More on the escalation

Some interesting things have come up lately regarding the Iraq escalation and a likely alternate explanation for the escalation. Is the military simply forward positioning military resources for an attack against Iran? The NY Times has a piece with this quote:

“The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq,” Kenneth M. Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said Sunday. “There’s a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive — that this is a way to get into a spiral with Iran that leads you into conflict. The likely response from the Iranians is that they are going to want to demonstrate to us that they are not going to be pushed around.”

. . .

Yet American officials have been careful not to rule out the possibility of American actions inside Iran. Pressed on the ABC News program “This Week” on Sunday about excluding the option of going after Iranians inside Iran, Mr. Hadley said that for now, Iraq was “the best place” for the United States to take on the Iranians.

“So, you don’t believe you have the authority to go into Iran?” the host, George Stephanopoulos, asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Mr. Hadley responded. “This is another issue. Any time you have questions about crossing international borders, there are legal issues.”

And The Guardian had this from an interview with Robert Gates from a report on a NATO meeting:

The defence secretary, Robert Gates, told reporters that the decision to deploy a Patriot missile battalion and a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf in conjunction with a “surge” of troops in Iraq was designed to show Iran that the US was not “overcommitted” in Iraq.

So this could be interpreted as posturing or it could simply be preparation for an attack against Iran. And I might be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, if I didn't know what this Administration was capable of.