Bush-Cheney may still start World War III

Just when you thought Bush and Cheney might have to rethink starting World War III, Matt Rotshschild has to spoil your mood. Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, writes:

Hold on a second here.

The risk of Bush attacking Iran is not yet over.

When the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran came out earlier this week, a lot of people jumped to the conclusion that Cheney and the hardliners have lost, and so we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Well, I’m not exhaling at the moment.

Because I still believe Bush and Cheney are going to do the deed.

And he may well be on to something.

If there's one thing our own, DC-based Axis of Evil learned in the runup to the Iraq war, it's that if one argument doesn't work you should just keep making others, until you wear down the resistance and something finally sticks.

And if it turns out later that you were wrong or lying about it, so what?

Will bombing be enough? Sending ground troops might be problematic, since most of those available are bogged down in another quagmire at the moment. And World War III will be a bit of an overstatement when it turns out Iran has no nukes and little ability to fight back. So maybe, despite Bush's hype, it's just another dirty little war.

Rothschild posits that Bush will simply switch gears and find another reason to attack:

“Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” [Bush said.]

Note well that he didn’t say Iran will be dangerous when it acquires such a weapon, but prior to that, when it acquires the knowledge to make one. That’s a big difference, and it shortens the timetable laid out in the NIE, which doubted Iran would have such a weapon until 2015.

Who knows when Iran will have the “knowledge to make” one? Maybe it has that knowledge already and lacks only the technical sophistication...

He reiterated that “Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace,” adding: “My opinion hasn’t changed.” And he remained as macho as ever in boasting that he wouldn’t allow Iran to acquire such a weapon while he’s around.

There's more. And it doesn't read like paranoia.