The anti-Iranian rhetoric has been rather intermittent and on-off, which is different from the consistent drumbeat that preceded the invasion of Iraq. This seems to me to suggest psychological rather than real warfare. Objectively the Iranian rulers are not very nice people, are they. and it is possible that they might be unendurably provocative. But that point has nowhere near been reached. Moreover even Bush, even if badly provoked, must flinch at the thought of the damage to oil facilities that the Iranians could inflict and of the consequent price rises. He's already unpopular and he can't stand much more.

Of course, our foreign policy is predicated on the White House doing something stupid about every other week.

A few people are trying to warn the American People that someone is prepping to do something stupid, and trying to get President Stupid to go with it. President Stupid is certainly well qualified to do it, and has a history of doing just that.

The Republican press has a history of standing around, looking stupid until the President acts, then stupidly cheering his actions. After it becomes far to obvious that the policy was stupid, the press spends the rest of the time attacking the people who pointed out, ahead of time, that the policy was stupid, and the compliant Republican Blogosphere tries to obfuscate the stupidity of the policy, and predictable lousy results that the policy produced.

Unless someone outside the White House cuts the ground out from under George, we will have a war with Iran, bloody, disastrous, illegal, immoral, unjust, and unnecessary, and irresolvable by president who If there is to be a war, it will be because SOMEBODY does something stupid.
follows him.

George will run around with that stupid grin of his, taking his $75K emoluments from the Bizarre right and castigating the Democrats in the White House and in Congress who will be desperately trying to end his stupid war.

It is ordinarily poor strategy to assume that your enemies are as stupid as your friends claim. In this case it is necessary to assume that your "friends" have chosen to be stupid for reasons that either are obvious, or are not obvious.

Mr. Arkin has chosen to act stupid.

If there is to be a war, it will be because SOMEBODY does something stupid.

Of course, our foreign policy is predicated on the White House doing something stupid about every other week.

A few people are trying to warn the American People that someone is prepping to do something stupid, and trying to get President Stupid to go with it. President Stupid is certainly well qualified to do it, and has a history of doing just that.

The Republican press has a histroy of standing around, looking stupid until the President acts, then stupidly cheering his actions. After it becomes far to obvious that the policy was stupid, the press spends the rest of the time attacking the people who pointed out, ahead of time, that the policy was stupid, and the compliant Republican Bolgosphere tries to obfuscate the stupidity of the policy, and predictable lousy results that the policy produced.

Unless someone outside the White House cuts the ground out from under George, we will have a war with Iran, bloody, disastrous, illegal, immoral, unjust, and unnecessary, and irresolvable by president who follows him.

George will run around with that stupid grin of his, taking his $75K emoluments from the Bizzare right and castigating the Democrats in the White House and in Congress who will be desperately trying to end his stupid war.

It is ordinarily poor strategy to assume that your enemies are as stupid as your friends claim. In this case it is necessary to assume that your "friends" have chosen to be stupid for reasons that either are obvious, or are not obvious.

Mr. Arkin has chosen to act stupid.

In seeming not concerned about the possibility of a strike, Iran necessarilty is well prepared for a strike.

We won't call it war this time...

America will simply do what Israel did a month ago in Syria, and simply go in and attack Iran.

What's that ole saying: It is easier to ask for forgiveness...than permission from the American people or Congress!

There is no such thing as sovereign borders anymore, at least from a Conservative Republican point-of-view!

Don't you understand, you who want to know what the evidence is? Putting the evidence on display would compromise our intelligence sources and threaten our security! The only solution is to trust the administration to weigh the evidence properly and make the right decision. We go to the trouble and expense of electing a Decider so that we don't have to make decisions for ourselves. The system must work; everything is going so well....

I am surprised that the WP would open a comments section on Arkin's patently pro-administration ramblings. His unsupported and illogical arguments have been already been shredded by several commentators. Some of what he says is very insulting, not just wrong. Arkin says, "...if we end up at war with Iran, it will most likely be because Iran does something stupid. Unfortunately, warnings about Bush administration war planning is making that more likely, not less." This sounds like you are accusing Seymour Hersh, a proven loyal American, (to the American people anyway) of giving "aid and comfort to the enemy" i.e. treason. It is not treasonous, yet, in America to report. Iran hardly needs Sy Hersh to tell them that half of the American fleet is off their coast, nor do they need Hersh to "inform" them that their Ambassador has been arrested and labeled a "terrorist" in a patent violation of international law and long held tradition.

