Griper News: Griper Blade: Impeachment is the Only Way to Avoid War With Iran

As a president in his final term, Bush has been freed from worry over public opinion. His career as an elected official is over, he has no reason to care about what voters think -- he'll never face them at the ballot box.

Being a lame duck has its advantages. You can move forward with ideas that aren't very popular -- Carter reinstating draft registration, for example. You can do what you believe is right and damn the consequences, because there are no consequences. At least, not for you.

So Bush can go ahead with his big troop surge idea. The people don't want it, no one thinks it'll work, but I'm sure that Bush -- like the four or five people who still support the war -- probably sees it as a bold move, a glorious gamble, maybe even manly, somehow. But to do something for principle is one thing and to do something out of pigheadedness is another. If there is a principle involved in Bush's plan to escalate the war, it's that the neocons in the White House won't admit that everything they were told about invading Iraq turned out to be true -- it's a quagmire, it's destabilizing the region, it's damaged the US reputation worldwide and earned us more enemies and no friends. It's the principle that the PNAC brain trust couldn't possibly be wrong.

So, given that the neocons clearly don't give a damn about what the hell you or I think -- or, for that matter, what anyone in the world thinks -- what's to stop them from expanding the conflict? Not much, really.

The Bush administration has been making a lot of noise about Iran. It's mostly BS, but when they fire up the noise machine, it means they've got something cooking. We're told that mortars and bombs in Iraq have come from Iran. Why this should come as a big surprise is a little beyond me. I've pointed out before that most of the rifles in Iraq come from China or Russia -- so what? In fact, it'd probably be a little weird to find someone using some sort of a weapon made in Iraq. Even Saddam's weaponry was mostly purchased abroad and not manufactured in Iraq. So the startling revelation that iranian arms have found their way into Iraq should be as startling as the fact that there's something in your house made in China.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate tells us that, yes, Iran is involved in Iraq, but that if you removed Iran from the equation, the violence would continue. Iran isn't a driving force in Iraq, iraqi sectarians are.

How long have the neocons been looking at Iran? Pretty much since day one.

Democracy Now! (emphasis mine):

CRAIG UNGER:... Richard Perle started meeting with then-candidate George Bush, and this has really not been reported much at all, but he came away with that meeting saying that Bush had agreed that if he were to be president, he would help overthrow Saddam. So, that, to me, is the first time I know that Bush seemed to have signed off on that. If you talk to the neocons today, a lot of them will say, “Well, yes, it’s a mess in Iraq, but that’s because we’ve just begun. We haven’t really started. This should be a regional war, that Iran is the real focus.”...