Tom Engelhardt | Connecting the Dots, Bush-Style

Tom Engelhardt | Connecting the Dots, Bush-Style: " What we face, in fact, are two fundamentalist regimes, American and Iranian - each in the process of overestimating the hand it is playing; each underestimating its enemy; each in the grip of a different kind of irrationality. It's a frighteningly combustible mix. All those people who believe that the administration's Iran approach is just so much saber-rattling and bluster, part of a reasonably rational plan to create bargaining chips, or force the Iranians to the table on more favorable terms, should divest themselves of such fantasies. We are on the path to madness, which also happens to be the path to $100 a barrel oil and possibly some kind of economic meltdown. Then again, dreams of riches have often gone hand-in-hand with madness. Why not now?

[Note to readers: Let me recommend The Global Beat, a website which I mined heavily for this piece (as I often do). A project of Boston University, it is compiled by Tony Karon of Time magazine and bills itself as offering 'resources for the global journalist.' You don't have to be a journalist or even a student of journalism, however, to benefit from its superb once-a-week run-downs of crucial news articles on and analyses of foreign-policy crisis points (with extremely useful links). Check it out and take a look as well at Karon's always fascinating, periodically updated blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan.]

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