the post where I congratulate Paul Krugman for realizing what I realized almost a year ago

I am already seeing huzzahs in the blogasphere for Paul Krugman’s Monday NYT column (in the greed hole). In it, Krugman warns that the Bush administration will use Iraq as the excuse for an attack on Iran. I am a big Krugman fan, and I mean to take nothing away from his point, but on today’s realization, I gotta say, gee, ya’ think?

On a morning where papers are full of reports on the Bush Administration’s queer as shit “off the record” briefing about how the evil Iranians are perhaps, possibly supplying a few fancy explosives that maybe, could have killed something like 18% five-and-a-half percent of the American war dead since the “end of major combat operations,” is there any question left in anyone’s mind about this—this idea that Bush/Cheney will use Iraqi civil strife as a pretext for war with Iran?

I could spend paragraphs picking apart this “please ignore the man behind the curtain” official leak of 16-month-old evidence about Iranian “EFPs”—there are plenty of questions to be asked, like, “How do you know the EFPs come from the Iranian government and not just some arms dealers or rogue Revolutionary Guardsmen?” (Oh right, it’s an “inference.”) But, I think we can safely say that even if the vast majority of what BushCo is floating is true (and I expect the opposite will be shown to be the case), it still doesn’t justify hostile action or guarantee a positive result from such a use of force.

Yes, there is much to say on this morning where we learn that new acronym and PK lays out the “secret” plan to expand the war, but all I really want to say (and I take no joy in saying it) is, “I told you so.”


PS Yes, I know that Sy Hersh told us so well before I did.