Another week, another John Bolton op-ed in a major newspaper, this time in the Washington Post, arguing for an Israeli attack on Iran.

With Iran's hard-line mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps unmistakably back in control, Israel's decision of whether to use military force against Tehran's nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever.

Iran's nuclear threat was never in doubt during its presidential campaign, but the post-election resistance raised the possibility of some sort of regime change. That prospect seems lost for the near future or for at least as long as it will take Iran to finalize a deliverable nuclear weapons capability.

Accordingly, with no other timely option, the already compelling logic for an Israeli strike is nearly inexorable. Israel is undoubtedly ratcheting forward its decision-making process.

That logic only exists in the minds of a demented few who fail to weigh the consequences of what such an attack would bring. While Iran is unlikely to respond in kind, it does have asymetrical options available. These might endanger the flow of oil out of the Gulf and place American strategic interests across the region in jeopardy. Former Ambassador Bolton seems to believe that one well placed bomb will bring the regime in Tehran down. That's unlikey.

Whether or not Iran is pursuing an actual nuclear weapon or a credible nuclear deterrent without actually possessing a nuclear weaopn remains unclear. Nonetheless reliable estimates suggest that the Iranians are still years from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Furthermore, a military strike is not an efficient or reliable way to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.  "Far from setting back Iran's nuclear programme, a military attack might create the political conditions in which Iran could accelerate its nuclear weapons programme," nuclear weapons physicist Dr. Frank Barnaby concluded in a March 2007 Oxford Research Group (pdf) report entitled, "Would Air Strikes Work?"

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Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former UN Ambassador and unrepentant neoconservative John Bolton finds that while Israel's military option against Iran's nuclear program is "unattractive", but failing to act is even worse. In his piece, Ambassador Bolton argues that time is not on Israel's side and that one "major new element in Israel's calculus is the Obama administration's growing distance." Ambassador Bolton seems to believe that Israel should attack Iran and the sooner the better.

He outlines six possible Iranian responses to Israeli attack and dismisses each scenario as unlikely to occur. Ambassador Bolton's fantasies extend to the realm of the absurd. For example he argues that even if Iran close the Straits of Hormuz, that might be offset by prudent hedging to prevent any spike in oil prices. By process of elimination but also because of strategic logic, Bolton concludes Iran's most likely option is retaliating through Hamas and Hezbollah. But here this too can be minimized by "simultaneous, pre-emptive attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas in conjunction with a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities." Why is it that John Bolton's answer to every question more war?

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Un-fucking-believable.

Neocon mouthpiece and conspiracy-theorist Frank Gaffney scurried out of his hole again today to spread his typically deranged propaganda on Hardball. Deranged? Yup. According to Gaffney, President Obama is sending "coded" messages of "submission" to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

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Flushed by their success in derailing the nomination of Ambassador Charles Freeman to the National Intelligence Council, the neocons have set their sights on another appointment, that of Ambassador Christopher Hill, who is currently the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, to be next US Ambassador to Iraq. The first salvo was fired earlier this week by Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard who questioned Ambassador Hill's diplomacy skills when really what Mr. Goldfarb is angry about is that Ambassador Chris Hill and Secretary Rice outmanuevered Dick Cheney and the neocons in the Bush Administration's approach to North Korea and the Ambassador has been openly critical of the neoconservative approach to long-standing international issues.

This weekend, the former Vice President got in on the act of Chris Hill bashing courtesy of CNN's John King:

KING: Before we get to another break, let me follow up on that point. You disagree with the overreliance, I think is a good term, a fair term, tell me if I'm wrong, on the diplomacy with the Europeans when it came to Iran. You also disagreed with the approach in the end to North Korea and taking them off the list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for, I believe your view is, for nothing, or for just false promises.

The man who led that effort, Chris Hill, the diplomat in charge then is now President Obama's choice to be the ambassador in Iraq. That's a tough job. Do you think Chris Hill is up to that job based on what he did in North Korea?

CHENEY: He's not the man I would have picked for that post. He doesn't have any experience in the region. He's never served in that part of the world before. He doesn't speak the language. He's got none of the skills and talents that Ryan Crocker had, who was our last ambassador, who did a superb job, deserves as much credit as Dave Petraeus in terms of how that process worked during the surge that led to the success we've seen now in Iraq.

So I think it's a choice that -- a choice I wouldn't have made. I did not support the work that Chris Hill did with respect to North Korea.

That last sentence is telling. That's what they are upset about. They were circumvented on North Korea.

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So it's Sunday morning and I'm halfway paying attention to the panel discussion on This Week with George Stephanopoulos when I do a double take. In the middle of a conversation about Guantanamo Bay, Newt Gingrich, sounding solemn and serious, interrupts with a grave warning:

Can I? I just want to raise one issue that did not come up today that I think is going to become a very big issue. There is a war under way in Mexico. There were more people killed in Mexico in 2008 than were killed in Iraq. It is grossly under-covered by the American media. It is on our border. It has the potential to extend into our countryside. It's a very serious problem.

Yes, it is. But I couldn't help but wonder why Newt Gingrich suddenly seems so passionate about it. I'm sure he's concerned with border security and drug violence, but it turns out Newt has another reason for talking about the "war in Mexico" right now. The neocons may have lost Iraq, but their agenda for Mexico continues unabated. And Newt's just doing what he can to make sure it stays that way.

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