Things are happening here, and frankly, it scares the shit out of me:

• The IAEA has contradicted recent reports of the advanced status of Iran's nuclear program, and has indicated that Iran is cooperating well and making progress. And yet Bush continues to make dire warnings about Iran and nuclear weapons.
• Norman Podhoretz, a leading neoconservative, who "makes Paul Wolfowitz… seem almost a moderate realist," and who recently wrote an essay advocating an attack on Iran, is on Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy team.
• Some Russian bombers recently flew really close to UK airspace. Russia has a pretty good relationship with Iran, because the Iranians like to buy their weapons.
• Syria recently fired on Israeli aircraft.
• Our air force just flew six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles to an air force base in Louisiana that may be a Middle East staging area. They said the nukes were a mistake, but the cruise missiles were on purpose.
• Iran says that the US is behind Kurdish rebel attacks inside Iran.

Let's think about it for a second. In the region, we have Sunni and Shiite factions openly fighting and practicing ethnic cleansing in Iraq. We have Iran, which is Shiite, and may or may not be supporting or participating in the fighting in Iraq. We have Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which are Shiite and openly supported by Iran. We have Saudi Arabia, which is Sunni, and which is the birthplace of Al Qaeda and the home country of nearly all the 9/11 hijackers. We have Israel, which is hated by Sunni and Shiite alike. We have Hamas, which is Sunni, and which does not have any regional ambitions other than the eradication of Israel. We have the Kurds in northern Iraq, who are friendly to the US and not at all to Iran, and who would like to declare independence from Iraq. We have Turkey, which is opposed to Kurdish independence. And we have the United States, which is about as universally hated as Israel, and whose military is stretched thin because of commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Okay, so let's say we attack Iran using air power exclusively, because we can't commit any ground troops to an invasion. Iran, weakened but still capable on the ground, immediately moves into Iraq in force to engage Americans. They also hit Kurdistan in retaliation for the rebel attacks on their soil. Hezbollah and Syria begin to bombard Israel with rockets, because hey, you might as well (remember, Saddam did the same thing back in the first Gulf war). Syria may take the opportunity to overthrow the Lebansese government. Saudi Arabia perceives a problem in Iraq, because the Iranian troops are there, and if they gain access to southern Iraq, they'll be at the Saudis' doorstep. Basra is the main city in southern Iraq, and it's predominantly Shiite, and therefore possibly sympathetic to Iran. So Saudi Arabia sends troops into Iraq. Iraq's government, which is on life support anyway, bites the dust. Meanwhile, Israel is retaliating against Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran with airstrikes, and Turkey invades Kurdistan to protect their interests there.

And let's not forget that Israel and the United States both have nuclear weapons. Oh, and you can forget about oil supplies for the next twenty years while everybody fights it out.

So now you have, incredibly, a far worse godawful mess in the region than the godawful mess we have now. And it's closer to being a reality than you think, folks. The administration wants to invade Iran. They have their contingency plans all set. They know what targets they will hit. Right now, in the media, what you are seeing is the administration attempting to turn public opinion against Iran. They want you to think that the Iranian government is killing Americans in Iraq, and that their acquisition of nuclear weapons is imminent. They did the exact same thing in the run-up to the Iraq war - they said Iraq was behind 9/11, and they said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They were lying then, and they're lying now.

This is real, people. They want to do this. They are trying to do it right now. Do not fall for it. We cannot afford to attack Iran.

Okay, so Cheney will be President for a little while on Saturday while Bush gets a colonoscopy. Big deal - he's already President anyway.

What I love is the use of the term 'surveillance' to describe the procedure:

He last underwent colorectal cancer surveillance on June 29, 2002.

"As reported at the time and in subsequent physical exams, absent any symptoms, the president's doctor recommended repeat surveillance in approximately five years," Snow said. "The president has had no symptoms."

See? The President is subject to invasive surveillance, too, just like everyone else in the country since he took office. He gets a crack medical team from Bethesda (pun definitely intentional), and we get AT&T. But it's the same thing.

It'll be interesting to see if they find that conditions have improved since his last colonoscopy in 2002. That's when they discovered the story of Saddam Hussein attempting to purchase uranium in Niger. Obviously, they pulled it right out of there when they found it. And there've been other "removals" as well.

Here's to President Bush's continuing colorectal health.

President Bush has always kept himself in the dark. Now he gets dressed there too.

George W. Bush recently visited the only country on Earth that can still stand him - Albania. I believe he was checking out retirement communities or something. Anyhow, while he was working the crowd, someone stole his watch. Check out the video, and keep your eyes on his left wrist.

I believe the word you're looking for is "hapless."

