Col. Lang was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer today. I cannot recommend reading the transcript enough.
Here's a key graf from the start of the interview:
Lang: Well, I think Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N. atomic agency, has it right. Everybody ought to calm down and take a step back and take a few deep breaths, because there's a kind of cycle of accelerated statements and heated developments that's going on now that tends to ratchet up the situation so much that it tends to push you in the direction of war. And something like that, in which we start to eliminate their people because we have information that we think might incriminate them is a very -- is a very dangerous escalating move.
And we're not doing anything at all to de-escalate:
Lang: But I don't see any tendency to a deescalation through negotiation on our part. Instead, we're just telling the Iranians, we want you to stop interfering in Iraq. And that's the end of the conversation.
Someone the other day asked me what I thought the odds of an American attack on Iran were. I said 60/40 in favor of an attack. Nothing Col. Lang says in this interview persuades me the odds are improving. Of course, this is what Cheney and the Neoconservatives want: more chaos. This is what they thrive on. It creates more opportunities for them to aggrandize power to themselves and their pet theory the 'unitary executive.'
Bush? I'm not so sure about clueless George. Rumor is he's determined to prevent a nuclear Iran, but in light of what's happened lately with our North Korea policy (Cheney's hardline seems to have met the sideline) I think he might blink. It's never good to have a president blink, but in this case . . .
What of Condi?
Condi appears to have been largely responsible for shutting Cheney and his thugs out of the North Korea policy debate, and yet she is clearly overwhelmed, especially without the steady council of Zelikow. I doubt more chaos is what she wants.
That doesn't change the fact that we are at a critical juncture right now in the region. Two or three missteps and we might have another war on our hands. A big war.
A war we cannot win via conventional means.
Update: I'm new to the Huffington Post's software and accidentally deleted the first comment, my apologies. It was a good comment and I'm sorry it's gone.
Update 2: Col. Sam Gardiner has a critical update on Iran here.