Bush’s New Excuse?—If We Leave Iraq, Iran Will Threaten World Peace!

Bush’s recent speech to the American Legion in which he said that allowing Iran to pursue “technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust” sounds mighty familiar of course.

Now whilst a majority of Americans have finally wised-up to Bush’s crap, the fact that his year-long campaign to push Iran as the next great “threat” has had no takers beyond the usual suspects doesn’t mean a damn. He's still keen on bombing Iran.

As everything Bush has EVER done or said clearly demonstrates, he doesn’t give a shit about what the majority public thinks or needs; manufacturing support for the Iraq invasion was merely useful but now with his established “executive powers” he’s perfectly capable of doing whatever he wants without public support—all he needs is his “Beltway” enablers, of which he has many, too attack Iran.

Interestingly (and scarily) he may have an accidental ally in Iranian President Ahmadinejad:

"The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," Ahmadinejad said at a press conference apparently after Bush’s American Legion speech, referring to US troops in Iraq. "Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbors and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation."

This quote may serve Bush well—not in reality, but in his mind and the minds of his warmongering supporters: in addition to the threat of Iran as a nuclear power, Bush could now parse these words to argue even more forcefully for the continued occupation of Iraq; the reasoning would be that an Iran with nuclear ambitions intends to “fill the gap” that would be left by a US withdrawal, take over Iraq and its oil and finance yet more global terrorism!

I’ll go out on what may be a very short limb here and predict that Bush will publicly make this connection in the next two weeks.

Such a connection would actually make no sense to the well-informed, but then that’s never been the US’s nor George’s strong point, has it?

UPDATE (8/30) :

"To a person, they said there would be genocide, gas prices in the U.S. would rise to eight or nine dollars a gallon, al-Qaida would continue its expansion, and Iran would take over that portion of the world if we leave," [John]Porter (R-Nevada) said Wednesday in a phone interview from Las Vegas.

That's one ( not from the WH though)...we'll see if this progresses