At TalkLeft, Big Tent Democrat takes a few writers to task for suggesting that Iran is a more important issue for us now than Iraq. Particularly, he highlights a post by Matt Yglesias:
[W]hat I'd urge everyone to do is keep their eyes on the real ball in the air at the moment: Iran. If Bush really bombs Iran and spineless Democrats back him ex post facto then the whole Iraq dynamic changes dramatically, and not for the better. If you want to hassle your member of congress on behalf of some peacenik cause this month, hassle him or her about Iran.
In this case, it would seem that Yglesias is following the administration's red herring--taking our eyes off of the Iraq ball is precisely how the administration tries to get to Iran. The path to any attack on Iran is through Iraq. Ed Kilgore unwittingly reaches that conclusion with some surprise:
[T]he really weird thing: reports are now coming out that Bush and Cheney are considering a military confrontation with Iran that has nothing to do with its nuclear program.... If true, this is a much crazier idea than anything being contemplated in Israel. Whatever Iran is up to in Iraq, the reality is that its primary agents in Iraq are SCIRI and its Badr Corps militia, which the Bush administration has called the great hope for marginalizing the Mahdi Army and building a "unity" government.
What's really the surprise is that the traditional media is ahead of the bloggers on catching on to this. Witness this exchange in yesterday's briefing with national security adviser Stephen Hadley on the Iraq NIE (which clearly stated Iran "is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability" in Iraq):
Q Steve, in 2002 and 2003, in the run-up to the Iraq war, the administration made statements that were obviously not borne by facts subsequently. And it later came out that caveats from the intelligence community, caveats from Energy Department analysts, those were left out of public statements of Vice President Cheney, the President, others in the administration. Now when it comes to Iran, you've been saying for months that Iran is a key driver of violence in Iraq. You've said there is evidence tying Iran to attacks in Iraq. You've said that you'd make that evidence public. That supposed to be made public on the 31st.
MR. HADLEY: Right.
Q It wasn't.
MR. HADLEY: That's correct.
Q Now you have this report saying it contributes in some way, so does Syria, so do other factors, but it is not, in and of itself, causing the violence, nor would the violence stop if Iranian influence stopped.
MR. HADLEY: I didn't read it that way....
Q Mr. Hadley, given the track record on weapons of mass destruction, and recent events that have alleged that intelligence has been cherry-picked and pulled selectively, how can the public be assured that intelligence is driving the policy and not the other way around, that it's being tailored to what the President and the Vice President want the policy to be?
MR. HADLEY: By putting out things like this, the coordinated judgment of the intelligence community, so you can see the intelligence on which the policy was based.
Q How can we be assured that this wasn't written for that purpose?
The LA Times follows up with a story today noting that the administration has not been able to make the case for a link between Iran and the escalation of violence in Iraq.
Why is this important? Again, because the road to an attack on Iran leads through Iraq. And with these kinds of tough questions finally being asked by the traditional media, the administration is going to have a much tougher time justifying an attack on Iran. And the Democratically-led Congress is going to have a much easier time denying any authorization to the President to attack Iran.
There can be little doubt that the fevered dream of Bush and Cheney is extending their debacle into Iran. The likelihood of the Congress passing a separate resolution allowing them to attack Iran (given public opinion, a media that is finally finding its teeth, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in the Congressional leadership) is exceedingly slim. The only way that Bush can attack Iran at this point would be through the existing Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq. Is the deeply flawed AUMF broad enough to give Bush that cover? In a conference call a few weeks ago, Harry Reid said, unequivocally, "no."
Where does that leave us? Back in Iraq, and with an administration seemingly hell-bent on finding a way to attack Iran through Iraq. This is the ball we must keep our eye on--closing any and all loopholes that might allow that attack. Despite Reid's certainty that there is no room in the AUMF for an attack on Iran, the blank check that the resolution gave to Bush to conduct this war needs to be revised and/or rescinded.
Don't take the administration's Iran bait--keep the focus on Iraq on getting us out of that quagmire. That’s the surest way to prevent the widening of the war to Iran.