[dude1394]

I thought this an interesting opinion piece. Powerline pulled out this quote which is about right.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../09/018542.php

The coming of the war with Iran has very little to do with our intentions and has everything to do with the enemy's intentions. Our only choice is how we will respond. Will we continue to evade the need to confront this threat--or will we finally begin to fight back?

A few weeks ago, the Bush administration followed this up with a more substantive threat against Iran. The London Times reported on Pentagon planning for a massive three-day air attack on Iran. "US military planners were not preparing for 'pinprick strikes' against Iran's nuclear facilities," the Times wrote, quoting a source who declared that the plans are "about taking out the entire Iranian military." A second report in London's Telegraph described a "war game" conducted to practice for the economic effects of war with Iran, especially if Iran attempts to cut off oil shipments through the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. The participants reportedly concluded that "The policy recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes" from an attack.

The fact that these stories were leaked to the international press suggests that their intended audience was, once again, the European diplomatists and the establishment in Tehran. This was an attempt to show them the big stick Uncle Sam is holding behind his back, ready to use if the Europeans and Iranians can't come up with their promised "diplomatic solution."

In that context, we can see the significance of last week's report that a diplomatic solution has now been definitively killed--and killed by the Germans, who had most loudly championed diplomacy. According to Fox News, Germany has "notified its allies...that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel refuses to support the imposition of any further sanctions against Iran that could be imposed by the UN Security Council." The reason: "the damaging effects any further sanctions on Iran would have on the German economy." But "according to diplomats from other countries, [the Germans] gave the distinct impression that they would privately welcome, while publicly protesting, an American bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear facilities."

This makes the Germans the second most reprehensible party in this drama--after Iran, of course. The Germans have sidetracked the US for years in diplomatic wrangling that would supposedly end with European support for economic sanctions against Iran--yet it is now clear that the Germans never really intended to impose those sanctions. Worse, they betrayed their allies in the free world for short-term economic gain--this from a country that accuses America of waging war for oil. And the hypocrites now encourage us to attack Iran anyway, while they publicly condemn us.

This is a crucial turning point. The Fox News report makes it clear that Germany's refusal has utterly discredited the administration's advocates of "diplomatic containment" of Iran, with the hawks telling the diplomatists, in so many words, "we told you so."