In their efforts to paper over a catastrophe, the Bush administration (and Iraq war supporters in general) are beginning to look like Saddam’s old press spokesman, “Comical” Ali, who steadfastly denied the advance of U.S. troops to Baghdad in 2003 when his audience could easily see American tanks in the street behind him. There’s a P.R. hero for you. Bush really needs that guy! All he’s got is his lame cousin Tony Snow, his even lamer “uncle” Dick Cheney, and the ever faithful bride of Frankenstein, Laura, who opined to Larry King recently that things are going not too badly in Iraq except for that one bombing that discourages everyone. I think she may have meant to use another word that begins with “dis”, like “dismembers”. In any case, all this minimizing does have some effect. Some recent polling shows that large numbers of Americans have no even semi-realistic notion of how many Iraqis have been killed since we unilaterally decided to “liberate” their country (by destroying it). People seem to think about 10,000 Iraqis have died since March 2003 — that’s only 1/3 of the ludicrously low-ball estimate Bush himself offered some months back.

Would it make a difference if people were more broadly aware of, say, Les Roberts’ Johns Hopkins study that estimates the death toll at as high as 650,000? I mean, imagine it were explained to the American people that the type of statistical model used in this study is the same that is routinely applied to war zones all around the world. What would we do with that knowledge? Would we force our leaders to end the war now? Or do we really only care about American lives? Hard to say. I like to think that many of us would be appalled to know that Bush had brought us back into Rwanda territory (we’ve certainly been there before). I don’t know if that would be enough to bring a stop to all this. What worries me is the degree to which people tolerate this war. This sort of permissiveness merely encourages bad behavior on the part of our leaders. Let one president get away with mass murder, and you can bet the next one will try the same thing. There are precedents.

Sadly, I don’t think we’ll have to wait for the next president. This one and his team are ready to strike a blow against Iran and, more broadly, what they view as Shi’ite extremism on the rise throughout the region. They appear to think that they can attack the center of regional Shi’ism without pissing off the millions of co-religionists who live in neighboring Iraq. (Check out Sy Hersh’s article in this week’s New Yorker.) And sure, I know the administration has said they will sit around a table with representatives of Iran, but that’s likely just so that they can say they went the extra diplomatic mile before bombing Tehran. It’s hard to imagine any foreign policy team that includes creatures like Elliott Abrams would offer the hand of friendship to a regime in whose vilification they’ve invested so much of their political capital. As Hersh and others have reported, the Bush administration is wittingly or unwittingly setting the stage not just for war with Iran, but for a regional conflict between Shi’as and Sunnis. Think they wouldn’t dare push their luck? Think harder.

As long as we don’t hold people accountable for this disaster, they will cause new disasters. And we will be left with the bill.

We seem to be headed, once again, down that treacherous path that leads to unprovoked war. Would such a course be possible were it not for the willing participation of the major national news media? Indeed, some of the mighty organs of the American press that felt compelled to apologize when the Iraq war rationales they so enthusiastically peddled fell apart are now engaging in the very same sort of behavior that brought on the mea culpas. Like the many politicians who supported this seemingly endless war at the outset, the press is only sorry that Bush/Cheney’s Iraq adventure wasn’t a swift success. The thing they’re decidedly not sorry for is the fact that they helped send thousands to their deaths needlessly. For this, they couldn’t care less. And you can bet politicians, pundits, and Pulitzer-prizewinning scribblers will raise a collective cheer for war with Iran if they see short-term benefit in it.

Still, this time around, the dossier against our potential enemy is pretty weak stuff, even for the New York Times. I mean, background-only briefings on weapons they can only provide photos of? Give me a break. Even the bogus claims about Iraqi WMDs held up for a week or two. This shit didn’t even last a day. Andrew Cockburn had an excellent article about how these “sophisticated” weapons can be built in a machine shop with about $20 – 30 worth of materials, according to Cockburn’s source at the Pentagon. Iraq is flush with the kind of high-explosives that might be used in these improvised devices, versions of which have been employed by the French resistance in WWII, by the IRA, and by Hezbollah during Israel’s 19-year occupation of southern Lebanon. Even NPR pointed out that the claim about Iran supplying these weapons was nothing new and had, in fact, been floated by the administration since early last year.

So… why does this shit make the front page of the Times? Because the prevailing model in mainstream journalism is to take the word of government spokespersons and “senior administration officials” at face value. Often it seems that reporters rely upon these highly placed sources even when it conflicts with the evidence of their own senses. In Iraq, they rely upon official information for just about everything that occurs beyond the boundaries of the Green Zone. So Judy Miller may be gone, but the Miller brigade marches on — next stop, Teheran! And if Cheney is to be believed (as he most assuredly will be in the corporate newsrooms), it will be another cakewalk. Hell, look what a difference the British have made in Basra, eh?

Then again, don’t look. Just take Cheney’s word for it — you’ll find it on the front page.