Iran?

Gosh. An advance story on the 9/11 report says that there will be evidence in it about some low level assistance by Iran to al Qaeda travelers who turned out to be involved in 9/11. The article is full of disclaimers that this does not mean that Iran was involved in 9/11, only that there was some cooperation between some elements in the Iranian government and al Qaeda.

Glenn Reynolds, presumably speaking on behalf of his side of the blog world, asks whether the people who opposed the war on Iraq because of the absence of evidence of ties to al Qaeda will now advocate war with Iran.

Gosh.

It's almost as if respectable (i.e. conservative) opinion hadn't come to a consensus that the problem with Iraq was bad intelligence from the CIA. Why in the world wouldn't we now all jump up braying for war at the drop of a previously classified intelligence report?

It's almost as if the better part of the American military isn't bogged down occupying Iraq, which didn't turn out to be quite the welcoming environment that it was supposed to be. How could invading Iran possibly go wrong?

It's almost as if we've learned absolutely nothing. Or that we want to score partisan points more than, say, have serious discussions of foreign policy. Naw.

Personally, I take seriously the fact that the Bush administration has completely blown American credibility on any intelligence-based claim for military action for the duration of his presidency; and his rather unconvincing, but determined, attempts to shift the blame to intelligence agencies makes the problem even worse by turning a political issue into an institutional one which may well cripple the ability of future presidents to act in the near to mid future. That's one of the major consequences of the Iraqi affair... for serious people, at least.