Have they learned nothing from Iraq? What Digby said:

I am starting to get agitated about our Democratic leaders' [sic] approach to Iran. John Edwards' recent comments while in Israel were disturbing enough. Now Hillary Clinton has used the same language.

This is very, very discouraging. In a different world, perhaps it could just be chalked up to rhetorical excess and presidential politics and leave it at that. But in our world today, those are words that will be used to justify what the Bush administration is planning to do. It's deja vu all over again.

These Democrats are explicitly and openly endorsing the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. There can be no other way to read this and I cannot think of a greater mistake at this juncture for the Democratic party to expressly align itself with such lunacy. What are they thinking?

Well, Clinton and Edwards could:

1. Believe what they're saying is sane (although helping Bush do anything is the definition of insane: Doing the same thing and expecting a different result). If so, I'm suddenly all in favor of the two-year Democratic primary, because that will give the reality-based community the time to cut Clinton and Edwards down.

2. Or they believe that they have to say these things in order to become President, because our famously free press will destroy them if they say anything else. (Which is also crazy, because the press, like the Republicans, will do what it's going to do. They didn't destroy Gore because Naomi Wolf's earth tones memo wasn't the best memo it could have been; they were out to destroy Gore, and they used whatever weapon came to hand. Same with Dean. So why propitiate them?)

3. The country has FDR-sized problems, and it needs an FDR-sized President. Hilbama and Edwards are pigmies to FDR's giant, at least on the current showing. Together, we can do better....

UPDATE, Via the man in the grey turtleneck, Edwards tries to walk it back. Alas, Ezra doesn't ask the obvious question: "Do you support the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war?" Maybe somebody should ask Hillary that.