THIS IS NOT ->Delawareliberal

Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say tha President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

Unlike "reporters" like Celia Cohen, Seymour Hersh does actual research and reports old fashioned facts. Hersh has a great track record, so it is safe to say that Bush is going to bomb Iran.

This had to be in the planning all along, and it's been dependent on the 2006 mid-term election timing. It's possible that he never would have had to bomb Iran if Iraq had been slower to collapse into civil war. But as always, he misunderestimated the situation, and the Iraqi people are killing each other now while killing US soldiers faster than he planned. Bush's polls are sliding down faster than he planned. So his ace in the hole is looking like the only card in the deck.

We know he likes to use the military to divert attention from how much he sucks. We know that he is capable of killing more hundreds of thousands of brown people to maintain political control over the Congress and avoid a Democratic Senate Select Committee. The only thing we don't know right now, is how much of a "bounce" in the polls the bombing of Iran will give him.

I put the over/under at 5 percent.