Bushco sells fear

As the current climate of international geopolitical strutting, posturing and bloviating keeps those sabers ever rattling in the direction of Iran, I like to remind myself of one important point—That the guys on my team, such as President Weedwhacker and Vice President Vader, have pretty much zero credibility when it comes to weapons assessment involving the Axis of Evil. Zero. As in the usual litany of nothing, nada, and, of course, zilch.

So when Dub and Darth and all their minions start crankin’ it up about how positive they are that Iran is up to mischief that will one day lead to nuclear Ahmadinejad, I’m now at the stage where the only thing I want to say in response is … prove it. Please. Is that too much to ask? Am I unreasonable here? Don’t bellow it, hint at it or insinuate it. Prove it. Make your case. Or go away.

Bushco wants you to believe that the Iranians are on the verge of joining Club Nuke. Maybe they are. I don’t know. But I do know this: The only tool left in the president’s shed, six lumpy years into his disheartening administration, is the trowel of fear. As Frank Rich wrote recently in the N.Y. Times, “Fear, the only remaining card this administration still knows how to play, may once more give a seemingly spent GOP a crack at the White House in 2008.” He then cites a new month old Zogby poll that shows 52 percent of Americans are ready to give the green light to a pre-emptive military strike on Iran in order to halt their nuclear industriousness.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) is Mohammed Al-Baradei. The man is not a dummy or a dupe. He says he has no evidence of Iran working to build nuclear weapons and has recently accused the U.S. of adding “fuel to the fire” with this most recent rash of highly unsubtle insinuations. Even United States intelligence, when pressed, will say they think the Iranians will be in Club Nuke somewhere in the next five to 10 years. The Israelis, considering some of the statements of the Iranian president, are understandably a little more paranoid. They say Iran will have a bomb by 2010.

So a consensus is desperately needed. A consensus that will strive very hard to keep its head out of its big, greasy rear-end. A consensus that remembers that just five years ago, when we were being closed on the Bushco Iraqi Smear Job, the people who were right about Iraq were folks like Hans Blix and Scott Ritter. Those two men, as it turned out, knew what the hell they were talking about when they dared to say that Dub and Vader didn’t know squat from squash. And it strikes me as important that this point be pounded into America’s skull right now—That our leaders have been dangerously wrong in the past. Not the Europeans. Not the Arabs. Us. Our guys. Way off. Stupid off. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and I’m obviously dug down deep into my warm sleepy spot on the turnip truck.