The biggest lie is that Iran is supporting the insurgency with EFP's and training. My god, this is a country that was and is awash in weapons, not including the several hundred thousand assault rifles that your government just "lost". Have they been beaten into ploughshares? I think not. As for EFP's and tactics, no less a personage than Gywnne Dyer has pointed out that far from being a new or exotic weapon, EFP's have been in the inventory of most nation's arsenals for over 30 years. They are NOT difficult to make. Remember that prior to the US being responsible for the deaths of 1.2 million Iraqis (ORB report) Iraq had the highest percentage of PHD's in the world and many many years experience fighting - surprise - the Iranians.

Arkin forgets, refuses to tell, or given his lack of intellect, never knew, that in 2003 the Iranians made a serious offer to Bush to pull back, everything was on the table, nuclear tech, support for Hezbollah, everything. Yet, Bush, still wearing his codpiece from his carrier landing - blew them off. America could have had a Korean solution, but that would have denied them the oil, and mid-east hegemony. This insane drive to dominate the region, and through it, the rest of the world, will be the real cause of war with Iran, Mr. Arkin, not Seymour Hersh, a man in whose shadow you clearly walk.

Some people here are talking about the war on Iran like its the most simple thing going to happen ,if it happens its going a different war a nuclear war!!
we witnessed the first chapter of it few weeks ago in North Syria.
http://www.oregontruthalliance.org/?q=node/259

when speaking about normal people in normal times with normal reactions.... it is true i think that you give the benifit of the doubt to the person in charge.......how ever when the person that is supposed to be in charge has already proved... over....and over.....that they do not have good judgement in foriegn affairs, people are obligated to make it perfectly clear to the obtuse what to do.. what people need to decide is what experience has actually taught us i would think

Is this what happens when right-wingers mount a focused campaign against a columnist for some unguarded but honest comment about mercenaries? The solidly centrist columnist tries to appear more "fair and balanced"?

These guys launched in Iraq without a provocation from Saddam. They started the war drums, and they followed through. Saddam complied with their demands, but they launched anyway. If asked, they simply say that he did not comply. And people buy it. They had no congressional authorization. If asked, they simply say that they did. And people buy it.

So what's to say they won't do it in Iran?

Let's see what you've got to offer today:

1) Sure the Administration is drawing up war plans, that means they AREN'T planning war.

2) If the Administration WAS planning war, why would they bother trying to generate public approval?

Are you for real? There might be good reasons (or even marginal reasons) to believe war with Iran is unlikely. You managed to find none of them, which suggests you are operating somewhere on the spectrum between dishonest and incompetent.

I think you need to go back on vacation.

Mr Arkin- interesting perspective. Any indications on whether there's an intra-administration power shift? Allegedly the Cheney camp has been on the 'bomb Iran' side, while others in the Administration (Rice?) are arguing for a saner approach. Is the sane side gaining ground?

Off-topic, marginally, did anyone else find this AMs news about the bin Laden video leak a little disconcerting? Not the leak, necessarily, but that the video was sourced from a private intelligence company - not from our own intelligence services? It implies that, after 6 years of concerted effort, we do not have effective intelligence sources among the extremist organizations we're fighting.

"...if the administration is really champing at the bit to attack Iran no matter what, why would it bother seeking public approval?"

"...if we end up at war with Iran, it will most likely be because Iran does something stupid. Unfortunately, warnings about Bush administration war planning is making that more likely, not less."

The administration bothered to seek public approval of the Iraq invasion with a campaign of lies. Did Iraq do something stupid to start that invasion? Wouldn't some truth about what the administration was really up to have made the invasion less likely?

A remarkably foolish column - have you learned nothing over the last 5 years?

Iran has a history of using proxies to carry out terrorist activities. Hezbollah, its proxy in Lebanon, was behind the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. They were also connected to the Khobar Towers bombing. Iran organized an attack on an American base where the attackers actually wore American uniforms. Iran is now using Shiite militias and arming them with made-in-Iran explosive devices. The use of these devices has been growing. The Iranian ambassador to Iraq is a member of the Quds Force which has been the planning and training arm for militia attacks. Iran is likely one significant incident away from triggering an American military attack. It has no one to blame but itself for this situation.

You say:
"Meanwhile, there is increasing evidence that Iraqi insurgents, militias and terrorists are getting support from across the border. President Bush warned Iran about this in January and the support continued."

I have been looking for the evidence and have found VERY LITTLE that is robust and points to deliberate Iranian arming of anti-US forces in Iraq. Would you show us the evidence or point to references, or is it another slam-dunk intelligence assessment we should just accept? Investigative journalists like you are supposed to help us see the real picture, but you seem to just repeat the war propaganda in this case.

