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I agree that Seymour Hersh is not necessarily a credible news source. In fact, the report that American special forces are in Iran is old news to me. I remember reading in the summer of 2004 that American and Israeli covert operations teams were being sent in to Iran. I think I read that in several news sources at the time, not the least of which was the Jerusalem Post, which is my favorite Israeli newspaper (and a credible news source, IMHO). It's my hope that now that Hersh has reported it, that it's a large-scale operation. Best-case scenario is that we establish the capability of doing some sabotage in the near future. Say, attempt to simultaneously (meaning within a 24-hr period) sabotage every target we know of, but don't say a word about it. Should Iran retaliate (say, on American forces in Iraq, or in Israel), it would give us the international advantage of not appearing to be warmongers. But I hope we couldn't care less what the rest of the world (read: Europe) thinks of us.

In my opinion, we have to do something. Helping along regime change would be ideal. By all accounts, Iran will have the bomb by the end of 2007. Other reports, probably more accurate, suggest they may have it by the end of 2005. Irsaeli intelligence suggests they might have it by early summer. But the truth is, we really don't know. Which means we need to get going. If the White House has a real Iran policy, the public hasn't been informed. They don't need to tell us details (and it's probably best that they don't, as much as we would like to know them!), but we (and the Iranian people, most of all!) need to be made aware of it. I'll be mighty disappointed if the State of the Union doesn't talk about Iran more than one sentence, if that much. Iraq received a paragraph, maybe two, in 2002. Iraq deserves the foreign-policy spotlight, but know this - Iran is next. Either regime change happens in Iran, or Iran tries to effect regime change somewhere else.

Finally, take note of the White House and the Pentagon's response to Hersh's story. They didn't quite say that the story is flat-out wrong and total nonsense. They blasted the story for sure. But they didn't quite deny it.

Reading the CNN account, at least they do the favor of making Hersh's biases crystal-clear. Suffice it to say, he's not a neocon.

But surely no one here thinks that we don't have any assets inside Iran!