Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran

From the UK Guardian:

The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. "The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week.

And

The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively.

More here.

Right. Well, regardless of whatever threat Iran presents, pretty much everyone but neo-cons like Cheney seem to think it can be dealt with diplomatically. Look at it this way. The neo-cons have been wrong about virtually everything. They didn't want to go after Bin Laden. They're most responsible for getting the Iraq invasion off the ground, and then for botching the occupation so badly that a mass insurgency was inevitable. Why on earth should we trust anything they have to say at all? Why is William Kristol, for instance, still given airtime on the talking head shows? Cheney's obviously wrong about this, and only utter incompetence and stupidity is moving Bush in the veep's direction. There's a good reason they don't trust their successors "to deal with Iran decisively." Going to war with Iran is probably just about the worst thing the US could do right now, and the Oval Office knows that's what everyone thinks.

I'd bet my mother that we start bombing sometime before November of '08.

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