A reader writes:

“You know, I really hope they wouldn't set up a whole song and dance to launch a hit on Iran before leaving office...

“Summer spectacular? With bombs over Tehran for the encore? Choruses of: Look what those softie liberals have wrought by pushing for defeat in Iraq! They have emboldened the terrorists and the terrorists have followed us here...

“That would all just be too predictable, right? Please?”

See:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg0JugJGt40
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070710/tpl-uk-usnavy-carrier-9562ed3.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/summer_terror_threats_8
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/al-qaeda-cell-i.html
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1183980036210&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

And AfterDowningStreet.org has this today:

Next Target: Iran; Democratic Senators haven’t Learned a thing

By Chris Floyd, ATLANTIC FREE PRESS
As you may know — unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course — yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to.
The bipartisan Senate resolution — the brainchild of Fightin’ Joe Lieberman — affirmed as official fact all of the specious, unproven, ever-changing allegations of direct Iranian involvement in attacks on the American forces now occupying Iraq. The Senators appear to have relied heavily on the recent New York Times story by Michael Gordon that stovepiped unchallenged Pentagon spin directly onto the paper’s front page. As Firedoglake points out, John McCain cited the heavily criticized story on the Senate floor as he cast his vote.
It goes without saying that all of this is a nightmarish replay of the run-up to the war of aggression against Iraq: The NYT funneling false flag stories from Bush insiders. Warmongers citing the NYT stories as “proof” justifying any and all action to “defend the Homeland.”
Credulous and craven Democratic politicians swallowing the Bush line hook and sinker. To be sure, stout-hearted Dem tribunes like Dick Durbin insisted that their support for declaring that Iran is “committing acts of war” against the United States should not be taken as an “authorization of military action.” This is shaky-knees mendacity at its finest. Having
officially affirmed that Iran is waging war on American forces, how, pray tell, can you then deny the president when he asks (if he asks) for authorization to “defend our troops?” Answer: you can’t. And you know it.
This vote is the clearest signal yet that there will be no real opposition to a Bush Administration attack on Iran. This is yet
another blank check from these slavish, ignorant goons; Bush can cash it anytime. This is, in fact, the post-surge “Plan B” that’s been mooted lately in the Beltway. As you recall, there was much throwing about of brains on the subject of reviving the “Iraq Study Group” plan when the “surge” (or to call it by its right name, the “punitive escalation”) inevitably fails. Bush put the kibosh on that this week…but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a fall-back position or rather, a spring-forward position: an attack on Iran, to rally the nation behind the “war leader” and reshuffle the
deck in Iraq.
Of course, the United States is already at war with Iran. We are directing covert ops and terrorist attacks inside Iran, with the help of groups that our own government has declared terrorist renegades. We are kidnapping Iranian officials in Iraq and holding them hostage. We have a bristling naval armada on Iran’s doorstep, put there for the express purpose of threatening Tehran with military action. The U.S. Congress has overwhelmingly passed measures calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. And now the U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Iran is waging war on America, and has given official
notice that this will not be tolerated. It is only a very small step to move from this war in all but name to the full monty of an overt military assault.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: there is madness at work here…
UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz points out that all of the Senate’s Democratic candidates for president voted for Lieberman’s Iran War amendment: Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, and Joe Biden. Just in case you were expecting a saner foreign policy after the 2008 election.
Copyright 2007 Atlantic Free Press