Not the scare the crap out of you before the sun’s even come up, but Sean-Paul Kelley of The Agonist has the most comprehensive encapsulation of how the drum-beat to war in Iraq has proceeded.

Fears of Iranian economic dominance in Iran are being stoked, although the story is already weeks, if not months old. We’ve also been told the Iranians are cooperating with the North Koreans in their bid for nuclear weapons. Never mind that the North Koreans use plutonium in their reactors and the Iranians use uranium. Ooops.

Not to worry. A parade of administration officials from the President on down inform us that Iran is aiding and abetting the chaos in Iraq by providing weapons to Iraqis. Never mind that there is little or no proof that the Iranians are supplying weapons to groups in Iraq actively targeting American forces. (The Washington Post conducted a similar investigation in October of last year with similar results: no evidence found.) Then we were told the US is fighting a proxy war in Iraq with Iran. That news was complete with evidence, in the form of a leak and just one paragraph in the article, of Iranian weapons to support to Iraqis, never mind exactly which Iraqis.

I agree with Sean-Paul: we have to make sure that Congress speaks out against another war based on false pretexts. We have to listen to everything we hear in the media with skepticism, understanding that the Bush administration wants to go to war in Iran as a way to kick the can of responsibility for their current bevy of failures down the road to the next administration. We cannot let the Bush administration dupe the American public into war again.