Will we attack Iran?

Tom Englehardt has a post up on why we won't attack Iran. I read it eagerly because this is one time I'd be thrilled to be wrong.

Englehardt states Cheney won't attack Iran for a couple of reasons. The first is a "global oil shock." The price of oil would double, probably, if not rise higher. That's quite true, but the price of oil more than doubled after our first attacks. In January 2003 oil was $29.31/barrel. Now it is 137.12/barrel. (How quickly the extreme becomes normal.) If the price of gasoline were to double it would be a greater hardship than the earlier increase, but at $8/gallon we'd be paying the same amount as most of Europe. Our poor would be severely hit by the increase, but governments don't often worry about the poor's suffering, do they?

His next reason is that Israel would need the US's help to attack Iran. I don't see the difficulty here. Our president and Congress have repeatedly promised to back up any action taken by Israel, even if it's not in the best interest of most Americans.

Another reason, Englehardt states, is that Bush and the "adults in the room" would object. But when the grown-ups objected to the first wars, Bush fired them. And I wouldn't count on Bush to stop war and death. He lives for death. (This would take another post to explain and support; I'll try to do that soon because it's very important.) Someone who pumps his fist and says "I feel good" right before he blitzkriegs a country is not overly concerned with others' deaths. The public would also object, Englehardt says, but I don't see the Administration being overly concerned about what the public thinks. The word "So?" comes to mind.

Finally, Englehard point out that reality demands no attack occur. But we all know that they create their own reality. They run this world, we just live in it. And it doesn't help that Englehardt's final words are:

And yet, of course, for the maddest gamblers and dystopian dreamers in our
history, never say never.

That's where we started out: Never say never.

Are we asking the right questions?

Dan Froomkin discusses the prospect of the US attacking Iran. He quotes another journalist:

Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of the Australian, writes:
"There is, I would guess, somewhere between a 30 and 40 per cent chance that the
Bush administration will bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of the year.
"This is, naturally, a personal judgment. It is based on two weeks of
intense conversations I have had with American national security figures. . . .
"People who know Vice-President Dick Cheney well believe he wants to strike
Iran, that he has made a sober judgment that time is running out. . . .
"Defence Secretary Robert Gates is strongly opposed. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice is also opposed.
"Some analysts believe that in the first
Bush administration Cheney won all such arguments, whereas in the second
administration Rice is dominant. They take this to mean Bush won't strike.
"I don't think it's that simple. It is true that Bush has ceded an enormous
amount of national security power to Rice. However, the Bush administration is
better seen as having two personalities, the psychology of which rose out of
Bush's peculiar historical circumstances.
"Bush understands that he is unpopular across the world and, as a result to some extent, so is the US. Therefore, on every issue where it's possible, from Africa to North Korea, he presents a kindly, moderate, multilateral face. And that face is Rice.
"However, Bush also knows that history will judge him on the outcome in
Iraq. So he does absolutely everything he can to win in Iraq. And this means
mostly following Cheney's advice. Remember that for all of Rice's undoubted
sway, she opposed the troop surge in Iraq, as did Gates. The surge went ahead
anyway, and was successful.
"So at this moment, in the second half of 2008, does the Rice side of Bush or the Cheney side win the argument on Iran?
"I think anyone who pronounces dogmatically on that question doesn't know what
they're talking about. For a start, if the Iranians are caught doing something
stupid, the calculations change dramatically."

Since I don't know what I am talking about, I am the perfect person to make a dogmatic pronunciation. When push comes to shove, I'd put my money on Cheney over Rice. Cheney has the greater motivation; he wants unfettered access to Middle Eastern oil. He is a completely focused and driven man, who is running a large organization he built to fulfill his goals. His time is running out, both as vice-president and as a man with enormous health problems.

Rice seems to be devoted just to her job as Bush's Secretary of State. She doesn't seem to have any grand ambitions beyond the job. And as far as I know she has a lot less power than Cheney. When the two clash, Cheney wins. Korea might be an exception, but Korea isn't sitting on a pool of oil.

Who is in charge? What is his goal? Does he have the resources and will to take what he wants? Can anyone block him? Those are the questions that might give us the answer.

Unless something unexpected happens, we're going to bomb Iran.

The state of the Snark.

It was graduation week here at the Snark, with assorted kids moving up from cabin boy to ensign and from ensign to whatever ensigns do next. But pirates never rest, so let's see what's up. Have we hit the housing bottom?

That second wave of adjustable-mortgage resets won’t even begin until next
year. And as you can see from the chart above, the quantity dwarfs the amount
that caused Wall Street, the Fed and Congress to vomit in unison already this
year. [We thank Agora Financial for sharing this with us http://www.agorafinancial.com/]The Prime Mortgages can include the
ARMs, and there were many, many ARMS originated between 2002 and 2006 that are
hanging on the edge of the "reset precipice". Then in the next 3 years the many
option ARMS and "Alt-A" ARMs (Alt-A loans are the no document "liar loans"
that were originated by the millions during the housing and mortgage bubble).
These resets and expired, low interest rate Alt-A ARMs will peak in 2012...oh my
God, 2012!
This indicates that we have at least 3 more years of the
mortgage meltdown and the housing wipeout to deal with and that is not a
promising indicator of the health of the US, British, and
Canadian economies in the the foreseeable future.

Ouch. Well, at least we don't have to worry about more wars.

Russian Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of
Geopolitical Sciences, said last week the Pentagon was planning to deliver a
massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future."I have
no doubt there will be an operation, or rather an aggressive action against
Iran," Ivashov said, commenting on media reports about U.S. planned operation
against Iran, codenamed Operation Bite.A new U.S. carrier battle group has been
dispatched to the Gulf. The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around
80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet
fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are heading for
the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been deployed since December
2006. The U.S. is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the region.

Aww, nuts. Better buy more toilet paper. And fill the car with gas.

For the last ten days in a row, pump prices set new records. And with
inventories of gas at a new five-year low, refiners are having trouble keeping
up with demand.

I remember the 1970s. They aren't worth revisting. Maybe I can go to the movies and forget my troubles. It'll be a relief to get away from Sex and the City reruns. I can't stand that self-delusional, self-indulgent airhead.

Aiiiiigh!

Your Democratic Party speaks.

Washington must assert to the rest of the world that if they want to be
friends with America, they need to do more to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons, visiting US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Sunday in an
exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post.

Pelosi said the US needed to be more "proactive" in saying to the countries of the world - including Russia, China and the Muslim countries in Asia - that "one of the pillars of US foreign policy is to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to anyone." The US needed to make it clear to everyone, including the Europeans, that their polices on this issue would be a term of friendship with the US, and a measuring stick of benefits they could derive from that friendship, she said.
The US cannot stop nuclear proliferation alone, Pelosi said, adding that "if these weapons proliferate, they are a threat to everyone, not just to the US, and not just to Israel."
Via.

God, this is depressing. When Bush bombs Iran before the election, Congress won't do a thing. Iran isn't a threat. I'd give you links but I'm too damn depressed.

Don't forget Iran.

Syria Reactor Story a Diversion; But From What?

Repeating the Crime: The Iraq War Morphs Into the Iran War

Is an Attack on Iran Imminent? (via)

U.S. Prepares ‘New Options’ To Attack Iran, Deploys Second Carrier To Persian Gulf