diplomacy as a setup for a nuclear punch

The Bush Administration is gearing up for its next two wars, and they're going to be hot ones, according to Paul Craig Roberts' latest column.

Mired in interminable conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration is moving toward initiating two more wars, one with Iran and one with North Korea. With no US troops available, the Bush administration is revamping US war doctrine to allow for "preventative nuclear attack." In short, the Bush administration is planning to make the US the first country in history to initiate war with nuclear weapons. The Pentagon document, "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," calls for the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear adversaries in order "to ensure success of US and multinational operations."

In the case of Iran and North Korea, the Bush administration is using diplomacy not for diplomatic purposes of reaching agreements, but in order to set the two countries up for nuclear attack. In the case of Iran, the Bush administration's plan is now obvious. The Bush administration is leveling false charges against Iran, just as it did against Iraq, of conspiring to make nuclear weapons. These charges are known to be false by the Bush administration and by the entire world.

I think Roberts raises a good point about how the Bush administration has shown a pattern of using "diplomacy" simply as a means of making baseless assertions and ridiculous demands, in order to set a foreign power up for attack. Bush's father did the same thing back in the days before the first Iraq war. I hope he's wrong about the nukes - that's too scary to contemplate. But unless Bush is raising a secret clone army, I don't know where the troops are going to come from for a traditional non-nuclear invasion. Nothing shocks me any more about the levels of depravity that Bush and the neocons will resort to in their plans for global hegemony.