This post is, hopefully, nothing more than stating the obvious. But let’s just put down for the record that when President Bush calls recent reports of White House plans to attack Iran “wild speculation” that means absolutely nothing.

It’s not just that the president has now earned a well-deserved reputation for lying. It is because he and his chief aides lied to the country about a more or less parallel situation — the build up to war on Iraq — only four years ago. We now know that the fix was in on the Iraq War as early as September/October 2001. And the president and his crew kept up the charade that no decisions had been made long after those claims became laughable.

Yes, I know, President Bush gets called a liar on center-left and left-wing blogs all the time.

But I think those more genial sorts in the press and policy community in DC need to be honest enough with themselves to recognize that on this issue of all issues President Bush is unquestionably a liar.

It is also not too early to point out that the evidence is there for the confluence of two destructive and disastrous forces — hawks in the administration’s Cheney faction whose instinctive bellicosity is only matched by their actual incompetence (a fatal mixture if there ever was one), and the president’s chief political aides who see the build up to an Iran confrontation as the most promising way to contest the mid-term elections. Both those groups are strongly motivated for war. And who is naive enough to imagine a contrary force within the administration strong enough to put on the brakes?

TPM Reader AB writes in to say that there’s no way President Bush will launch a war against Iran. At most what we’re talking about is aerial bombing to eliminate or seriously degrade the Iranian nuclear program.

To this a couple responses.

I don’t see the logic of reserving the noun ‘war’ for full-scale invasion and regime change. A bombing campaign to seriously degrade or eliminate the Iranian nuclear facilities would mean bunker-busting bombs to destroy buried and heavily reinforced facilities. It would hit a lot of places. Something of that caliber amounts to war. And not just by some rhetorical definition. It’s something that wouldn’t end after a few days or after the last US bombers and fighters return to their bases and ships.

Second, AB suggests that what’s going on here is not actually preparations for war, but saber-rattling to keep the Iranians off balance and give them an added incentive to reach a diplomatic compromise.

With any other administration, I’d agree with that. Hinting at a potential military option would actually make sense as a backdrop to serious diplomatic discussions. It would make sense for an administration that wanted a diplomatic solution.

But this isn’t any administration. This is an administration that demonstrated in a fairly analogous situation a preference for war over diplomatic solutions. So the ‘threats as a way to spur diplomatic flexibility’ argument makes perfect sense in the abstract. But there’s no reason to assume it applies to this situation.

For myself, I still find it really, really hard to believe that the adminstration is seriously considering military action against Iran. At one level, I don’t believe it. But I’ve thought the same thing with these guys too many times and been wrong. It’s a situation where I set logical analysis aside and rely on experience and the administration’s track record.

We know these guys. Why get fooled again?

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin is going to be doing a book reading/signing/talk about her new book Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives tonight at 6:30 at the Strand Bookstore at 828 Broadway here in New York. I’ll be on hand to moderate and lead the Q&A.

In Seymour Hersh’s much-discussed new article on President Bush and Iranian regime-change there’s this graf (emphasis added)…

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?'”

This claim is certainly ambiguously sourced. But if true, it suggests that our nation’s fate is again in the grip of George W. Bush’s grandiosity. And if so, no eventuality is too far-fetched. Nothing can be ruled out.

What’s left of Hitchens: Still holding out for the Iraq-Niger link.

New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal comes to the White House.

Fitzgerald says Bush put the ‘bully’ in ‘bully pulpit’. That and other news in today’s Daily Muck.

Now that Romano Prodi’s election in Italy appears to have been confirmed, many readers have written in to ask whether I think the impending change of government in Italy is likely to shake free any of the secrets about the Niger forgeries.

A colleague and I spent the better part of two years working on the forgeries story. In fact, we still are. As recently as a couple months ago we were meeting with US government officials about the US government’s intentionally moribund investigation into the forgeries’ origins.

In any case, much of my reporting on the case amounted to an education of just how little I knew about the inner-workings of Italian politics. We learned a lot. And much of it I’ve reported in these pages.

One might imagine that since the Italian center-right is implicated in the forgeries scandal, that the center-left would be eager to get all the facts out. But that wasn’t our experience at all. We found fairly consistently that there was a surprising amount of collusion across the ideological spectrum when it came to keeping the wraps on this affair. For that reason, I would not be expecting any sudden revelations just because voters now appear to have turned Berlusconi out.

That is not necessarily the end of the story though. The international situation is quite different than it was in 2004 — when we did the majority of our reporting. President Bush was riding high. And his reelection campaign was underway. Also, in recent months, I’ve picked up some hints that elements in the Italian government wanted to get this whole mess behind them, and that the election was what had everyone frozen in place. Once the election was out of the way, whoever won, but especially if Prodi did, things might change.

These two points, I know, rather contradict each other. But they are the sum of what I know. Will things change? Maybe. There are some hints of it. But I remain skeptical.

Paul Kiel finds another damning clue in those records of the calls that the NH phone-jammers made to the White House on the day the scheme went down.

Employees at the Department of Labor get the ‘opportunities in Iraq’ email …

As you may know, in previous years some DOL staff volunteered and were deployed to Iraq to help rebuild the country’s government and infrastructure. The Department is again looking for volunteers to assist with the Iraq reconstruction efforts, which are so vital to building stability and democracy in that country.

Specifically, the Department of Labor has been asked to provide detailees for two positions at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The first position requires labor law experience and a background in pension and labor law reform and government employment restructuring. This position is a one-year assignment in the embassy in Baghdad.

The other position requires public affairs experience and this person would work as part of a team assisting journalists covering the Iraq reconstruction. This position is typically a three-month assignment in the embassy in Baghdad.

Individuals volunteering for service at the U.S. Embassy would continue to be employees of the Department of Labor during their service and would retain all current pay and benefits. Additional compensation may also be authorized. Assignments would probably begin this Spring or early Summer, but dates certain have not yet been set.

If you are interested in this opportunity or would like more information, please contact ******* by email no later than COB Friday, April 14. During the week of April 17, those who have contacted Leon will be invited to a State Department briefing during which there will be an opportunity to meet with DOL employees who have been to Iraq. There may be additional volunteer opportunities in the future, so please indicate whether you are interested in an immediate assignment or a later date. Please contact Leon ******* if you would like to attend.

Additional general information about working and living in Iraq can be found on the Department of State website.

Thank you for your cooperation.

See the earlier emails to the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development and Commerce here.