While the democrats congratulate themselves ...

... on their symbolic protests, the Bush administration has basically opened war fronts in two new countries. There was that appallingly transparent massacre of civilians by helicopter gunships earlier in the week in Somalia, (a grotesque show of force on defenseless targets, timed to coincide with Bush's speech, with the inevitable deaths of innocents and just as inevitable belated admission that the "mission" failed), and now today U.S. troops stormed an Iranian consulate in Irbil, northern Iraq, this morning and basically kidnapped six employees. The Times reports that "Fuad Hussein, the spokesman for the president of the [Kurdish, pro-American] semiautonomous territory, Massoud Barzani. Mr. Hussein called the raid an 'abduction.'"

All the headlines are consumed with meta-commentary on how Bush's speech played in Peoria. Meanwhile, Bush continues to do whatever the hell he feels like. Should we be surprised? His press secretary Tony Snow, who at least wins points for candor, comes right out and says it, "the President will not shape policy according to public opinion."

On what Bush has in store for Iran, there have been two great analyses posted today: Tony Karon, Bush’s New Iraq Plan: Bomb Tehran, and Glenn Greenwald, President's intentions towards Iran need much more attention.

Here's Greenwald:

I think there is a tendency to dismiss the possibility of some type of war with Iran because it is so transparently destructive and detached from reality that it seems unfathomable. But if there is one lesson that everyone should have learned over the last six years, it is that there is no action too extreme or detached from reality to be placed off limits to this administration. The President is a True Believer and the moral imperative of his crusade trumps the constraints of reality.

The AEI/Weekly Standard/National Review/Fox News neonconservative warmongers are mocked because of how extremist and deranged their endless war desires are, but the President is, more or less, one of them. He thinks the way they think. The war in Iraq has collapsed and the last election made unmistakably clear that Americans have turned against the war, and the President's response, like their response, was to escalate. How much more proof do we need of how extremist and unconstrained by public opinion and basic reality he is?

And Karon:

But it was the characterization of Iran’s role that was most disturbing [about Bush's speech]. Bush suggested that the Iraqi people had voted for united country at the polls, and seen their dreams dashed by the maneuvering of Iran and Syria and others. That’s a crock. Iran enthusiastically supported those elections, and why wouldn’t they? The Shiite majority voted overwhelmingly in favor of parties far closer to Tehran than they are to Washington. Moreover, while Bush implies that sectarianism was somehow a deviation from what the electorate had chosen, in fact the electorate had voted almost entirely on sectarian and ethnic lines. The sectarian principle is at the heart of the democratically elected government; it’s not some imposition by al-Qaeda or Iran.

Iran and Syria must be addressed, Bush said, but only as a threat — he accused them of offering support to insurgent forces attacking U.S. troops, and vowed to stop them. Almost in the same breath, he added: “We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region. We will expand intelligence sharing ­ and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies. We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.”

Carrier strike groups and Patriot missile defenses are of no use in the counterinsurgency war in Iraq: They are an attempt to turn up the heat on Iran by preparing for an air strike, and putting in place the means to contain Iran’s response via its missile capability. Bush called for regional support, but only on the basis of his anti-Iran alliance — for the Sunni regimes, support for the U.S. in Iraq was cited as a duty in light of their common purpose in containing Iran.

So, essentially we’re now being asked to believe that the Iraqi government, dominated by Iran-friendly Shiite religious parties, is going to act in concert with Bush’s plan — and even Bush admitted that their support is the critical factor — giving U.S. forces the green light to take control of Sadr City from the Sadrists and so on, even as Washington moves its assets into position for a military strike on Iran. It may be, of course, that Washington is posturing in order to sweat Tehran into believing that a military strike is coming in order to intimidate the Islamic Republic into backing down, but frankly I wouldn’t bet on the collective strategic wisdom of Cheney-Rice and Khamenei-Larijani-Ahmedinajad combining to avoid a confrontation. And if the U.S. is raising the stakes, you can reliably expect Iran to do the same, probably starting in Iraq.

Oh, yeah, and on the other front, that Somalia massacre didn't get the al qaeda baddies after all. Quelle surprise!

And the number of shepherds, children and newlywed couples whose flesh was shredded by helicopter gunship fire continue to climb....

"We are really scared," said [Dirir Moalim Hussein, a herder]. "We heard bombing and heavy explosions over our village, it was dark and no one could see well. I ran with two children, I don't know in what direction, but three of my family were killed, including my wife."

"I have nothing right now," Hussein said. "I have lost everything, they have bombed my cows and goats, we don’t know what crime we committed and we have been punished for no reason.”

Justin Raimondo sums it up with his characteristic biting sarcasm:

The series of blunders and willful miscalculations that led to our present predicament in Iraq are now being replicated in Somalia, where a rather large U.S. footprint is being stamped into the hard Somali soil. Well, it isn't a footprint, quite yet, but rather a series of bomb craters, where the lives of "many" civilians, according to news reports, have been summarily ended. U.S. bombing raids, ostensibly aimed at al-Qaeda fighters supposedly hidden among native Islamic militias, have succeeded in killing scores, albeit none of the three dudes we are allegedly after. That's right: we're bombing a country because we're after a terrorist trio....