Sy Hersh has a new report in the New Yorker on the Bush administration’s planning for a series of attacks on Iran.

And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the agency said, “The C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the relative size of its operational components.”)

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

Perhaps that’s the actual agenda. A twenty year war would assure that federal spending would be sucked up by the wars with nothing left for the domestic programs that other civilized countries support but that American conservatives hate. Would they go that far to block health care for all or universal child care and preschool?

I haven’t had a chance to read the whole Hersh article yet, but it’s also paints a grim picture of another attempt to manufacture support for an expanded war. As was the case in the runup to war against Iraq, the proffered justification is shifting as Bush & Cheney search for a rationale that can garner public support or, if not, at least public apathy and confusion. While the press isn’t being totally docile, the corporate media are still not tearing into the transparently manipulative process, while at the same time there have been a series of admissions by editors and media execs that they should have been more skepticism the last time around this same bend.

Then last night we stumbled onto CSPAN’s broadcast of a 1955 televised press conference with President Eisenhower. It was quite astonishing to contrast 1955 and today and to see how far democracy has declined in the past half century. I’m not evern sure what they were asking questions about–my attention was grabbed by the setting and the power relationships it revealed. Eisenhower stood behind his desk, but reporters were literally within arms reach, with chairs arrayed in front of the desk. The president had no prompters, no electronic backup, no podium to distance himself. And despite the 1950’s formality of style and dress, it was clear that the president was another person in a room facing his peers.

Eisenhower sent me running for a pen when he aimed harsh comments at “those sterile unproductive agencies we call ‘defense'”. That was the general speaking, and a Republican to boot, not the fake wannabe civilian militarists of the current political generation.

If you can arrange to catch a repeat of any of these Eisenhower-era presidential press conferences, it is definitely worth the effort.

It was cloudy and a bit wet yesterday morning, but I was able to get some pictures between the periods of rain. Just click for a larger version.