Insisting The Obvious For No Reason At All

Somebody please help me understand this:

President Bush said Sunday that Iran is threatening the security of the world, and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger "before it's too late."

Bush said Iran funds terrorist extremists, undermines peace in Lebanon, sends arms to the Taliban, seeks to intimidate its neighbors with alarming rhetoric, defies the United Nations and destabilizes the entire region by refusing to be open about its nuclear program.

"Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terror," Bush said in a speech he delivered about mid-way through his eight-day Mideast trip that began with a renewed push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace pact _ an accord he said whose "time has come."

"Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere," Bush said. "So the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf, and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late."

Okay, first: Why does the AP headline read, "Bush Insists Iran Biggest Terror Sponsor"?  That suggests that the AP believes Iran isn't a terror sponsor at all, indeed that they think it's obvious that the mullahgarchy is the veritable dove of peace coming down out of heaven to alight upon Adolph Ahmadenijad's windjacketed shoulder with the voice of Allah saying, "This is my beloved Neanderthal, in whom I am well pleased; bow down to him (or else)," and the President is some desperate, warmongering crank still trying to "smear" Tehran as "terror masters".  Which is akin to "insisting" that the sky is green on Tuesdays and Thursdays, orange on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Argyle on the weekends.  And yet I have to wonder how much of the public has been taken in by this brazen pro-Iranian propagandizing from our own media.  "After all," they can claim, "'Bush's own' intelligence agencies say Iran gave up nukes five years ago."  All of which means they're in the same quisling boat with the Enemy Media.  But if you don't pay attention to such things on an ongoing basis, how discerning can you really be?

Until an Iranian nuke goes off in Tel Aviv or Paris or Manhattan.  But that'll be Bush's fault, of course.  And even then, will he do anything about it?  What does "confronting this danger" that is more obvious than Michael Moore from orbit really mean?  Piling ineffective sanctions atop more ineffective sanctions isn't going to accomplish anything, other perhaps than to hasten the mullahgarchy's rush towards all-out war. "Strengthening long-standing security arrangements with friends in the Gulf" in practice means selling more arms to the Saudis. And as the dismal events of the past couple of years in the Palestinian Territories have amply demonstrated, "advancing democracy" in the Muslim world only advances freedom, even tangentially, if there are several hundred thousand heavily armed American troops present to make sure that far-from-natural linkage sticks.

So, once again, we have Dubya's lofty, vaguely bellicose rhetoric flitting about the rhetorical ether looking for a policy to support that he has no intention of promulgating.  As I consult my dictionary, I see the term "confront" exposited as "to face in hostility or defiance; oppose".  Is there any signal, any hint whatsoever, that the Bush Administration intends to "confront" Iran in the true sense of that term over its drive for nukes, its support of global terrorism, the nexus thereof, or anything else?

Not beyond words.  Which get emptier every time he utters them, a desultory match for the collective national stomachlessness for the war with Iran that is inevitably coming, whether we want it or not.

Thanks for your help.  I think I understand it now.  I'm off to do what I always have to do after swallowing a bunch of air.

It's cosmically appropriate, somehow.