Iran War: The good news or the bad news?

Maybe a little of both.

Pat Lang has posted a short piece by Richard Sale reporting on what he's hearing about the prospects for attacking Iran from three unnamed "administration officials". This sounds like good news:

According to one, "Bush really wanted to mount an attack on Iran earlier this year - he was really hot to trot," but military briefings brought home to him that attacking Iran did not mean eliminating its suspected nuclear sites but
also having to destroy "Iran's entire retaliatory capability," in the words of
one.

But then there's this:

Cheney is still pushing hard for a strike ...

The news that Bush is supposedly cool on the idea gives me less comfort than the news that Dark Lord Cheney is still pushing for for an attack makes me worry.

While it's always possible that these kinds of leaks are a deliberate ploy to mislead the public, this report sounds plausible to me. But then misleading leaks are supposed to sound plausible. And those warships are still headed toward the Straits of Hormuz.

Sale also provides some detail to back up this assessment:

As one civilian military expert said, "Iran would be likely to do a great deal of damage in the Gulf before its assets on the mainland and islands were neutralized."

In other words, if attacked, Iran would respond asymmetrically, and any U.S. Iran war would be more frightful, full of bloody slaughter and unintended consequences than current U.S. planners think. This is what is giving Bush pause.

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