Bushco Downplaying Plan For Iran

Bushco keeps insisting they are trying for a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear enrichment program, but are they really? In this story, a foreign policy professor says it is just contingency planning and not something that's gonna be implemented.

Stephen Cimbala, a Pennsylvania State University professor who studies U.S. foreign policy, said it would be no surprise that the Pentagon has contingency plans for a strike on Iran. But he suggested the hint of military strikes is more of a public show to Iran and the public than a feasible option.

"If you look at the military options, all of them are unattractive," Cimbala said. "Either because they won't work or because they have side effects where the cure is worse than the disease." [emphasis mine]

That's all well and good and I'd accept the good professor's assessment...IF we had a reasonable leader instead of the idiot-in-chief. I would bet the farm Bush was warned before Iraq that things would turn out just as horribly as they have. It didn't stop him then and won't stop him now.

Oh yeah, does that side effects where the cure is worse than the disease stuff sound familiar?

And what about this quote two paragraphs earlier in the same story?

"The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally
Israel," the president said last month in Cleveland. "That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace; it's a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally."

Maybe it is just sabre rattling and Bush is too stupid to realise he can do it with a little more subtlety.
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