Another thing to remember is that while everyone is watching the Foley debacle, those carriers are still headed for the Persian Gulf.

Shrubya is determined to have his glorious Iran war, no matter what it does to the country, the military or our rapidly rising reputation as a criminally rogue nation.

Arthur Silber at Once upon a Time:

I can't say, as Billmon does, that "I don't expect" an attack on Iran to happen before November. [See here.] In a way, my judgment appears to me to be worse: I simply don't know. To me, it is entirely possible that the Bush administration will launch an attack on Iran before November 7. The totality of this administration's record demonstrates a level and depth of irrationality that is impossible to grasp fully. The monstrousness of such an act should always be emphasized, repeatedly:

Any military attack by the United States on Iran within the foreseeable future -- even an attack using only conventional weapons -- would be profoundly immoral, and eternally unforgivable. Remember the critical facts: all experts agree that Iran is approximately five to ten years away from having a nuclear weapon. Moreover, Iran is fully entitled to take the actions it does at present, including the enrichment of uranium it announced yesterday. It is entitled to take those actions under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory. While we condemn Iran and maintain that its actions are "intolerable" and "unacceptable" -- even though they are entirely permissible under the relevant agreements, and are only "intolerable" because we say so without any moral, legal or strategic justification for that stance -- we carve out exceptions for a country like India, which is not a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty. The position of the United States is an entirely unprincipled one, and one which devolves into incoherence.

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