From Information Clearing House
By Ed Kinane

These days we’re on needles and pins. We keep our fingers crossed. We hope the US won’t attack Iran. There are good reasons to believe it won’t. Elsewhere I’ve argued the folly of doing so.

Cheney and Bush, no doubt, have heard such reasons and yet still itch to attack. They’ve got the aircraft carriers and Cruise missiles in place. They keep poking Iran hoping to get an overreaction. They keep saber-rattling.

Why, we all wonder, would they replay the same — or even greater – debacle as in Iraq? Many readers may be too humane to fathom what goes on in those men’s minds. Sociopaths are hard to understand. Nonetheless we must try.

Who knows? Part of Cheney and Bush’s crusade may be theological. Isn’t it god-like to unleash the Predators? Isn’t it god-like to threaten and surge, kill and explode? Islamic Iraq and Islamic Afghanistan may seem to those men like latter-day Sodoms and Gomorrahs. Having smote them, let Islamic Iran be next.

Besides, having failed to force Iraq and Afghanistan to submit, they may well crave another chance. They certainly seek to shore up their faltered administration. They’ve seen how a new war distracts from scandals in high places. And how it distracts from policy disasters, both domestic and international. A new war puffs up otherwise plummeting presidential and vice presidential polls. Our cowed and co-opted Congress rolls over during war. War pumps up executive power.

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