Congress has now authorized an attack on Iran

We saw the news this morning that the White House is planning to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. On it's surface, while that seemed to be ratcheting up the noise level against Iran, consistent with the Bush administration's obvious spoiling for another disastrous war, it didn't seem that big a step.

Well, we now, thanks to Attywood, have to think again:

Nowhere yet have I seen what it seems clear Bush's Iran move is really all about.

The White House hawks in Dick Cheney's office and elsewhere who want to stage an attack on Iran are clearly winning the internal power stuggle. And an often overlooked sub-plot on the long road toward war with Tehran is this: How could Bush stage an attack on Iran without the authorization of a skeptical, Democratic Congress?

Today, the White House has solved that pesky problem in one fell swoop. By explicitly linking the Iranian elite guard into the post 9/11 "global war on terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's lawyers would certainly now argue that any military strike on Iran is now covered by the October 2002 authorization to use military force in Iraq, as part of their overly sweeping response to the 2001 attacks.