The war, again

From William S. Lind:

Between now and January, the Bush administration will have to decide whether or not to take the last dignified exit from Iraq. That is, to announce before the Iraqi elections that we will be leaving soon after them. If Bush and his neocon handlers miss this opportunity, our only choice will be to remain in Iraq until we are driven out in a humiliating defeat.

He then discusses how Iran might react to a possible US and/or Israeli "preemptive strike" against their nuclear installations. Lind dismisses the neocon expectation that they would fire off a few missiles against Israel: there is a bigger and juicier target close at hand.

Under the cover of bad weather, which winter often provides, Iran could strike suddenly into Iraq with several armored divisions. Our forces are scattered throughout Iraq, and they cannot mass rapidly because Iraqi guerillas control the roads. With skill that is not beyond what Iran might manage (the Iranian army is better than Saddam's was) and a bit of luck, they could roll us up before American airpower could get the clear weather it needs to be effective. America would not only lose a war in Iraq; it would lose an army.

Scary stuff, all the more so for the self-willed blindness of the leaders and the self-censoring of their advisors:

New CIA Director Porter Goss recently told his people, "As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."(Quoted in Lind, the Telegraph reprints the whole memo.)

So if Bush says "black is white", the CIA will agree? It seems to me that we must renegotiate the meaning of that middle initial, because it no longer stands for "Intelligence".