A few weeks ago the Bush admin took the unusual step of declaring a branch of the Iranian army a "terrorist organization". It was a curious move, given that terrorists prior to this point have been non-state actors.

State-sanctioned organizations, even evil ones such as Hitlers SS, are arms of government policy, which can be addressed through diplomacy, sanctions, or war.

Just Sunday, the US government formally declared the Iranian Ambassador to Iraq a "terrorist". This is just ridiculous, and an eerie reversal of the 1979 Iranian assault on our Ambassador. An Ambassador is a representative of a foriegn government. He may be up to no good, or even guilty of an act of war -- but he isn't a 'terrorist'.

The point, obviously, is to shoehorn in a war with Iran, preferably via provocation, then fold it into Bush's "Global War On Terror" and dare any Democrat to support "the folks who attacked us on 9/11".

Shame on Arkin for lending credence to this hogwash. He should have stuck with his old boss a little longer -- maybe he'd have learned something.

heel90 has it exactly right. What Hersh is doing is quite distinct from the various well-calculated leaks from the OVP, the AEI, and AIPAC, which are all precisely calculated to provoke an Iranian response justifying an American attack. Hersh, on the other hand, is exposing a bunch of lies which are calculated to allow a seemingly innocuous set of "limited" strikes against the IRGC. He's getting leaked to from very high levels because the Realists understand that such strikes would give Cheney everything he needs to have his thousand points of light shock-and-awe air campaign. Iran isn't known for turning the other cheek. They get even. That leaves Liberty Valance, oh excuse me, Vice President Cheney free to draw in self-defense. Either-or. But whereas the war noise campaign has gone nowhere as the Iranians have seen through it, the limited strike option is almost certain to work but only if covered up by media deception. Hence the leaks to Hersh.

Instead of declaring that there is "increasing evidence" that (1) Iran is training Shiite militants in Iraq; (2) Iran is designing, smuggling, and training militants on the use of explosive devices; and (3) Iran has the technical know-how and capability to enrich uranium from its current level of 5% (needed for nuclear power generation) to the more than 90% required for weapons -- (and even getting enrichment up to 5% is proving to be technically difficult for Iranian nuclear engineers) I would like to see some evidence. Where is the proof? If you have any real evidence of any of these, I'd like to know what it is.
If you can only offer wisps of suggestive evidence, I'd like to know the assumptions underlying the interpretation which adds up to "increasing evidence."

I am frankly not persuaded that Iran has the *intention* as well as the capability to attack Israel or Iraq. Amadinejad's inflammatory rhetoric notwithstanding, it is evident to that his remarks are (i) directed in the main towards his domestic constituency, and that (ii) he is manifestly unskilled and inexperienced in communicating to the international community. He is unquestionably regarded with dismay by clerics who are constitutionally and actually senior to him, esp. the Supreme Leader. Let me remind you that unlike the greedy and growing powers of the Executive Office in the United States, the office of the Presidency is not the seat of political authority in the Islamic Republic.

If you acknowledge that there lies a vast gulf between technical capability and actual intentions, tell me what is your understanding of Iranian *intentions* to attack its neighbors (or the US for that matter) and prevail? Based on what evidence? Based on what intelligence finding? Based on what methodology for risk assessment?

So, just like Iraq, we should just sit back and trust Bush and the media to know what's best for us. How dare anyone report on war planning! What foolishness for us to expect to know what our government is doing. We should just let them do as they will, and let whoever wins in 2008 clean up the mess.

I think you have it backwards. Hersh's (or others) reporting will have no impact on Iran one way or the other. It may, however, prevent Bush from doing something stupid. Not that Bush has a track record or anything.

If Iran does something stupid, it won't be due to anything Hersh wrote or didn't write. It will be because the power vacuum we created in Iraq, like a black hole, inexorably drew the two principles in the region -- Iran and the US -- into conflict. Not that this wasn't predicted, ad nauseum, by many prior to the war.

Bush will not leave Iran to a new administration, unless he feels strongly that the new President will continue his Middle East policy. The man has nothing to lose, and he's convinced he's right.

There's nothing in the domestic political context or international context that suggests we're not going down that path. I know, that's not necessarily proof of anything -- but, to turn a phrase from the run-up to Iraq, the smoking gun will be the attack itself, and then it will be too late.

Short of an overwhelming mandate from the public, I genuinely believe Bush is going to use the military against Iran. The only way to see if such a mandate exists is to alert the public to the possibility. That's what Hersh is attempting to do. Don't confuse the messenger and the message.