Scott Ritter, in his understated manner, writes today:

“Those who have formulated the policies of the Bush administration which have placed Iran and America on a collision course have done so not on a whim, but rather based upon deep and sincere ideologically based conviction which holds that such a course of action is in the best interests of the United States. The ideologues who populate the current Bush administration, especially those associated with the Office of the Vice President, imbued with an unprecedented level of influence on matters pertaining to national security and defense, may feel obliged to initiate a military strike against Iran prior to leaving office, not for the purpose of achieving any permanent result, but rather to ensnare a new President in a situation where the political-military options for Iran policy are limited by the reality of ongoing conflict.”

Recently, Tom Englehardt, a man of the Left, wrote:

Let's leave to the experts the question of whether Israel could actually launch an effective air strike against Iranian nuclear facilities on its own -- about which there are grave doubts. And let's instead try to imagine what it would mean for Israel to launch such an assault (egged on by the Vice President's faction in the U.S. government) in the last months, or even weeks, of the second term of an especially lame lame-duck President and an historically unpopular administration.

Both Ritter and Englehardt seem to me to be evading a central issue, or dancing around it. Washington and Tel Aviv are joined at the hip. Cheney has no need to egg the boys in Tel Aviv on. Tel Aviv is driving the agenda via its influence and its lobby in the United States. Tel Aviv's man in the White House, hyper-Zionist Elliott Abrams, is assisting Cheney to carry out American foreign policy in the Middle East in the name of George Bush. Cheney brought Abrams into the White House. If the dangerous and dishonest policy of trying to destabilize Iran, using the bogus issue of Iran's legitimate quest to produce nuclear energy, should result in a new war in the greater Middle East, then at least we should know who or what is behind  it. If Americans Knew. Watch the U-Tube video.