Dangerous Ignorance

The tape of Bush and Blair's frank conversation about Hizbullah at the G8 summit scared me. The most frightening part was when Bush expressed his opinion that Assad feared that if Iraq turned out okay and various other things happened, his regime would fall, with the context implying that this was why Hizbullah had attacked Israel. Up until that point I was assuming that the administration was aware their worldview lay discredited and was just sticking to it for political reasons. However, there was no way to explain away that part of the tape as there were other segments, and one is left with the horrible conclusion that our President actually believes much of what he is saying about Iraq.

With this in mind, one has to take seriously many worst-case scenarios for the future. What if we really are planning an attack on Iran? The main reason for discarding the possibility has been the lack of a free army, but then President Bush is doing everything he can to keep them right next door to Iran. Ray Close sees signs a war is coming, and while his case is hardly airtight, others claim to have heard that sort of buzz coming out of the Defense Department.

As Josh Marshall, with whom I share "partisanized moderate" status, says: "It's like we just need to be in lock down. How little more damage can we get by with in the next two and a half years?"