I came home last night from the local anti-war vigil in time to see Russ Feingold on Olbermann's show. Olbermann brought up the subject of Iran, and I was unhappy to hear Feingold repeat the same old Bush line: "No options are off the table when it comes to Iran."
NO! Dammit, no! What we need to do is take the option of making war on Iran off the table. We need to take the option of a pre-emptive strike off the table. We need to start working towards peace, not spreading war even further.
Later in the show, Olbermann did his Special Comment, and he said what I wish Feingold had said, what I hope Feingold heard him say: "this is madness."
[UPDATE:] A sign of sanity: Defense Secretary Gates and General Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there are no plans for an attack across Iran's borders at this time.
[UPDATE:] elishastephens has a diary http://www.dailykos.com/... about Howard Dean not getting it, either
Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.
Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me" — only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake ... in Iran.
Only this president could extol the "thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group," and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — "engage Syria and Iran" — and transform it into "threaten Syria and Iran" — when al-Qaida would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.
...
And yet — without any authorization from the public, which spoke so loudly and clearly to you in November’s elections — without any consultation with a Congress (in which key members of your own party, including Sens. Sam Brownback, Norm Coleman and Chuck Hagel, are fleeing for higher ground) — without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker-Hamilton urged you to do — you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment (on America’s behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran.
Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq that even a majority of serving personnel are willing to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war.
It is so weary that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq will be on their second tours or their third tours or their fourth tours — and now you’re going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well?
Senator James Webb gets it. In the same hearings, he demanded whether Rice believed that the US was authorized to attack Iran, and also suggested that the right thing to do was for her to get on an airplane to Teheran.
Even Republican Senataor Chuck Hagel gets it.
Olbermann is right. This is madness. This has to be stopped before it can start. Why doesn't Feingold get it? Why don't more of our Senators get it?
Iran has not attacked the US. Iran has not threatened to attack the US. Iran is not a threat to the US. Iran with nuclear weapons is not a threat to the US. There is no excuse for the US to be threatening Iran, yet Bush continues to escalate the needless confrontation.
Senator Biden, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seems to get it. He has warned Bush and his advisors not to escalate the confrontation with Iran, that they have no authority to pursue the war beyond the Iraqi borders. "We all hoped and prayed that the president would present us with a plan that would make things better," Biden told Rice.
"Instead, we heard a plan to escalate the war, not only in Iraq but possibly into Iran and Syria as well. ... It's a tragic mistake," he said.
Biden gets it. He has warned that he would make such an escalation a "constitutional crisis."
I only hope that the rest of the committee backs him up. Because the pressure from the warmongers to attack Iran continues to grow.
Commenting on Bush's latest speech, the Jerusalem Post pressed for even more belligerence:
Though this is perhaps the most accusatory finger the US has ever pointed at Iran in the Iraq context, it still goes nowhere near to expressing the full magnitude of Iranian involvement. Just as Israel was really fighting Iran in Lebanon this past summer, it is increasingly clear that America's real war in Iraq is with Iran.
Bush's self-imposed timeline for success is an invitation to Iran to make a concerted push to ensure America's defeat. While Saddam Hussein paid for suicide bombers against Israel, and Hizbullah and Iran are now paying Palestinians to shoot Kassams from Gaza, these efforts pale in scope compared to the billions of petrodollars and untold numbers of agents that Iran is investing in fomenting mayhem in Iraq. The high-level Iranian agents recently captured and released in Iraq are likely the tip of the iceberg.
The US is essentially in a race with Iran: Can America and the Iraqi government "clear, hold, and build" as fast as Iran can threaten, subvert, and destroy?
It will be very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to win such a race while Iran itself enjoys de facto immunity for its actions. The Iran-Iraq border cannot be hermetically sealed, particularly to the financing of terrorism. If Iran pays no price, and has much to gain, for fomenting terrorism, why would the mullahs not redouble their efforts?
The Iraq Study Group put at the top of its recommendations that the US must reach an accomodation with Iran and Syria. Instead, Bush has thrown this advice out the window and taken the directly opposite route of armed confrontation. In Olbermann's words, "This is madness."
It is time for the leadership in the Senate and Congress to take a stand, to tell the warmongers NO!