We're screwed.

One of the reasons I have so far avoided blogging about the set-up of Iran over the British sailors now in captivity for allegedly trespassing in Iranian waters, is because I needed time to process what has happened. If you think about it, knowing the Bush regime and its lapdog Tony Blair has been itching to broaden the Mideast War to Iran, there really is no logical conclusion to reach other than the British government ordered those sailors to either trespass in Iranian waters, or get close enough to be considered trespassers. The inevitable result of that order was that the sailors would be captured and held as enemies of the Iranian state--a manufactured crisis, designed to provoke retaliatory and escalating back-and-forth actions that would lead to war.

None of this is surprising, and none of it would have happened had the U.S. and British governments not sent war fleets into the Persian Gulf to prepare for the attack. A government-linked Russian news service reported over the weekend that the U.S. intends to strike Iran as early as this month. And Tehran was stupid enough to play right into the Bush regime's hands. All it took was a call to Tony Blair, and the manufactured provocation was a done deal. But things may not go quite as well as this incompetent bunch of power-hungry maniacs planned: The RAW Story reports that all fifteen sailors have confessed to illegally entering Iranian waters, and that British Global Positioning Satellite information proves they were in Iranian, and not Iraqi waters as the British government has claimed.

One has to wonder what the assholes-in-chief are thinking; even Henry Kissinger, a shameless toady of the powerful given to saying whatever will please those in executive office, admits that the Iraq war is already lost, and is not salvageable. And yet, despite all the horror and bloodshed inflicted on Iraq and its people by the U.S. invasion and occupation, despite all the incompetence and loss of credibility, these fuckers are prepared to start yet another war they have no hope of winning--all for the sake of their petty, imperial ambitions.

One would think, given the latest string of scandals currently plaguing the White House over the attorney firings; Alberto Gonzalez's perjury before Congress over the same, and the loss of faith by Republicans in Congress in the scuzzy little fascist; the high profile testimony by Valerie Plame Wilson and her former employers at the CIA that she was indeed a covert operative and that the regime's outing of her as CIA is therefore a crime; the growing demands for impeachment across the nation, even coming from the Mormon stronghold of Salt Lake City, Utah; all the scandals now coming to light ought to be putting the Bush regime on notice that the days of getting its way on everything are over now that Democrats are in charge and the investigations are revealing the truth in ever-more outrageous detail.

But no, that's not what's happening. The Bush regime is still plodding along on its course toward another ill-conceived war. And Democrats, cowed by Republican lies about "not supporting the troops" for daring to pass resolutions putting even tepid timetables on keeping soldiers in Iraq through the supposed end of Shrubya's dictatorship, are letting him do it. They won't impeach him or his gargoyle, Dick Cheney, even though the public wants them to and even though it is clear to just about everyone that the dictators have committed impeachable offenses.

The public demand for impeachment is growing louder by the day, as it becomes clear that the U.S. is shedding the last vestiges of illusion that ours is a representative government and not a Nazi-esque dictatorship. We are being dragged on yet another insane course toward an unnecessary war, with Democrats taking too long to find their collective spines.

But what's most fucked up about all this is the ease with which Tehran succumbed to the manipulations that led to the current hostage crisis. Even an idiot like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, a chronic Holocaust denier whose popularity at home is at best tenuous, should have had sense enough to steer clear of the bait that was being set for his country. But no, he wants to play the role of martyr for the faith, as it were, in order to bolster his weakening position in Tehran. So he has fifteen British sailors in custody, and a manufactured crisis that will most likely lead to his country being attacked by the U.S. and Britain, all because he's too stupid to realize that his people come before his own ego and ambitions. But then, in that regard, he is exactly like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

God help us all if Democrats let political cowardice stop them from preventing war with Iran.