“Not this crowd”, boy is that a mouthful. Fourteen months is a longtime to hold our breath that Junior’s playground bullying tactics doesn’t pull us into another tragic and costly war. And let us hope that the pressure that the political community is putting upon the Bush Administration to try diplomacy first with Iran keeps the R Presidential Candidates from beating the Iran war drums any louder, because it seems they think Bush-lite is their key to keeping the White House. I believe the country will be sending the Bush-lite team a strong message come next November.

Trash Talking World War III

America’s allies and increasingly the American public are playing a ghoulish guessing game: Will President Bush manage to leave office without starting a war with Iran? Mr. Bush is eagerly feeding those anxieties. This month he raised the threat of “World War III” if Iran even figures out how to make a nuclear weapon.

With a different White House, we might dismiss this as posturing — or bank on sanity to carry the day, or the warnings of exhausted generals or a defense secretary more rational than his predecessor. Not this crowd.

Four years after his pointless invasion of Iraq, President Bush still confuses bullying with grand strategy. He refuses to do the hard work of diplomacy — or even acknowledge the disastrous costs of his actions. The Republican presidential candidates have apparently decided that the real commander in chief test is to see who can out-trash talk the White House on Iran.