[Rutles4Ever]

I keep thinking that Bush feels that he has to wait until after the election and some more of Iraq dies down and some troop shifts are made before he has the flexibility to deal with Iran.

My fear is that we blew the "pre-emptive" card with Iraq. Intelligence may have overestimated the probability of a counter-revolution against the Iranian clerics, placing them at a lower priority than Saddam Hussein.

I think it will be extremely difficult to play the pre-emptive card with Iran. Israel has a better hand to play than we do, given their direct vulnerability to the Iranian medium-range missile. As insane as it sounds, world support of the United States would probably vanish (these are indeed times of insanity) if we launched another pre-emptive war on Iran. As long as the Israeli trump card exists, I wouldn't expect the U.S. to strike Iran UNLESS - unless - a terrorist attack occurs on U.S. soil which can be pinned on Iran, or Iran's support of Al Qaeda. At that point, all bets are off.

[Quix]

I think you're right on all counts.

[HipShot]

The simple fact that Iran has threatened our troops in theatre with a preemptive attack should be enough to vindicate any decision to take out their C&C. I still can't determine exactly why they're fishing for us to attack them.