I believe we can all agree that George W. Bush and Company want to widen the Middle East war zone, to include Iran at the least. We know this because the same sell job they did before the Iraq War is now being applied about Iran. In general this sell-job takes the view that Iran is the new Middle East bogeyman, although the different ways this is said are numerous.

We are right to ask the question whether the Democrats could stop Bush from moving against Iran militarily, and the answer to this is not an absolute yes. Pelosi has already told Bush and Company that the authorization to attack Iraq does not include Iran, but as anyone who understands U.S. history knows, the commander-in-chief does have the power to act with military force to protect American lives, without a Declaration of War. This fact is why the rhetoric out of the White House has taken the form of speaking over and over again about the need to protect American lives, and the dangers imposed by Iran in this regard.

Bush and his Warmongers also realize that if they can find an excuse to attack Iran, this will force Iran to react, which then (perhaps, depending on the strength of the Iranian response) might force the Congress to not only declare war against Iran, but also re-institute the draft. A wider war in the Middle East requires an enormous increase in manpower and materials, and the War Profiteers very much want this opportunity to expand not only their profits, but also their power.

But to do this requires that the U.S. Military be complicit. They will have to passively submit to orders from Bush requiring some kind of attack on Iran. The question will come before our military leaders is this fashion: Do I do something against orders, which appear lawful, but which I know will lead to disaster, or do I so suborn my will and my conscience that I will aid and abet a willful and dangerous man to take the whole Country into a war it clearly does not want or need.

As I wrote before here, the Democrats do have powers they could use to make life very difficult in the White House, and these powers have not yet been applied. The Democrats could completely stop funding the current War. Yes, they would take a lot of heat, but basically this is their job - they are to serve our needs and not bend to the fickle will of a man whose actions and speaking clearly reveal someone lacking the necessary faculties of reason. Bush's recent performance at a press conference the week of February 11-17, 2007 showed how tortured was his reasoning in seeking to justify his actions and his un-admitted longer range intentions.

It becomes necessary to expose this vain psychology, by more strongly frustrating it, and this is the main action we need from the Democrats. They need to put real teeth in what they pass in the House, and at the same time completely unleash the Committee Chairman in across the board investigations of the last 6 years of the Bush Rule. As written here many years ago now, Bush is basically a dry drunk, someone prone to outbursts of anger and completely in denial of his own culpability for the consequences of his own actions.

He has to be confronted, not enabled by the other powers in Washington that surround him. Neither the Congress nor the Military do the American People any good by being in anyway passive in the face of his stubbornness and the always implied threat of a tantrum. He has been allowed to fire too many military leaders, and Congress continues to think that actions without any steel in them (such as non-binding resolutions) will have any effect.

We have to keep in mind that this petty tyrant is not just ruining his own family - he endangers the whole world. Its well past time for the Military, the Democrats, the awake members of his own party, and the members of his immediately family to recognize just how out of control and dangerous this man is.

Now it may be that Rove and Cheney still have their hooks in him, but that is no excuse for the inaction of others. The voice of the People remains clear. Are those in public service listening?

Senator Hillary Clinton, the leading presidential candidate for the Democrats (not a good sign for the Democrats), continues to waffle on whether she made any errors of judgment in voting for the War in Iraq. Asked recently by a citizen at one of her speaking engagements to give a clear answer as to whether she regretted her decision, she said essentially (it took several sentences): yes, and she blamed not her own judgment, but the false intelligence offered by the administration.

Lets examine this denial of blame and then shifting it to the administration a little more closely (she basically is saying: yes I was wrong, but I have an excuse, I was misled).

The plain fact is that many people saw through the sell-job the administration was engaged in right from the beginning. I wrote this on my blog in the Fall of 2002:

"To know the error of the Bush Administration, all we have to do is listen to the Drums of War - all the efforts made to create the belief in the need for war. No one in the right ever needs to beat the Drums of War - if there is a true need that will be obvious. Yet, we forget that the Johnson Administration faked the necessity for the invasion of Vietnam, and standing on the sand of that vain lie, we fell to our destruction. There will be no Victory, in such a repeat of this situation, only the Bagpipes of Sorrow as the dead are buried, the maimed ignored and hidden, and the spiritual heart of the Republic shattered into ruins."

A half-awake adolescent could smell the lies being told by the administration. What is worse, is that it was Hillary Clinton's job, as a U.S. Senator for the opposition party, to dis-believe the administration. The Democrats blew it, and while we may never really know exactly why* someone who wants us to believe they are somehow blameless for not doing their job, does not deserve to be in government anymore at all. In the end though, it will be us who bear the ultimate responsibility, if we keep electing to office such professional liars and snake oil salesmen as Hillary Clinton.

*exactly why is a deeper problem, which I wrote about in: Uncommon Sense*: the Degeneration, and the Redemption, of Political Life in America.