Pot... Kettle ... etc.

Don't you just hate it when people start throwing facts in the face of your rhetoric?

President Bush has no authority to accuse Iran of sponsoring terrorism while the U.S. supports "Zionist terrorists" and runs military prisons that use "torture," Tehran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

Secretary of State Condi Rice shot back, responding, "Ouch. Oooo... nice one, Hamid. Didn't see that coming." (My apologies for stealing that particular literary device from Mike at Running Scared.)

No... actually what she said was,

"An attack on Iran over its alleged nuclear program is not on the agenda at this point. We have many diplomatic tools still at our disposal and we intend to pursue them fully. However, Iran must not use the cover of civilian nuclear power development to sustain a program that can lead to a nuclear weapon."

(Emphasis mine.) If you will look at the emphasized phrases for a moment, please, I think you'll see where I'm going here. After being outed by Seymour Hersh, this administration has never come out and denied that they are planning to invade Iran. The most they have said is that we're not planning on invading them right now. The Iranian Foreign Minister had a few thoughts to add on that.

"Such threats will not have much effect on the Islamic Republic and we will continue our path of sovereignty, independence and saying no to hegemony."

Let the rattling of sabers begin. As to the nuclear question, other countries continue to advance in the world of technology... particularly the wealthy ones. (You know... like the ones sitting on billions of barrels of black gold?) The development of nuclear reactors to generate power is going to happen, since other countries also realize that the oil is going to run out some time this century.

Is Iran also working on developing a nuclear weapon or five? I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised. But this is also something that America and Western Europe are going to have to come to grips with. It was a valiant effort to try to make sure that nobody else could ever join the atomic club, but the djinni is out of the bottle now and it's too late to put the cork back in. It may just be time to start treating a few of the other nations like adults rather than attempting to put them in "time out" like children.

We are seeing the runup to Iraq being shown as an instant replay. Even if Tehran has no nuclear ambitions beyond the peaceful generation of power, the administration is laying the groundwork to claim that it "must be for a weapon." Since you can't prove a negative, Iran can never prove that they don't have a bomb. Before you know it, the next, large, oil producing nation in need of "liberation" is in Bush's sights.

We can only pray that a sufficient number of congressmen will wake the hell up this time and shut this madman down.
Edit by Ron
Jazz has a related post over at Running Scared you should also check out.