When Doves Cry (The Hidden MoDo)

To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, if brains were elastic, these guys wouldn't have enough to make suspenders for a parakeet.

That's Maureen Dowd in her latest column, Wag the Camel (fully available to Times Select subscribers), referring to how the BushCo Gang's obsession over one Middle Eastern country with conflated nuclear capabilities has allowed a neighboring country to actually get in the game. And yes, they've got game (the following from the WaPo and Guardian):

Iran has succeeded in enriching uranium to new levels, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday, proclaiming a technical breakthrough that advances both the country's nuclear program and the international controversy surrounding it.

Addressing an invited audience of clerics, military figures and dignitaries, Mr Ahmadinejad made an unabashed appeal to national pride: "The nation, under the umbrella of God's grace and through its own efforts, has reached this big achievement. Today is a big day which will be recorded in Iran's history."

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog group, confirmed that the Iranians were operating an array of 164 centrifuges, and inspectors arriving in Tehran on Wednesday will seek to verify the production of a token amount of nuclear fuel. Producing amounts large enough to power an electrical plant or -- if enriched long enough -- to make a bomb would require several thousand centrifuges, orchestrated in cascades whose constant operation poses significant technical challenges.

"This means they can operate a larger cascade, but can they do it for a long time? We don't know," said a Western official closely involved in monitoring Iran's progress.

Now back to MoDo:

Speaking before a mural of fluttering white doves, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged that his scientists had concocted enriched uranium. They will now churn out nuclear fuel as fast as they can.

Are they making a bomb? Nah, said the Iranian president, furthest thing from their minds.

Are we going to bomb them before they can get a bomb? Nah, said the American president, furthest thing from our minds.

The nuclear doves announcement was embarrassing for Mr. Bush, who had said on Monday that he was determined to prevent Iran from getting the know-how to enrich uranium. But the Persian logic cannot be faulted. If you pretend to have W.M.D., the U.S. may come and get you. Ask Saddam. If you really have W.M.D., you're bulletproof. Ask Kim Jong Il.

I'm sure the mad-as-cheese Mr. Ahmadinejad cannot believe his luck. The down-the-rabbit-hole Bush administration is tied up in Iraq, helping to create a theocracy friendly to Iran while leaving Iran to do whatever it wants on W.M.D.

In this week's New Yorker, Seymour Hersh writes about the Pentagon planning for a possible strike against the nutty "apocalyptic Shiites," as the former C.I.A. agent Robert Baer calls the Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad and his chorus line of clerics.

Mr. Hersh quotes a source close to the Pentagon saying that Mr. Bush believes "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy." Which makes sense, in a wag-the-camel way, since saving Iraq is not going to be his legacy.

The Bush hawks, who have already proven themselves cultural cretins in Iraq, seem to still be a long way from that humble foreign policy they promised. A former defense official told Mr. Hersh that the plan was based on an administration belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." The official's reaction: "What are they smoking?"

Just as Rummy dismissed questions back in August 2002 about a possible invasion of Iraq as a media "frenzy" — even as plans were well under way — the defense chief shrugged off The New Yorker story as "Henny Penny, the sky is falling."