Next Stop - Iran

Charles H. Featherstone writes a very cogent and accurate assessment of the COMING WAR!

...it seems at this point that Team Bush will, sometime before the fall (and possibly as soon as the summer), attack Iran. It appears as inevitable as the coming of spring or the raising of the federal debt limit.
The war, if it comes, will not be fought because Iran is trying to create a euro-denominated spot and futures market for oil. Nor will it come because Iran is allegedly pursuing nuclear weapons, though that will be the excuse given at forums in New York, in salons across Europe, and at angry, hectoring press conferences here in Mordor-on-the-Potomac. No, the real reason the United States will wage war on Iran is because the Bush Jong Il régime will decide the only way to save face and withdraw from Iraq with some "dignity" in fact is to bomb Iran.
...Team Bush is going to decide, soon, that sponsoring Shia-majority government in Iraq was a very bad idea, that Iraq’s Shia (or anyone else’s Shia) should not be allowed anywhere near a ballot box, mainly because they vote for all the wrong people (dour men with turbans, who will never again be allowed on ballots in proper, well-managed duh-mocracies). And the only way out of the mess that has been made is to find some Sunnis willing to play nice with Uncle Sam, with the Kurds and with the well-shaved men and uncovered women of the country, and then back them to hilt. I don’t think this decision has been made yet, but it will be made soon. In fact, if (when?) Iraq slips into open sectarian war, this choice will become the only real logical choice for the idiots at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and their equally incompetent counterparts in the various sub-basements of the Pentagon. The goal will be to create and install a "Saddam With a Human Face," a dictator who can rule with a firm hand but without all the monument building, invading his neighbors and threatening Israel.
At the same time this is all happening, it will be decided that the reason the whole duh-mocracy in Iraq thing failed was because Iran meddled. It’s all Teheran’s fault. The bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, its governmental installations, the infiltration of commandos to commit acts of terrorism by blowing stuff up and killing people, will all be part of a general war against the Shia of the Middle East. There may also be joint Israeli-American attacks on Hizbullah in Lebanon. The air campaign against Iran will last anywhere from four days to two weeks, and it will go well (from a Pentagon standpoint, not an Iranian or human one). The US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps will lose few planes, and no one will really care how many Iranians get killed.
I don’t expect many US troops to actually cross Iranian borders. In fact, the attack on Iran may be part of a general evacuation of American troops from Iraq, part of the "Iraqization" process and how Team Bush "helps" the Iraqi military cope with the civil war. The goal will not be to unseat the Iranian government. It won’t even be to really eradicate Iran’s nuclear program. It will simply be to show the world that the US of A is still strong, still mighty, still matters, that no one f**ks with the United States of America, that we can still beat up on people who make us mad.
But I’m fairly convinced that, for political reasons, an attack on Iran will be for the Bush people what the invasions of Laos and Cambodia were for the Nixon people – an expansion of the war as political eyewash to cover the defeat and justify a withdrawal.

He also writes about the response of the Dems. Not a pretty picture as some of them are trying to position themselves to the right of W. His closing paragraph says it all when it comes to what our style of democracy has become.

But at least maybe enough Americans will finally realize the truth – that we the people are not the government, that we have almost no say over anything it does, and that those who make its laws, craft its rules and carry them out care nary a whit for our welfare, security and well-being.

I think it is time for some changes.