Former deputy attorney general James Comey testified before the Senate on Tuesday about how he and FBI director Robert Mueller prevented Alberto Gonzales (then Bush's lawyer) and former White House chief of staff Andrew Card from ambushing then-AG John Ashcroft to get him to agree to Bush's original domestic wiretapping plan.

Card and Gonzales were on the way over to get his approval for the plan. What the plan was hasn't been revealed yet, but it's clear that it was scary. Comey and Mueller heard Bush's boys were coming, so they "rushed" over to warn Ashcroft, who was hospitalized at the time. That's right, he was sick and in the hospital. Comey and Mueller got there before Card and Gonzales, and when they arrived, Ashcroft refused to endorse the plan. As we now know, a later, more limited version of the plan was approved in collaboration with the Justice Department.

Judging from how scary the actual warrantless wiretapping program turned out to be, imagine if the original plan had gone through.

I couldn't help but notice the similarity here to the hospital scene in the The Godfather, where the ailing Vito Corleone's police guard has disappeared and Michael and Enzo stare down the hit squad sent by Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey. It's unnerving. I can almost imagine the film noir shadows, the darkened street, the trembling hand reaching for the jacket pocket…

When you'd stoop to taking advantage of a sick man to support your illegal activities, are you really any better than a common gangster? At least now the White House doesn't have to intimidate the attorney general to get what they want. They just have to ask.

George W. Bush has a lot of problems lately.

He's got a former administration official self-destructing messily at the World Bank. His attorney general, who presumably had to memorize the occasional piece of information when he was working his way through Harvard Law School, now seems completely unable to remember any conversation or meeting he has ever participated in. And the unprecedented cronyism and incompetence that characterizes all levels of his administration is becoming clearer to the public and to the media every week.

His war isn't going well. Soldiers are coming home in boxes, and there's no end in sight. He's long since lost support for the war effort at home. And it's becoming ever clearer that his legacy, such as it is, will certainly include decades of escalated sectarian violence in the Middle East. It's like he was reading the Road Map upside down.

His party is stumbling around trying to tag someone with the monumental task of bringing home a Republican victory in 2008. They know exactly who they want, but, among other things, there's the small matter of the 22nd amendment. So they have no clear vision, and meanwhile Bush has single-handedly reinvigorated the Democratic Party. It wasn't so long ago that there was no hope for progressives in this country - the Democrats were scattered and there was going to be a "permanent Republican majority." How sad for Bush that he is watching this grand vision crumble before his eyes.

So GWB has problems. And that's just the stuff that he would think is wrong. I could name a few more, but all of this makes me wonder. See, Bush is a guy, a human man. He's the president, but he's also a regular dude. How does he feel about all of this?

We see the swagger, the relentless arrogance unshakable confidence, the decisiveness. But with all of this truly heavy stuff going wrong around him, does a regular dude like Bush maybe, just maybe, have occasional, ahem, doubts about whether he's done the right thing?

Here's the way I see it: Bush is a religious man, or so I'm told. That means that he holds a certain worldview about a man's place in the universe (hint: we're special as a species, but individually we're insignificant). Given that insignificance, can a Christian man truly believe (as Bush would have us believe) that the decisions he makes are infallible? Can a man who believes he is a sinner actually maintain absolute confidence in his own ability to run a country?

I think he can't. And so I think that Bush is privately racked by doubt and guilt. He knows that lots and lots of people are dying because of him. He's not stupid or oblivious. He appears so because of the arrogance of his public persona. But I think he's hurting. I can't point to any particular episode; his public face is as polished as ever, the media machine freshly oiled and humming away. But the man has got to be coming apart on the inside.

I mentioned this to a co-worker and to my wife, and they disagree with me. My wife says that evangelical religions don't encourage doubt or existential questions like this, which I think is true. She says that he believes that he is doing God's work, and that that belief precludes all doubt and self-examination. I see her point, but I don't agree - you can't simply remove doubt from your mind like that, regardless of what religion you are. Even the stories about people who actually were supposed to be real prophets have them questioning themselves once in a while.

My co-worker says that he's spoiled - he's always been privileged and has always been able to avoid responsibility (Air National Guard, anyone?). She says that a life lived like that makes you callous, shallow, and, indeed, callow, and that Bush is simply unable to recognize the consequences of his actions. And I see her point, too.

But in the end I can't believe that religion or lifestyle can free you from normal human emotions like guilt and self-doubt. They don't keep you from soul-searching, or obsessing over hypotheticals, or feeling like you should clean up your own mess. I still think that, behind the Decider costume and underneath the Commander Guy multi-function wristwatch, there has to be some human emotion about all that has been lost.

I guess that makes me an optimist.