Iran holds Bush, GOP hostage

MSNBC.com: "

In 1979, young Islamic radicals (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have been one of them) imprisoned 52 Americans in Teheran for 444 humiliating days. Today, the whole world is hostage – not only to Iran’s fanaticism but, ironically, to America’s diminished power, and the president’s diminished standing, in the aftermath of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Here’s how the president is boxed in:

POLITICALLY
In terms of public opinion, Bush is at the low point of his presidency, not just in terms of job approval ratings but – more dangerously – in terms of the kind of personal qualities for which people used to give him credit and leeway."

MILITARILY
Unlike Iraq, a country cobbled together by the Great Powers in the early 20^th century, Iran is the major leagues, in history, unity and population if not, as of this minute, in homegrown nuclear technology.

DIPLOMATICALLY
The genuine concern at the U.N., paradoxically, will require that the U.S. work more closely with the international body. As he assembled the “Coalition of the Willing,” Bush essentially dismissed the U.N. as weak and accommodationist.

ECONOMICALLY
Spot oil prices are at $69 a barrel — almost double what they were in the two years before we went to Iraq.