the new sy hersh article is up. his pieces about the bush administration and iran all paint the picture of an administration anxious to go to war with tehran. sy has been producing articles like that for at least two years. and yet, the u.s. has not attacked iran, at least not yet. and there's only 7 months left before bush hands the keys to someone else.
the closer it gets to the election, the more a sudden war with iran will seem like a cynical election-year ploy. remember, the sales job for the iraq war started more than a year before the first shot was fired (the axis of evil speech was 14 months before the iraq war began). it took quite a while for the administration to lay the P.R. groundwork to sell the public on an american invasion.
i remain cautiously optimistic that no matter how much cheney et. al. wants to attack iran, there are significant political barriers preventing them from doing it before inauguration day. of course, there's always the danger that president bush won't care about the disastrous consequences of such an attack, he's leaving office so he won't be in charge for the mess. but at the same time, he doesn't want to kill mccains chances to be president. and once mccain loses, the republican party will be trying to find a way to get its mojo back, not remind everyone that it stands for a series of foreign policy debacles.
UPDATE: most of the experts surveyed by mother jones seem to agree with me that the chances for an attack on iran are low.
