reality-based educator

From Thursday's Scarborough Country:

BUCHANAN: If you notice, the president said he‘s sending Patriot missiles in and he‘s sending an aircraft carrier in. We don‘t need air power in Iraq—aircraft. We don‘t need Patriot missiles because the insurgents don‘t have missiles. And the president said—the most important word is networks that are training and providing advance weaponry. Those obviously are in Iran.

I think what the president plans to do is to find one or two of these networks, hit them with air strikes, and when the Iranians respond militarily, then the B-2s go after the uranium plants and the heavy water reactors.

SCARBOROUGH: So you think George Bush right now—you think George Bush‘s plan—and it certainly looks like it—is to bait the Iranians into attacking us and allowing George Bush and the U.S. military cover to go into Iran?

BUCHANAN: I think—I would guess that is it. He is certainly planning that. He is preparing for that. If he hits Iran and they respond.

I think the president believes in his heart that Iranian—the nuclear program has to be eliminate or smashed before he and Cheney leave office. He‘s committed to do that. That is the Bush doctrine.

He is looking for an opportunity, and he may well be preparing the opportunity right now, Joe. I think that‘s very valid—that‘s not only valid speculation, I think it‘s pretty much what‘s planned. Why would you need Patriot missiles? Why would our allies need them? Who‘s going to fire rockets at our allies? Who‘s got ballistic missiles?

When Buchanan says "that's very valid," he's speaking of the speculation that Wednesday's Bush speech, along with the Patriot missile defenses he's added to the surge group and two carrier groups he's sent to the Persian Gulf, means Bush and Cheney have decided to expand the war to Iran.

Buchanan, btw, doesn't think war with Iran as the Bushies are currently pushing it, is valid. He has said that absent an Iranian attack on the United States or its allies, Bush has to come to the Congress to get authorization for the use of force against Iran and it shouldn't be granted.

He also has been opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning.

Buchanan's no patchouli-smelling, dope-smoking, tree-hugging hippie. He just doesn't think expanding the Iraq war (which he has called a "horrendous blunder") to Iran makes the mess in Iraq better. He thinks the push for war with Iran is coming from Israel, Saudi Arabia and neocons with ties to the Likud Party in Israel. He also isn't in favor of a complete drawdown. Here's his concern if that happens:

But Joe, let me say this. Where the president is correct—everybody‘s saying, This is a blunder, the surge is a mistake, and it‘s probably not going to work. But where the president is dead right is what Joe‘s been describing as the disaster that‘s going to occur. I believe, if we do turn around and march out of there, this government is coming down. There is going to be killing on an unimaginable scale. We are going to have a terrorist base camp. We are going to have interventions. The country‘s coming apart. We are going to have the countries down in the gulf threatened by Shias.

The whole Arab nationalist and Islamic radical world is going to be energized because when the Afghans beat the Soviets, they have beaten the last superpower, the greatest nation on earth. And that enthusiasm, that wild energy will cut lose across that region. This will be a debacle on a massive scale. That‘s where Bush is right.

Pat Buchanan may be absolutely right about that. Unfortunately it's a shame the preznut, the vice preznut, the neocons and all the war supporters and cheerleaders couldn't have thought about the possibility and ramifications of a U.S. military and political defeat in Iraq BEFORE Bush got to launch his war of choice.

Pat Buchanan thought of it. Why couldn't others on the right?