Afghanistan: Done. Iraq: Almost Done. Next Up: Iran.

Maureen Dowd outlines the next step in Bush's Middle Eastern dance: Iran. Snippets:

"When Colin Powell went to the UN in February to make the case for attacking Iraq, he raised the specter of 25,000 liters of anthrax, tons of chemical weapons and a dictator on the brink of a nuclear bomb. Flash forward to May. Stymied U.S. arms inspectors are getting ready to leave Iraq, having uncovered moldy vacuum cleaners, pesticides and playground equipment, but nary a WMD. One of the weapons hunters compared his work to a Scooby-Doo mystery - stuff seems pretty scary at first, but then turns out to be explainable. Even before the war, some CIA analysts and British spymasters were complaining of puffed-up intelligence. Now Congress wants to know if it was flawed as well. As Representative Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, put it: "This could conceivably be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time." Her innocence is touching. The Iraq WMD's and ties to Al Qaeda were merely MacGuffins, as Alfred Hitchcock called devices that drove the plot but were otherwise inconsequential.

The plot was always to remake the Middle East, while remaking a George W. Bush into a Ronald Reagan. And the Bushies were not above playing on American fears and desire for 9/11 payback. Far from being chagrined about the little problem of having no casus belli, and no plan for smoothly delivering Pax Americana to Iraq and Afghanistan, the hawks are hawking the next regime change. If Iraq was not harboring Al Qaeda and going nuclear, then certainly Iran is.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda are resurgent; Afghanistan and Iraq are a mess; the vice police are back arresting women in Afghanistan and looters are tearing up archeological sites in Iraq; Saddam and Osama are still wanted, dead or alive. Yet the MacGuffin has moved on. It is paradoxical that the hawks were passionate about breeding idealism by bringing democracy to the Middle East, but are unconcerned about breeding cynicism by refusing to admit mistakes or overreaching. By the time the CIA delivers its report, it will be time to investigate how our intelligence was hyped in the prelude to the strike on Iran."

Also read THIS ARTICLE in the San Jose Mercury News.