First you have John McCain copying Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy, now President Bush starting to use diplomacy with Iran. Is reality winning out over neocon fantasy?

Update: "...former Ambassador John Bolton 'said this is like getting an Obama administration six months early.'"

I was planning to put something in my last column on this subject but ran out of room (and it was a bit of a tangent). John McCain and others keep talking about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as if he was the absolute leader of that country. But in fact, he's not in charge. The Supreme Leader of Iran is Ali Khamenei, and he is the one in charge of the government and foreign policy. Khamenei was president from 1981 to 1989, when took over as Supreme Leader after Ayatollah Khomeini died.

But Ahmadinejad makes an easy target, so they go after him instead.

Here is video of McCain being confronted with these facts. His answer is revealing:

When confronted with the truth, McCain wants to take a poll. For someone so wrapped up in bombing Iran, you would think he would find out who is in charge of the country first.

There are few people who understand the situation in Iran and Iraq better than Juan Cole. His knowledge of the region and fluency in the local languages gives him the ability to dig past all the PR spin.

Recently, Cole has been noting the absurdity of Bush & Co. claims that Iran and Muqtada al-Sadr are on the same side, and this it was Sadr who sought out the Iranians to broker the recent cease fire in Basra. Quoting local sources, Cole points out that it was the Maliki government that sought the cease fire, than it's the Maliki government who is directly tied to Iran, and that Sadr is not looked on too favorably by Tehran.

It all points to an effort to start a war with Iran, blaming them for the mess we created next door. Bush seems to ignore that our allies in Baghdad are tied directly to Iran, that the Iranians sheltered and trained them, and continue to support them.

What Sadr is doing is pointing out to Iraqis that their government is a puppet of both the U.S. and Iran, which is basically the truth. He could end up being the unifying figure that has been missing in Iraq. But he's a nightmare for Bush.

Bush is trying to tell everyone that he wasn't made aware of the findings of the NIE that said Iran shut down its nuke program in 2003. Joe Biden calls him on it:

“Are you telling me a president who is briefed every single morning, who is fixated on Iran, is not told back in August that the tentative conclusion of 16 intelligence agencies in the United States government said they had abandoned their effort for a nuclear weapon in ’03?” Biden said in a conference call with reporters.

“That’s not believable,” Biden added. “I refuse to believe that. If that’s true, he has the most incompetent staff in … modern American history and he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.”

There has been some disagreement about whether George W. Bush in fact lied about Iraq in order to invade the country. He argues that he didn't know the full truth, and that what we said at the time was what he believed to be true. Others point out that the truth was there, but that Bush and his cohorts weren't looking at it objectively.

Whatever.

But I think there is little doubt now that the president was lying about the threat of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. The newly released National Intelligence Assessment on Iran clearly states that their nuclear weapons program closed in 2003. And, the president and his people knew about this assessment for the last several months, while in public they were making all kinds of threatening gestures, even talking World War III.

Plausible deniability might get you off on Iraq, but not Iran. Watch him squirm to explain himself:

Josh Marshall's take:

Look at the expressions on Bush's face and the evident discomfort as he gets ready to fib and weave about when he knew the intel on Iran.

Pay particular attention to when he says he was told there was new information back in August but supposedly didn't ask what the 'new information' was. And then: "He didn't tell me what the information was." Right ...)

What do you make of this?

Buried in the $196.4 billion supplemental war spending proposal that Bush submitted to Congress on Oct. 22 is a request for $88 million to modify B-2 bombers so they can drop a Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, a conventional bomb still in development that is the most powerful weapon designed to destroy targets deep underground.

A White House summary accompanying the supplemental spending proposal said the request for money to modify ­B-2s to carry the bombs came in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.” The summary provided no further details. The White House and the Air Force, in response to queries, did not provide additional clarification.

Unless the Iraqi insurgents suddenly have radar and antiaircraft capabilities, and have been able to construct deep underground bunkers under our noses, this request is part of the war preparations for attacking Iran.

Did they really think people are dumb enough not to notice stuff like this?

Glenn Greenwald points out why no amount of pressure, no prodding by the wise old men of Washington, not even single-digit poll numbers will make George W. Bush change his mind:

This has been the great unexamined issue of the Bush presidency -- the extent to which Bush's unwavering commitment to Middle East militarism is, as Bush himself has made clear, rooted in theological and religious convictions, not in pragmatic or geopolitical concerns. That Bush's foreign policy decision-making is grounded in absolute moral and theological convictions and therefore immune from re-examination or change is an argument I examine at length in A Tragic Legacy because it is one of the principal -- and most dangerous -- forces driving the Bush presidency.

This is a religious war for Bush, between good and evil. He answers only to a higher authority, not to the people who elected him.

Oliver Stone, talking about Iran's president:

“I wish the Iranian people well, and only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours.”

US generals 'will quit' if Bush orders Iran attack:

SOME of America's most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

"There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran," a source with close ties to British intelligence said. "There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible."

In my column this week, I discuss how attacking Iran would be a disaster.

What I wasn't able to fit in was how the war in Iraq puts Iran in a stronger position with regard to its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Having American troops tied down in Iraq gives Iran a tremendous advantage. The Iranians know they could make things far worse for the U.S. in Iraq if they so choose. It wouldn't be too hard to flood the country with fighters and weapons, and to spark an uprising among the Shiites in Iraq against the U.S.

Despite all the bluster coming out of the White House, Iran has to conclude that Bush would be stupid to take action against them. So they have what amounts to a Mexican standoff, allowing them to pursue their nuclear ambitions.

If the U.S. withdrew from Iraq, we would have much greater leverage against Iran. An airstrike against their nuclear facilities would again be on the table, since there is little Iran could do to retaliate. The U.S. would also have more forces available to discourage an Iranian counterattack on Saudi Arabia, or an attempt to slow oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf.

Withdrawing from Iraq also diffuses the situation with Iran, giving them less incentive to pursue nuclear weapons, and more incentive to negotiate.

America needs to decide what is more important: continuing the war in Iraq or stopping Iran from getting nukes.