War with Iran?

From The Telegraph:

Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.

Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.

Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.

In a chilling scenario of how war might come, a senior intelligence officer warned that public denunciation of Iranian meddling in Iraq - arming and training militants - would lead to cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories.

A prime target would be the Fajr base run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force in southern Iran, where Western intelligence agencies say armour-piercing projectiles used against British and US troops are manufactured.

Under the theory - which is gaining credence in Washington security circles - US action would provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and even its armed forces.

Senior officials believe Mr Bush's inner circle has decided he does not want to leave office without first ensuring that Iran is not capable of developing a nuclear weapon.

From their lips (or printing press) to God's ears.

Seriously, the one thing that lends this any credence whatsoever is in the last sentence above. Mr. Bush is a grownup and a patriot and he knows that his successor is likely to be a Democrat with no capacity to see the world as it really is or formulate any kind of intelligent policy toward our adversaries.

You will all remember that North Korea was only able to develop nuclear weapons was because of a deal made by the first Clinton administration in which we paid them off in exchange for a promise (which was broken, and a chimpanzee could have predicted that it would be) that they would stop developing nuclear weapons.

George W Bush knows that unlike North Korean dictator Kim, who cares about nothing past his own survival in power and comfort, the mullahs who govern Iran follow an eschatological vision which tells them that the return of the "Hidden Imam" and the ultimate triumph of Islam can be brought about by the ignition of a regional, if not global, holocaust.

The Iranians will not permanently abandon their nuclear program any more than Christians will stop praying to Jesus or religious Jews will stop observing the Sabbath.

Mr. Bush knows this and almost all conservatives know this. Almost no elected Democrat knows this other than Joe Lieberman (and he isn't a Democrat any more). As for the libertarians - forget about it - they hold a worldview in which all human action is economically determined and they are as dogmatically locked into this view as any Marxist.

George W Bush has consistently shown that he cares more about doing what he believes to be right for the country than he does about keeping his poll numbers high or even about the electoral future of the Republican Party. Even when I've disagreed with him, as I did on amnesty, I've never doubted that he was doing what he sincerely believed to be in the nation's best interest.

If Iran gets nuclear weapons and the Iranian government remains unchanged then sooner or later Iran will use those weapons certainly against Israel and possibly against Europe. If the President believes that the only way to derail Iran's nuclear ambitions is to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities and remove the Iranian government and that he can accomplish this before an enraged Democrat moonbat base forces their elected Democrat politicians to finally withdraw all funding for any US military involvement in the Middle East he may very well do it.