Bush's Legacy

....a nuclear Iran (via Newsmax Insider):

President Bush will not launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving the White House, a former key national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney told the Jerusalem Post.

"No, Bush won't go," said David Wurmser, who served as Cheney's senior adviser on national security affairs from 2003 to 2007, specializing in the Middle East, terrorism, proliferation, and strategy.

Wurmser's comments came in Brussels during a conference on nuclear nonproliferation sponsored by the European Jewish Congress.

"Two things have to be in place for there to be an attack," Wurmser told the Post. "That time has run out, and that diplomacy has run out. The feeling to a large extent now is that diplomacy is working, that there is a trend in the regime toward moderation, that pressure is building on the regime."

According to Wurmser, the Bush Administration’s thinking has gone from advocating regime change to favoring Iranian "behavior modification."

The hope now is not to replace the rule of the ayatollahs, but rather that a leader might emerge in Iran who would substantially change the regime's polices from within, according to Wurmser.

He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “the British, and others" believe that to a large extent, recent American successes in Iraq came about because "Iran has acquiesced" and is not as involved in Iraq as it was previously.

{*Sigh*}  How the Conquerer has shriveled.  I never would have believed that the same man who said on 9/11 itself, "Somebody's gonna pay!," the same man who promulgated the first Bush Doctrine that essentially declared, "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists, and if the latter, your asses are ours," the same man who refined it into pre-emptive self-defense with the words, "We will not wait while storms gather; we will not allow the world's most dangerous regimes to get their hands on the world's most destructive weapons," is now the, yes, wimp who has shrunk to the level of cowardice and idiocy that stakes the lives of millions of Americans on the corrupt, complacent fantasizing that is the stock in trade of Foggy Bottom.

Then, as if to preemptively pour salt into the coming radiation burns, Wurmser added this: 

He also asserted that Iran's military might, and its capacity to respond to any attack, was overblown.

Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, agreed with Wurmser that Iran's threat of a response to military action was exaggerated.

"Iranians are masters of bluff," he said during the conference, adding: "An Iranian response would not be as terrible as the reality which would ensue from an Iranian nuclear capability.”

Is that so?  Convenient that the Bushies reach that dismissive conclusion after deciding against the military action that remains the only means of preventing Iranian-administrated nuclear Armageddon.

It sure as hell, in other words, looks like the bluff worked.  So successfully that on Iran policy, there'll be more of a transition if McCain wins in November instead of Obama.

Remember this when the first American city goes up in irradiated flames: the blood of those countless thousands of Americans who perish will, at least in part, be traceable back to that ranch in Crawford, Texas.  As will the historical receipt for that little short of criminal dereliction of presidential duty.