From Think Progress
You can sell [this approach]. It’s more logical. You can say to people, the American people, we’re only hitting those people that we think are trying to hit our boys and the coalition forces. And so that seems to be more sensible. Because the White House thinks they can actually pitch this, this would actually work. In other words, you can do a bombing and not have the world scream at us and also get the British on board.
During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board.” At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution. (Al: Condoleezza Rice isn’t affecting anything here, just as she failed to affect anything significant during the Iraq war. If Bush is suddenly convinced that it is time to do something, if history is any indication of what will happen, she will turn into a bobblehead, and leak dissent here and there to the papers. It won’t be voiced emphatically during the run-up, and whatever mistakes are made, she will take on the task of defending the President and laying blame on people who don’t deserve it…ala George Tenet and the 16 words on uranium that appeared in Bush’s state of the union speech in 2003.)
The White House has even prepared a “Clinton did it too” defense for attacking Iran, according to Hersh. “If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.”