Excuse Me While I Scream for a Few Minutes

I continue to marvel at the fact that our ruling elites utter statements of this kind with apparently no awareness whatsoever of our own conduct, and I am similarly astonished that very few people comment on how absolutely ludicrous such utterances are:

"We're a power, too," is the message to Tehran, the [senior administration] official said. "Your power is not unlimited. You can't go anywhere and do anything you want."

Who was it again who invaded and occupied a nation that neither attacked it nor seriously threatened it? Which country is it that has a global empire of military bases? And just which nation is it that believes it can "go anywhere" and "do anything" it wants, and has a highly developed theory honed over many decades to purportedly justify its actions? I'm not entirely sure about this, and I am periodically plagued by numerous doubts, but I think I can maybe assert with just a couple of pieces of supporting evidence lying here, there and everywhere, that other leaders have just a teenyish inkling that "[w]e're a power, too."

That asinine statement is especially scream-inducing after the immediately preceding sentence:

Warnings of new sanctions if Tehran does not suspend its nuclear enrichment program, the dispatch of a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf, presidential authorization to treat Iranian intelligence and paramilitary operatives in Iraq as "enemy combatants," and encouragement of Sunni Arab states to take a united stand against Iranian aggression are all designed to convince Tehran that "we have options" and are prepared to use them, a senior administration official said.

Now I wonder why Iran might conclude it needs some deterrent ability of its own. I just can't imagine.

I've noted this kind of reversal before. From Bush's State of the Union address:

The consequences of failure [in Iraq] are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions.

This paragraph from the Washington Post article is also wonderfully calming:

Some senior administration officials still relish the notion of a direct confrontation. One ambassador in Washington said he was taken aback when John Hannah, Vice President Cheney's national security adviser, said during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 "the year of Iran" and indicated that a U.S. attack was a real possibility. Hannah declined to be interviewed for this article.

I think I have about 20 minutes of screaming left. 'Scuse me.

(WaPo article via Mr. "All Iran, All the Time.")