Yeehaw! is not a foreign policy

This is what I have been afraid of -- that the Bush administration thinks Iraq and Afghanistan aren't enough. They want the whole Middle East up in flames.
John LeCarre said three years ago that the United States had gone mad. He was right.
And if the rest of the world doesn't tell them STOP, then we'll all go down in flames with them.
Sydney Blummenthal describes the nightmare scenario in Salon magazine:

. . . The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war . . . Rice's diplomacy in the Middle East has erratically veered from initially calling on Israel for "restraint," to categorically opposing a cease-fire, to proposing terms for a cease-fire guaranteed to conflict with the European proposal, and thus to thwarting diplomacy, prolonging the time available for the Israeli offensive to achieve its stated aim of driving Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. But the neocon scenario extends far beyond that objective to pushing Israel into a "cleansing war" with Syria and Iran, says the national security official, which somehow will redeem Bush's beleaguered policy in the entire region. . . .

Emphasis mine.
See? A "cleansing war"? This is an insane concept developed by people who obviously watched too many TV commercials while they were growing up --You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pesodent! and Mr. Clean scours like a White Tornado! -- the very same people who have spent five years now losing wars.

Having failed in the Middle East, the administration is attempting to salvage its credibility by equating Israel's predicament with the U.S. quagmire in Iraq. Neoconservatives, for their part, see the latest risk to Israel's national security as a chance to scuttle U.S. negotiations with Iran, perhaps the last opportunity to realize the fantasies of "A Clean Break."
By using NSA intelligence to set an invisible tripwire, the Bush administration is laying the condition for regional conflagration with untold consequences -- from Pakistan to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Israel. Secretly devising a scheme that might thrust Israel into a ring of fire cannot be construed as a blunder. It is a deliberate, calculated and methodical plot.

The United States does not, of course, have the troops or the equipment or the airplanes or ships to fight such a large war. What they have are nuclear weapons. To "win", they will need to use them.