Letter: Rhetoric that sounds as bad the second time

Sunday, March 12, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

The Bush administration, frantic to distract us from its myriad crimes and incompetence, is now relentlessly ramping up the war rhetoric aimed at Iran. I recommend that you all do three things:

1. Review this administration's hyperbolic (and by now proven utterly false) run-up rhetoric leading to its unwarranted and bungled invasion of Iraq. Change a few dates and names, and we could simply re-use the texts.

2. Obtain a map of Iran, and some demographic data. Ponder this information at length. Consider, just for openers, the upshot of an Iranian mining and blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Are we ready to now take on a nation three times the geographic size and double the population of Iraq? Not without yet another tax cut, I would think.

3. Reflect on the eloquent words of beloved leader Bush from a speech in 2002: "There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."

Robert Gladd, Las Vegas