber-stamped the President's case for war, but genuine hearings that draw on all the lessons of Congressional failures when it came to Iraq. Summon all the President's men (and women), and grill them on every phrase and word uttered about the Iranian "threat," especially as it has been linked to nuclear weapons. Demand facts to back up the rhetoric.