Deja Vu, all over again

"Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it."

-George Santayana

Does history repeat itself? A question that is often asked, and often answered in the affirmative. I attribute this to the fact that as humans, we tend to make mistakes-sadly the same ones. It is not from ignorance (well, GWB may be the exception) but due to stubbornness, selfishness, egotism, and blindness. People are often too full of themselves and full of self importance to see that situations from the past apply to them.

Take Vietnam. In 1964 Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson the ability to escalate the war. Well, a few years later it came out that the administration and the Pentagon had not be completely truthful with what happened. By that time we were so entrenched in IndoChina that it took several more years, and 10's of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives.

Fast forward, oh lets say 38 years. The current President (and hopefully LAST) Bush and the Pentagon go public with evidence that Iraq was developing WMDs, as we all know. This led Congress to give the President the ability to wage war in Iraq. After a few years, we all learned that things were, once again, not what the administration and Pentagon had portrayed. And, we are deeply entrenched in a war that is costing American and Iraqi lives. , starting to sound familiar?? Well, the scary part is yet to come, I fear....

Fast forward to 2007. Pentagon and the Administration announce that they have conclusive proof that Iran is directly involved in supplying insurgents with weapons and explosives. (though there is some backpedaling on just exactly what they were saying and what it all meant). Questioned about whether or not they were making a case for war with Iran, Bush et al cry foul, saying there is no such plan or effort. In fact, GWB gets quite indignant, wondering why people are so skeptical (see, I said GWB was the exception).

A quick fast-forward to today: Reports say Iranian patrol boats are making incursions into Iraqi territorial waters........

.. it's deja vu, all over again.

The administration HAS to know that Congress and the American people will remain skeptical of anything that it puts forward, so it will look for something more substantial to push us into another war. I feel this is being done for two reasons. 1. They really really want to 'get Iran' and 2. A means of taking the Iraq war off of the front page.