Oh, Yippee

So.... anything interesting happen while I was distracted? Oh, that's right, Bush is preparing to use nuclear weapons on Iran.

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”....

One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface.

I wonder if the English language even has words to describe the combination of stupidity and isanity this administration represents. America has managed to lose a war against an impoverished Iraq with a barely-functioning government and an Army that happily deserted during the initial part of the war. But these morons honestly think they can win a war against Iran, which is a bigger country geographically, more than 2x the population, a much stronger government and military (Iran nearly beat Iraq during the war, and it would've been a sure thing without US aid.)

The proposal to use nuclear weapons is simply insane. We've managed to go 60 years with nuclear weapons considered to be weapons that aren't "like bombs, but bigger." That is, they haven't been useable weapons. Now Bush wants to undo this? Why, in God's name?

Just a few more articles of impeachment, I guess.