Is there a limit to power or stupidity?

Yeah, I'm late to the game in talking about Sy Hersh's article on US interests in Iran. Yeah it's long, but it's pretty informative.

The money paragraph:

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

So I don't know where to start on this one. First of all, the president should content himself with Iraq as his legacy. When the most overtly Christian president of recent times succeeds in starting 3 wars with 3 Islamic governments, that's not a legacy, that's the crusades. And the crusades went on and on and on. That will become Bush's legacy. War for the next several decades. Such an event could spread thorough all of the Islamic nations and maybe the Christian ones too. Hopefully that consultant's just a hater with a grudge, because it really sounds like Bush is developing a martyr complex and feels he has nothing left to lose.

Worse is the talk of use of nuclear weapons:

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’

As rankly hippocritical as it is to say "we can have nukes, but you can't because you're crazy and we don't trust you know to use them", how much worse is it to follow that statement up with "and if you try to get them we'll nuke you."? That's like, unlimited stupidty.

There's still some hope:

The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.”

So let's hope that's true. I'm not sure if the President has authority to launch nukes based on his personal convictions, but I bet he thinks he does. And then the question becomes whether the military would disobey a direct order. Scary stuff.