Iran in the cross hairs.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Column

Just because a certain action is irrational, illegal, unjustified, and potentially catastrophic does not mean that the Bush Administration won t engage in it. No, those aren't showstoppers for Bush and Cheney. If anything, they are perverse incentives.

So it seems with the buildup to a bombing raid on Iran.

Bush and Cheney have been slowly getting everything in place.

The aircraft carriers are there.

The charade at the United Nations is well under way.

And the propaganda wheel is spinning. But this time, fewer people are being taken in. The mainstream media, for one, is at least marginally more skeptical than it was during the lead-up to the Iraq War. Which isn't saying much, since many members of the elite media were accomplices to that crime.

Some Democrats--though notably not the leading Presidential candidates--are not buying what Bush is selling. Representatives John Murtha and Pete DeFazio, along with Senator Jim Webb, have led the Democratic effort to require Bush to come to Congress first for authorization of military action against Iran (unless there is some Iranian provocation, which Bush is fully capable of ginning up). Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has also rebuked the Administration for its war plans against Iran.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice isn't even sure that Bush is required to go to Congress before bombing Tehran. When Webb asked her on January 11, "Is it the position of this Administration that it possesses the authority to take unilateral action against Iran, in the absence of a direct threat, without Congressional approval?" she said she'd have to get back to him on that. Pressed by other Senators at the same hearing, she averred that the President had broad authority as commander in chief.

Hagel would have none of it, and he recognized a historical parallel when Bush said he would pursue Iranians who were helping Iraqi insurgents. "Some of us remember 1970, Madame Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said we didn't cross the border going into Cambodia. In fact, we did .... When you set in motion the kind of policy that the President is talking about here, it's very, very dangerous."

Much to their discredit, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards have not shown any reluctance about going after Iran.

"No option can be taken off the table," Clinton said on February 1 to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). "U.S. policy must be clear...