From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq: Iran

Jesus, I hate that fucking guy.

Fucking weepy-eyed war mongers.

Bush is less reticent about public displays of grief for victims of Sept. 11. During the recent events marking the fifth anniversary of the attacks, he teared up several times and at one point had to concentrate just to finish a speech. "Your heart breaks for somebody who suffered," he later told Charles Gibson of ABC News. "Tears can get contagious as far as I'm concerned."

That's the weirdest thing, the focus on the Iran guy; it's like the warmongers need a hitler-ish figurehead to focus their hate on because they find it to be more useful or it's the only way they can conceive of war(furthering the analogy of the current occupation as somehow being like the U.S. Civil War). The fact that he's rapidly losing popularity/power inside the country, that he's not even the guy in control, and that he'll most likely be out of power years before they could scrape together materiel for a bomb.

Is it wrong that I think Ahmadinejad is rather handsome?

It's the Sears Roebuck trousers.

Handsome in a hardware store kinda way.

Ahmadinejad is totally stylish!

he IS rather handsome, but then again so are all iranians

it's the members' only jacket!

every time I see him I think of John Landis in "Into the Night"

He puts a lot of effort into his snappy look; he copies Obama at every turn!

(minus the whole Members Only jacket thing)

ahmadinejad is just trying too goddamn hard. he's totally trying to play the snidely whiplash role -- we got nukes! we deny the holocaust! israel must die! -- but he's just not very scary. i think the bush people even realize that, after a year or so of showcasing him as the big bad wolf. that's why they're muttering now about "the mullahs" and the quds forces and whatever, the shadowy "real leaders". it's a lot scarier to say "ayatollah" than to trot out smiley turtleneck guy. and it seems like an awful lot of iranians are just embarrassed by their doofy president. (join the club, iranians.)

anyway, i go back and forth on being sure we're going to stir up some military shit there and thinking the whole thing will fizzle. right now i kind of think both are likely; there'll be some kind of skirmishes, maybe a little bombing run, and the reaction will be so uniformly negative -- from the american public, the iranian public, and the world at large -- that the two idiot presidents will both have to back down a little. sort of like what seems to have happened in the north korean talks.

kinda like schrodinger's war

Iran's rep to the UN was a little disappointing on Charlie Rose last night.

i keep hearing The Straits of Hormuz as The Straits of Vermouth, becuz i is a drunk.

Still, they shut that down, thing's gunna get even more interesting.

Anne Applebaum:

Last weekend, Iran's nuclear negotiator also sounded more conciliatory when he offered to re-open the stalled Iranian-European negotiations. Iran's president has also gone out of his way to say that his country poses "no threat to Israel", despite earlier promises to "wipe Israel off the map".

But it is also true that at least one of Iran's tactics is also working. For some time now, the Iranians have been trying to play America off against Europe, so as to relieve the pressure on themselves. After all, if there aren't joint American-European sanctions, then the Iranians will find it that much easier to ignore them. Thus do the "war in Iran" headlines - guaranteed to stir up fear and loathing of the American government - feed right into Iranian interests.

Which matters: for we are at an unusual juncture in history. If Britain, France and Germany go along with America's "coercive diplomacy", that diplomacy might stand a slim chance of success. If they do not, then yes, the distant, but not completely unthinkable military option might begin to loom larger in the minds of politicians in both Washington and Tel Aviv.

Having started an unpopular war already, having no prospect of being re-elected to anything, President Bush might decide that, in the absence of allies, there is no other way. For the first time in a long time, it really is up to Europeans to influence what comes next.

Nothing new here, I just like how mouthy the press is getting with Bush:

Mr. Bush: But my focus is on making sure that this weapon is dealt with, the program is dealt with in a constructive, peaceful way. And we’ll continue to work toward achieving our common objective with other nations in the world in a peaceful way. …

Question — using faulty intelligence to provoke Iran?

Mr. Bush: No, I heard your question, and I told you, I was confident that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, was providing weaponry into Iraq. And to say it is provoking Iran is just a wrong way to characterize the Commander-in-Chief’s decision to do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm’s way. And I will continue to do so.

"Bombing is Wrong"

ORLY

The reporter should have said, "X-post, Mr. president."