I may not be old enough..

to avoid the next catastrophe, but there are more and more reports that the Bush administration is planning to attack Iran. Seymour Hersh in this week's New Yorker has an incendiary article about this issue. Hersh does have a lot of connections. He quotes many of them anonymously in his article.

He quotes a government consultant that Bush believes "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy." (my emphasis)
A former defense official says that military planning is premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign on Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government."
A House member says "There's no pressure from Congress" not to take military action.
A Pentagon adviser warns "we have no clue where some of the key stuff is. It could even be out of the country."
A former high-level Defense Department official claims, "The Iranians don't have friends."
A recently retired high-level Bush administration official says, "Iran is a much tougher target than Iraq."

Some were willing to speak for the record:
Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near Easr Policy, told Hersh that Iran has no choice but to accede to America's demands or face a military attack.
Colonel Sam Gardiner estimated that at least 400 targets would have to be hit. "Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target..."
Robert Baer, former CIA agent, "These guys are nuts and there's no reason (for us) to back off."
President Bush in a speech in Cleveland last month, "I'll make it clear again, that we will use our military might to protect our ally Israel."

It just sounds a hell of a lot like the crap we were fed three years ago. We made the mistake then of not giving the inspectors enough time. We believed it would be a piece of cake and we would be hailed as liberators. After three years of demonstrating that we were wrong, of alienating our allies, of angering the Muslims, we're going to make the exact same mistake as before; this time, however, we may use nuclear weapons. Who are the nuts running the show? Do they have a death wish?

There are some sane people quoted in the article. One of whom, Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state in the administration, asks, "What will happen in the other Islamic countries? ...What does the attack do to our already diminished international standing? And what does this mean for Russia, China, and the UN Security Council?"