Who Will Stop War With Iran?

Though the Bush Administration's increased "nuclear holocaust" rhetoric against Iran over the last month has seemingly been foiled by the latest IAEA intelligence and the wary, Iraq-inflected-incredulity of the American public, Seymour Hersh has recently released a piece in the New Yorker claiming that the Administration is changing tactics. According to Hersh, the Administration is now favoring more limited strikes against Iran's Revolutionary Guard by championing the angle that Iran is largely responsible for the failures in Iraq and much of the insurgent violence against U.S. forces:

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

This shouldn't come as a surprise as General Petraeus advanced this idea in "his" testimony last month.

President Bush preceded the Petraues accusation by the unprecedented tactical decision of designating the Revolutionary Guard as "global terrorists". However, in a wild, trick-taking game of political pinochle, this bold play of putting a national military organization on the terrorist list, a gambit which has never been done before, was trumped last week by the passing of the Lieberman - Kyl resolution, condemning Iran and allowing the designation of its Revolutionary Guards as a “terrorist” entity.

According to Hersh:

T]wo former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group… “They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency.

With 70% of the American public wanting to begin withdrawing from Iraq, these recent developments beg the obvious question: How do we prevent the next war with Iran?

The most obvious wrong answer is to vote for Hillary Clinton, who voted for Lieberman-Kyl. However, though the other candidates did not vote for the bill (Obama wasn't present to vote at all and Biden and Dodd voted against it in the Senate), as I've written before we need strong leadership on this most important issue. And this much is clear: Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate leading here, just as he did in 2002. In fact, he lead 132 other members of the House to vote against military action against Iraq in 2002, citing illegitimate intelligence.

We can not forget 2002; the Administration's lies, the lack of judgement(credibility?), the illegal, agressive attack; just as we can not ignore 2007; the Administration's lies, the lack of leadership, the aggressive attack...

We can not forget Dennis Kucinich. We can not ignore Dennis Kucinich. We can prevent this War...