Tour de force

That's what I have to call this analysis by Spengler of the Asia Times. Or maybe "ecrof ed ruoT" given the way he flips conventional wisdom so persuasively. The lynch pin of it all is the accuracy of the intelligence estimates that Iran is still three years from achieving critical mass for its weapons project. I'm not exactly a big fan of the CIA which, after all, assured Bush that Saddam's WMD were a slam dunk, and then went into reverse like a crayfish and launched its own war of leaks on the White House. I don't believe that anybody except the Iranians really knows how close they are. Who knew that A. Q. Khan was shopping around his designs for the Pakistani Nuke?

Still, I think there's an invisible hand moving pieces on this chessboard, and the potential for civil war throughout the Muslim world seems to be rising, regardless of what we do from here on. That's not a reason to bug out, but Bush can take some comfort in the fact that we may have already won. The rest is keeping the vacuum sealed until the Iraqis fill it themselves. If they don't do it, we can't do it for them.