Who needs a pretext? Iran, here we come.

It's no great surprise, but the fact that they proudly announced that it was "The Decider" a.k.a. "The Escalator" who personally authorized the U.S. attack on the Iranian (sort of) consulate in Iraq to take six of their diplomats as hostages, certainly tells you where the war with Iran is about to go. Bush is obviously trying to ginny up a new "Gulf of Tonkin" pretext for attacking Iran. If he can't goad them into that, he'll just attack anyway. Lyndon Johnson taught us all how it's done, but Bush has taken the art to its ultimate perfection.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — A recent series of American raids against Iranians in Iraq was authorized under an order that President Bush decided to issue several months ago to undertake a broad military offensive against Iranian operatives in the country, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

“There has been a decision to go after these networks,” Ms. Rice said in an interview with The New York Times in her office on Friday afternoon, before leaving on a trip to the Middle East.