President's Iran rhetoric causes alarm among the Democrats

Bush confirmed Last week that his troops in Iraq have been given the okay to capture or kill Iranian agents who pose a threat to Americans fighting there – a significant change in the rules of engagement and a provocative move to back long-standing White House claims that Iran is funnelling weapons into the country.
To some Democrats, it is the latest frightening show of "cowboy diplomacy" from a wounded president who has no support in Congress or on the streets of America. Some analysts are suggesting the ratcheting-up of rhetoric against Iran is a well-worn diversionary tactic from a president trying to buy time for a last-ditch move in Iraq to bear fruit.

Bush himself dismissed those who are joining the dots and suggesting he is about to broaden the war in Iraq and said he will not send troops across the border.
"The Iranian people are proud people, and they've got a great history and a great tradition," George W. Bush said yesterday. "Our struggle is not with the Iranian people. "My problem is with the government that takes actions that end up isolating their people and ends up denying the Iranian people their true place in the world."

Gary Sick, acting director of Columbia University's Middle East Institute, said refocusing attention on Iran could remove some of the scrutiny of the Iraq catastrophe.
"Perhaps Iran is being set up as the excuse for why the Iraq policy is not working very well," Sick said. He said if the U.S. really wanted to deal with the Iranian regime's determination to develop nuclear weapons, it will need more than air strikes. It will have to put military boots on the ground. "We don't have those boots right now," Sick said. "Iran is a huge country. It's far more nationalistic than Iraq. "It would actually make the Iraqi campaign look simple by comparison."

Yesterday, Bush conjured a new label for himself, discarding the old "Decider" moniker and anointing himself "The Decisionmaker." "One of the things I've found in Congress is that most people recognize that failure (in Iraq) would be a disaster for the United States," Bush said. "And, in that I'm the decision-maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster." That was downright conciliatory when compared to a now famous post-State of the Union interview Dick Cheney granted CNN's Wolf Blitzer. In it, the vice-president elevated his cantankerous and confrontational reputation to a higher plane. Cheney dismissed suggestions of blunders in Iraq as "hogwash," grunted one-word answers, railed against "TV talking heads," responded to criticism by Republican Senator John McCain with "So?", suggested Blitzer was out of line and dared Congress to try to block his troop "surge."