¿Marcha inexorable hacia la guerra con Irán?

Todo indica que sí, así será. Los tambores baten cada vez más fuerte, los medios de comunicación de nuevo repitiendo mentiras, medias verdades, ocultando información... Exactamente lo que condujo a la guerra/genocidio de Irak.

There were some things far more frightening this week than Halloween's small ghouls and goblins — and the scariest of all is the Bush administration's seemingly inexorable march toward military confrontation with Iran.

What ARE they smoking back there at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? The very idea is dumb as a fencepost and best left to the biggest pied piper of what passes for neo-conservative thought, Norman Podhoretz. Yet both President George W. Bush and his able assistant, Vice President Darth Cheney, are marching to that tune and humming along lustily.

There is no crisis here, and no earthly reason to manufacture one on short notice, except for the fact that in under 15 months the Bush administration will pass ignominiously into history. Then a new chief executive can begin dealing with two ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a national debt nearing $10 trillion, a terrorist threat to America only made stronger by eight years of Bush and Cheney, and a national economy trembling on the brink of recession.

As though that weren't a big enough mess to leave behind, like so much trash in an abandoned trailer home, these brilliant thinkers want to bequeath a third and far more dangerous war to whoever is unlucky enough to win the ongoing tussle of midgets that passes for a presidential contest.

There are two questions here: Why? And, why now?

Yes, the centrifuges are whirling away in Iran's deeply buried and widely dispersed nuclear facilities, enriching uranium that can be used to power electric generation plants and, it's true, can also be used to build nuclear weapons.

But most analysts say that even if Iran's ultimate ambition is to build a nuclear weapon, it will take them another five or six years before they get there. Some say even longer.

How about we take a deep breath and — once we have an administration in power that believes that it is far better to talk, talk, talk than it is to war, war, war — negotiate with Iran without all those preconditions so beloved by Bush and Cheney.

How about we do all we can to support the International Atomic Energy Agency and its goal of inspecting facilities like those in Iran to ensure that the product is used only for peaceful purposes.

If none of that works, we can count on one final fallback position: If and when Iran and its illustrious leader, Ahmad Uglydinnerjacket, get within reach of building a nuke, Israel will take out crucial parts of that system.

All of this argues against Bush and Cheney doing anything more than running their mouths and pretending to still be relevant, studly and in charge as they stumble blindly toward the finish line and history's harsh judgment.

The more thoughtful military and civilian advisers can rattle off a dozen reasons why an American attack on Iran at this juncture would be foolish in the extreme and risk setting the Middle East afire.