"Inexcusable Behavior"

Despite the best efforts of Tony Blair to keep the president from shooting off his mouth, the inevitable diatribes ensued at a news conference this weekend, at Camp David, in which Mr. Bush suggested that the behavior of those who "summarily plucked out of the water" fifteen British sailors and marines was "inexcusable." (WaPo)

Both the U.S. and Great Britain insist that the sailors were kosher insofar as they were in Iraqi, and not Iranian waters., but as we've come to see, every major confrontation has had its catalyst . There are catalysts and there are catalysts, and this, the taking of innocent "hostages," as the president likes to call them, makes for the perfect pretext to do unto Iran what we haven't quite finished doing to Iraq, and maybe just in time for Easter, too.

Some rationales for taking a country to war are manufactured, some are exaggerated; all too often evidence is tampered with, and/or planted; sometimes there is no evidence, at all. Sometimes, too, the lives of spouses of those who have the courage to insist that there is no evidence are placed in jeopardy, as was the case with Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Far be it for me to suggest that these marines, sailors, and so-called "hostages" are a bunch of extras sent by central casting to provoke the kind of ire needed for a conflagration in Tehran, but had it not been for the release of a notorious classified memo, which divulged conversations between Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush on possible catalysts for confrontation with Baghdad immediately preceding the invasion, and occupation of Iraq, perhaps one wouldn't be so cynical as to ask when we will see the Downing Street Memo for this one.