Source -- "Bush Intends To Attack Iran"

Today the White House denied an Israeli Army Radio report that President Bush intends to attack Iran before leaving office.

From The Jerusalem Post:

Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who concluded a trip to Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.

The official reportedly went on to say that "the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic for the time being.

(more)

The report is disturbing because it comes on the heels of Bush's out of control comments to the Israeli Knesset about appeasement. I initially assumed that Bush was injecting into the presidential campaign his idea of foreign policy stumbling blocks for Barack Obama. But if the report is true then it's likely that Bush's babble about appeasement to the Knesset is more about setting up the attack on Iran than Obama.

A lot of rightly paranoid Bush critics who simply can not envision Bush and Cheney relinquishing power believe that some inevitable coup is right around the corner. An attack on Iraq could be the "emergency" they need to pull that off. I always saw this regime as being rogue yet contained within the eight years alloted to Bush. That does not make the attack any less likely. In fact, doing it on the way out might be the idea here. Bush might do it over brunch, twenty minutes before Obama is inaugurated. "Suck on that, Obama! Heh, heh, meh (snort)."

But if this is some wild card intended to reverse an unfavorable playing field for the Republicans, then the strategists behind it are completely insane. Maybe I'm being optimistic here, but I believe the surest way for the Republicans to increase their losses is to sink America deeper into war. Iraq is what got them in the ditch in the first place--believe me it was not the cunning opposition of the Democratic Party. Robert Gates and Condoleeza Rice know America can't take it. Bush and Cheney know it too. But do they care? Doubt it.

By the way something, check out the White House's statement about the report:

[The US] remain[s] opposed to Iran's ambitions to obtain a nuclear weapon. To that end, we are working to bring tough diplomatic and economic pressure on the Iranians to get them to change their behavior and to halt their uranium enrichment program. As the President has said, no president of the United States should ever take options off the table, but our preference and our actions for dealing with this matter remain through peaceful diplomatic means. Nothing has changed in that regard.

Peaceful diplomatic means? Peaceful diplomatic means? Isn't that... appeasement? According to Kevin James, George Bush and John McCain it is.

TAGS: Iran, Election 2008, Foreign Policy, George W. Bush