Looking Into the Soul of Iran
WaPo’s “National and Homeland security” blogger, William Arkin, has an insightful (as usual) post about Iran and war plans. He lays out several situations in which a war with Iran is possible
• We could go to war if a cornered Iran lashes out.
• We could go to war if the intelligence community assesses that Iran has clandestinely acquired nuclear weapons and an administration decides that the U.S. must preempt.
• We could go to war if intensified military activity on both sides leads to greater possibilities for contact leading to an accident or incident that escalates out of control.
Actually, I think he may have missed one:
• We could go to war if President Bush sees into the future and believes that his successors will not be able to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, so he needs to do that now.
We must remember that this is a man who believed he could see into the soul of Mr. Putin, who had some “beliefs” about stem cells and interfered with scientific inquiry. His administration seems to be ideology-based, rather than fact-based. Some have said that in some disturbing ways the administration has itself become a faith-based organization. If so, then the fourth possibility looms large.