The Wall Street Journal noted today that, with the State of the Union coming up, the president may try to change the direction of the national conversation a bit.
“Iraq can’t be ignored, of course, but Mr. Bush said his piece on that in his recent address to the nation,” the WSJ’s Gerald Seib wrote. “Odds are he wants this time to prompt the Congress — and the country — to start thinking beyond Iraq to what he clearly sees as the next big problem. And that lies next door in Iran.”
It’s almost amusing, in a sardonic kind of way, to think that in the midst of an international crisis, the president might want Americans to start thinking “beyond Iraq” and onto the next war, as if the current conflict is yesterday’s news. Iraq is so 2006; there’s a new product line the White House would like us to think about.
On that note, I was delighted to see (via Prairie Weather), Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) step up and tell the Bush gang that we won’t get fooled again.
The new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday sharply criticized the Bush administration’s increasingly combative stance toward Iran, saying that White House efforts to portray it as a growing threat are uncomfortably reminiscent of rhetoric about Iraq before the American invasion of 2003.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who took control of the committee this month, said that the administration was building a case against Tehran even as American intelligence agencies still know little about either Iran’s internal dynamics or its intentions in the Middle East.
“To be quite honest, I’m a little concerned that it’s Iraq again,” Senator Rockefeller said during an interview in his office. “This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre.”
Rockefeller, who’s usually a mild-mannered one, even got a little shrill.
Mr. Rockefeller said he believed President Bush was getting poor advice from advisers who argue that an uncompromising stance toward the government in Tehran will serve American interests. “I don’t think that policy makers in this administration particularly understand Iran,” he said. […]
Mr. Rockefeller was biting in his criticism of how President Bush has dealt with the threat of Islamic radicalism since the Sept. 11 attacks, saying he believed that the campaign against international terrorism was “still a mystery” to the president.
“I don’t think he understands the world,” Mr. Rockefeller said. “I don’t think he’s particularly curious about the world. I don’t think he reads like he says he does.”
He added, “Every time he’s read something he tells you about it, I think.”
I’ve been disappointed, at times, with Rockefeller’s unwillingness to stand up to former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), whose breathtaking hackery was almost comical, but who never drew the public wrath of Rockefeller.
Now it looks as if Rockefeller was just biding his time, waiting to be committee chairman. I’m feeling better about his tenure all the time.