I find myself looking at the situationwith Iran from a few different vantage points, imposing a number of different frames, and coming out with absurdities.

Take everything at face value.  The US is helping the Iraqis set up a representative sovreign government, a government which has made friendly agreements with the Iranian government of various security and economic varieties.  It is in the interest of the Iraqi government’s attempts to stabilize itself to do so (“Shiite Crescent” not withstanding).  At the same time, the long rumored war plans against Iran are, apparently, in an early stage of implementation.  And so goes the absurdity and the irony.  I see a box bulging, unable to be tied together because of the huge volume of odd-fitting inconsistencies.  It’s not a pretty sight.

Move at a different angle, and throw some parts of the puzzle away.  This becomes a resumption of the Iraq – Iran War, with the US once again taking the side of the Iraqis, who — are killing the Iraqis.  Kind of.  Therein was that now famous Rumsfeld — Hussein photograph.  There was a minor diversion to Iran with the Iran – Contra Affair, but that was in pursuit of bigger enemies over in our hemisphere — those goddamned Central American Commies.  I have to shift some things around to make this make any sense, because the “devices” (and Bush keeps using the word “devices”, which I guess creates some leeway in the charges against Iran) are used against — Sunnis, more or less, I presume, and Americans — Americans not having been in the crossfire of the Iraq – Iran War because we had the good sense of not being present where the fighting was at that time, and the Sunnis being the ruling sect — Saddam Hussein privileging his own kind.

No.  I can’t tie it together there either.

Jim Webb:  And you know, one thing, if you look at where we are in the Persian Gulf right now, when I was Secretary of the Navy and until very recently, we never operated carrier — aircraft carriers inside the Persian Gulf because, number one, the turning radius is pretty close, and number two, the chance of accidentally bumping into something that would start a diplomatic situation was pretty high. We now have been doing that, and with the tensions as high as they are, I’m very worried that we might accidentally set something off in there and we need, as a Congress, to get ahead of the ballgame here.

AND, from Newsweek:

At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. “They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for,” says Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs. …

A second Navy carrier group is steaming toward the Persian Gulf, and NEWSWEEK has learned that a third carrier will likely follow. Iran shot off a few missiles in those same tense waters last week, in a highly publicized test. With Americans and Iranians jousting on the chaotic battleground of Iraq, the chances of a small incident’s spiraling into a crisis are higher than they’ve been in years.

AND

Some senior administration officials still relish the notion of a direct confrontation. One ambassador in Washington said he was taken aback when John Hannah, Vice President Cheney’s national security adviser, said during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 “the year of Iran” and indicated that a U.S. attack was a real possibility. Hannah declined to be interviewed for this article.

“The Year of Iran”?  I thought it was “The Year of the Bear”?

This has been a long time in coming.  The rumors have always been easily brushed aside quite easily by the simple fact that dates have kept being assigned which have passed into oblivion.  Thus, that bizarre October blast from Pravda — ie: Fox News — where everyone on the Fox News channel for a few days blasted away at Iran was easily passable as electioneering — churning out the base and a bit beyond.

Maybe we oughta make any further movement on this scene an Impeachable Offense.  We should be allowed to define those terms of what falls under that category, right?  Nay.  Let’s just pass a non-binding “Sense of the Congress” Resolution.  That’ll work!

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