Krauthammer: Bush Will Bomb Iran Before He Leaves Office

News Hounds
October 24, 2007

During Tuesday’s edition of Special Report the All-Star Panel discussion started off with a video clip of Vice President DIck Cheney addressing a weekend meeting at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he uttered yet another of his dire warnings to Iran. The Washington Institute was founded in 1985 by a former research director of AIPAC and has a long history of advocacy for pro-Israeli positions. Once again, pro-war neocons Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer suggested that President Bush will attack Iran before his term ends. His reason? Because he wouldn’t want to leave it for the next President to deal with!! Yeah, and coffee still costs a dime … With video.

It never ceases to amaze me how supposedly rational, educated human beings can sit around and calmly hypothesize about the possible onset of a bloody World War as if they were discussing the latest stock prices over tea and crumpets on a Sunday morning.

This is at least the third time that Special Report has dealt with this issue in the past month. Over and over again, Kristol, Barnes and Krauthammer openly state exactly what the President is going to do and no one seems to take them seriously.

When asked by Brit Hume if the administration might be “saber rattling,” Charles Krauthammer noted that the President feels freer to act now that the situation in Iraq has improved (?!!) so dramatically and Congress has backed off a bit.

“I think there are two clocks working here,” Krauthammer said. “The first is the Iranian one, in which it’s developing a weapon, it has these centrifuges working overtime. But that clock is indeterminate. Nobody is sure when it will happen and you can always argue that we can always wait another six months. The more important clock is the Bush Presidency. It’s running out and we all know exactly how long it has. And the way the President is speaking and Cheney’s speaking, you have the impression that he believes this is a problem he cannot leave to his successor. This looks like a serious threat.”

Krauthammer repeated several times that he believes Bush is set on attacking Iran, possibly playing out some demented end-game scenario, hoping that by appearing to be willing to go the distance in Iran, it will “scare” other nations into putting pressure on Iran to cease their nuclear program. “He’s prepared to attack if nothing happens,” Krauthammer concluded.

Fellow panelists Mara Laisson and Fred Barnes both concurred with Krauthammer’s assessment.

FRED BARNES: “Cheney didn’t say much more than Bush had said. Rudy Giuliani in the debate last night in Orlando talked about this subject, I thought very cogently, that saber rattling can be very,very effective, scaring the Iranians and even scaring our allies into stronger sanctions and the Iranians responding to those sanctions to avoid an attack by the United States. And there are more things they could do. One, leak how we could do this. You know, the White House - the President doesn’t have to come out and say - well. with 200 planes and this many aircraft carriers, I mean, this is viable. We could do it, but …”

BRIT HUME: “There is a military option, in other words.”

BARNES: “Certainly there is and word of that could be leaked. We have one aircraft carrier I think in the Persian Gulf. There could be more sent to the region, things that would really make the Iranians perk up. Right now, it’s clear they’re not paying any attention to the sanctions.”

HUME: “What you’re saying is that the saber is going to be rattling, but they’re not going to be rattling loud enough to suit you, is that ..?

BARNES: “No. It’s not having any effect on the Iranians.”

COMMENT

This was a very, very scary segment. Short. To the point. No frills. Bush and Cheney are playing a game of global thermonuclear chicken.

If what Barnes and Krauthammer said is true, then, in my opinion, the Congress should begin impeachment proceedings immediately on the grounds that the President and Vice-President are totally batty and belong at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, not in the White House.

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