The Road to War.

It's coming again, folks.

THE WORLD FROM WASHINGTON
Michael Hirsh
The Road to War, Part II
With new unilateral U.S. sanctions announced Thursday, America and Iran may now be headed for unavoidable hostilities.
Oct 25, 2007 | Updated: 3:54 p.m. ET Oct 25, 2007

Last weekend I met a happy hard-liner, a senior White House official, at a Washington party. His good mood, it turns out, had a lot to do with the new, uncompromising stance laid out by his boss, George W. Bush, against Iran. Until recently administration hawks had been somewhat worried about where their president was headed. Since the beginning of his second term, in their view, Bush had gone suspiciously soft on the question of how to stop Iran's nuclear program. He had acceded to Condoleezza Rice's demands that the United States back the multilateral diplomatic approach favored by the Europeans. But in the last two weeks the administration has been on a unilateralist tear against Iran once again, issuing hawkish rhetoric that far outpaces anything heard in European capitals. On Thursday the White House announced a broad array of sanctions that affect almost the entire Iranian government. Tehran, meanwhile, has hardened its own position considerably.

<snip>

So both sides—the United States and Iran—have staked out extreme positions, and it is difficult to see how there can be a negotiated solution. Even if Tehran decides to suspend enrichment, for example—as unlikely as that it is—Washington will still suspect it of proliferation of missiles and support to terrorist groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. No wonder my White House hard-liner was so "relieved," as he told me.

<snip>

The Bush administration seems singularly uninterested in truly bargaining—that is to say, compromising, which is what real negotiation is about—with a regime it wants to see replaced. That is why it refuses to discuss all outstanding issues at once—nukes, Iraq, Tehran's support of Hizbullah and Hamas, Israel and the Palestinians—which is what Iran would prefer. Instead the administration pretends that it can hold ambassadorial-level talks with Iran over Iraq in one place (Baghdad), and back European-led talks in another place (over the nuclear issue), while the president and his top aides demonize Tehran in every speech they give.

<snip>

War with Iran would be, in the best case, disastrous. Even the neocon hawk Norman Podhoretz, who is advising Rudy Giuliani and says he "hopes and prays" that Bush attacks Iran, admits that with such a war "we'll unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we've experienced so far look like a lovefest." It would also guarantee Ahmadinejad's continuance in power. The Iranian president is currently unpopular at home; a U.S. attack would almost certainly rally his country around him and silence the pragmatists in Iran who are looking for a negotiated solution. An attack would also guarantee that Iranian interference in Iraq would escalate. There are no doubt hard-line chauvinists in Russia and China who would actually like to see such a war, because they know it would weaken the United States further. But Bush and Cheney seem to be following the logic of war right now, and unless something changes it will take them all the way to the bloody end.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/62031/page/1

It's going to be one of those wars that changes world history, a watershed moment.

And sadder still, that impeachment is off the table. Both are inexplicable ~ and completely INSANE.

: (