The biggest scandal at the moment in Washington is a subset of the biggest scandal in Washington ongoing for decades. For the latter, read about it in the most important book on U.S. foreign policy in a long time, entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by professors Mearsheimer and Walt, published this week, highlighted here Monday. For the former, Patrick J. Buchanan’s column last week “Phase III of Bush’s War” is a must read.

Buchanan gives an excellent summary of why Cheney and Bush and the “neocons” are now free to attack Iran with impunity, lacking any need or reason for authorization from Congress. The Cheney Regency and the Bush White House have been fully enabled once again by the “me too” Democrats in Congress. It just confirms what most of us already know: we have one party in Washington, with two faces. Buchanan pinpoints when an attack on Iran became inevitable: “Last spring, Nancy Pelosi herself, after a call from the Israeli lobby, pulled an amendment that would have forced Bush to come to Congress for specific authorization before attacking Iran.” Good ol’ Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. Count on them to do the right thing.

As the White House propaganda campaign for war with Iran cranks up, the silence on Capitol Hill is deafening. If this is not all an elaborate bluff and if war actually happens, it will be a war similar to Bubba’s War in the Balkans in 1999, only shorter. It will be a series of air strikes, Shock and Awe II. Washington does not have any ground troops left with which to wage war inside Iran. But Washington and Tel Aviv do have oodles of cruise missiles and long range bombers to inflict a lot of damage, thanks to Capitol Hill. Why not use them, and see what happens? It’s your world, and you are most welcome to it.