Iran is next. After manhandling the war in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, Team Bush is now revving up for war in Iran. The war lovers are setting us up for another war when we can't finish the first two. It's like a kid who wants dessert before finishing his veggies.

Some people love the idea of war. The President's approval ratings skyrocket whenever an international crisis arises, and he gets a honeymoon period once the war starts. If the war fails . . . well, we'll worry about that later.

To start a war, you have to scare the American people into thinking that war is the only option. That's how the Iraq war started. That the scare tactics were all false did not matter at the time. Everyone hated Saddam Hussein anyway, and thh six-month build-up to war in late 2002 early 2003 was like the run up to the Super Bowl. The anticipation and excitement was so fierce it was like having seven consecutive Christmas Eve's before the big day finally came around.

I just finished reading another book about the Bush administration's propaganda war against the American people in the run-up to war in Iraq. This time it was Hubris, by David Corn and Michael Isikoff. These books are starting to sound the same after a while. Almost none of the intelligence that supposedly supported war in Iraq was true. The question for some people is whether Bush lied to the American people. The better question is whether his administration did. There is a difference in these distinctions. Bush publicly said what his advisors told him to say. His advisors cherry picked the intelligence to support war, even though sourcing methods were questionable and foreign governments who supplied some of this information distanced themselves from it. If you want war badly enough, you'll find a way to start one. Even assuming that Bush was a mouthpiece for the warmongers in his administration, we're talking about one corrupt administration. Bush was not intelligent enough to ask the right questions, and that's the scandal. When nearly every justification for war is false, you can assume that the proponents of war knew it at the time. There is no such thing as being extremely negligent. At some point, extreme negligence turns into recklessness, and you can also assume that mistakes like this were intentional.

The general view is that Bush is losing the war on terror. al-Qaeda is regrouping in Afghanistan because we've been farting around in Iraq, which is a lost cause and making us less safe.

So if the facts supporting the Iraq war were smoke and mirrors, why should we believe the Bush administration's next feature film, War in Iran? Seymour Hersh, one of our greatest investigative reporters, says that Iran war plans are afoot.

According to Reuters:

Despite the Bush administration's insistence it has no plans to go to war with Iran, a Pentagon panel has been created to plan a bombing attack that could be implemented within 24 hours of getting the go-ahead from President George W. Bush, The New Yorker magazine reported in its latest issue.

The special planning group was established within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in recent months, according to an unidentified former U.S. intelligence official cited in the article by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in the March 4 issue.

The panel initially focused on destroying Iran's nuclear facilities and on regime change but has more recently been directed to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq, according to an Air Force adviser and a Pentagon consultant, who were not identified.

The consultant and a former senior intelligence official both said that U.S. military and special-operations teams had crossed the border from Iraq into Iran in pursuit of Iranian operatives, according to the article.

The problem with the propaganda rush for a war with Iran is that, as usual, the intelligence may be faulty. According to the London Guardian last week:

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, diplomatic sources in Vienna said today. The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran and raises the possibility that the US could resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.

At the heart of the debate are accusations - spearheaded by the US - that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.

However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.

"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations said.

"They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities.

"Now [the inspectors] don't go in blindly. Only if it passes a credibility test."

Is there any good news here? The only good news that I can find is that American generals will quit if Bush goes to war in Iran. According to the London Times, "Some of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources. Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack."