Iran: a Red Herring?

by soccerdad

[Update Below]
Both Big Tent Democrat at Talkleft and McJoan at Daily Kos are claiming that all the talk about an attack on Iran is nothing but a red herring meant to divert our eyes from Iraq. In particular they both take Matt Yglesias to task for his call to keep our eyes on Iran.

BTD rants in his usual polite way

This is so wrong, so obtuse, so plain dumb from both Fallows and Yglesias, that I simply can't understand how they came to think these things. Let's be clear -- the chance of Congress authorizing military action against Iran is zero

MCJOAN points out that Reid says that the original AUMF for Iraq does not give Bush the right to attack Iran.

Well what's wrong with this picture? In the first place, Bush will claim that the AUMF does and then what are you going to do about it? This is the same Bush who ignores the Congress, the Supreme Court, his Father, and anyone else who doesn't agree with him. So not having an AUMF means exactly squat. Secondly, these two apparently haven't been paying attention to what the neocons want and the influence of the Israeli lobby on Congress. The neocons led by Cheney want the oil and the Israelis want to dominate the ME. This confluence of goals will make it highly unlikely that Bush would stop.

Now to be fair, both BTD and MCJOAN want the US out of Iraq as do many of us. However, if they think the Democratic leadership wants us out of Iraq or would do anything of substance after Bush attacks Iran they haven't learned much. Bush will attack Iran, the Congress will act outraged and hold hearings (But not impeachment hearings) and nothing will happen. As Michael Klare and others have well documented, the use of military force to keep the flow of oil going has a long bipartisan history. Bush will go for broke, knowing that no matter what happens the US and Europe will do what ever it takes to keep access to the energy resources in the region.

Anyone who thinks the Democratic leadership opposes this policy has been living in a cave. The Democratic leadership has only been claiming that Bush is incompetent.
UPDATE
from Pat Lang

Moreover, he [lang] continues, Bush can count on the military to carry out such a mission [attack on Iran] even without congressional authorization. "If they write a plan like that and the president issues an execute order, the forces will execute it. He's got the power to do that as commander-in-chief. We set that up during the Cold War. It may, after the fact, be considered illegal, or an impeachable offense, but if he orders them to do it, they will do it."