Bush Prefers Diplomacy to War

I know, you think I'm kidding.

But according to an Internet reporter named Steve Clemons, there is a divide over Iran in the White House, between State+CIA+SecDef on one side, counseling diplomacy, and Pentagon+Veep on the other, rattling sabers. POTUS is said to lean so heavily toward Condi and her boys that Cheney doesn't trust him to steer the right course, and is actively working to create a situation which will force the president into (more) military action in the Middle East.

Here's the gist. Cheney and his network of widely-dispersed acolytes are apparently trying to create a situation in which Israel launches a preemptive strike on Iran, prompting Ahmadinejad & Co. to attack US forces in the Gulf, plunging us into war.

Think about it. The Vice-President is concocting a strategy which deliberately endangers the lives of American soldiers and sailors -- that is, one which deliberately exposes them to an attack which will then be declared "unprovoked" even though it is not, and made casus belli. He's going to kill our soldiers as an excuse for starting a war. It's like planting a bomb on the Maine.

This is scary stuff. It is, in fact, the stuff of all those "evil conspiracy inside the government" thrillers they used to make in the 1970s -- from "Three Days of the Condor" to Kevin Costner's belated "No Way Out." People say Cheney is Darth Vader, but they're wrong. Lord Vader is a lame comic-opera Ruritanian in contrast to this sort of wickedness. Cheney is Voldemort.