There are some famous buses out there. The Rosa Parks’ bus—and the seat she refused to give up to a white man in 1955 in Montgomery, Ala.—is in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. Ken Kesey’s famous psychedelic pranksters’ bus, “Further,” sits in an Oregon farm field. And who knows where the Who’s “Magic Bus” finally ended up.

Now we can add to the list of famous buses—or in this case, perhaps infamous—The Bush Legacy Bus. It’s a museum on wheels describing the George W. Bush legacy—eight years of failed and flawed conservative polices that have dragged down our nation. It’s coming to a town near you soon.

The bus is a project of Americans United for Change (AUC) and it rolled out of the garage today for its first stop—our AFL-CIO building here in Washington, D.C.—on a 150-city tour through Election Day. It returns tomorrow for the tour’s official kickoff and is open to visitors until 1:30 p.m., then it heads for a stop in Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday.

Inside the bus, interactive, multimedia exhibits present a multitude of facts on the trail of destruction Bush is leaving behind on health care, the economy, workers’ rights, education, the environment and the war in Iraq.

Running along the floor of the bus is the eight-year Bush time line. Here’s a tiny sample.

The exhibit on the war in Iraq highlights Bush’s misleading and ever-shifting justifications for launching the conflict and his failed strategies in carrying out the war. The combat boots, dog tags and family pictures of Sgt. Patrick McCafferty are preserved in a glass case. His family donated the items of McCafferty, who enlisted immediately after Sept. 11 and was killed in combat in September 2004.

The bio-diesel bus’s itinerary includes both the Democratic and Republican conventions, hometowns of the senators and representatives who have been Bush’s ardent supporters and other towns and cites around the country.

The road map isn’t finalized, but it’s a good bet there will be a stop or two in Arizona, home of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who has backed Bush 100 percent so far in 2008. Says AUC President Brad Woodhouse:

This bus is not about bashing Bush, it is about holding him and everyone in Congress, including McCain, who voted for his agenda 90 percent of the time or more, accountable for the war, the economy, the health care mess, etc.

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/06/23/bush-legacy-bus-rolling-across-the-nation/

                                       VISIT THE BUSH LEGACY TOUR WEBSITE:

http://presidentbushlegacy.com/bushlegacy

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country's nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic's government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

White House, CIA and State Department officials declined comment on Hersh's report, which appears in this week's issue of The New Yorker.

Hersh told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, which involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.

The new article, "Preparing the Battlefield," is the latest in a series of articles accusing the Bush administration of preparing for war with Iran. He based the report on accounts from current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.

"As usual with his quarterly pieces, we'll decline to comment," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told CNN.

"The CIA, as a rule, does not comment on allegations regarding covert operations," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, denied U.S. raids were being launched from Iraq, where American commanders believe Iran is stoking sectarian warfare and fomenting attacks on U.S. troops.

"I can tell you flatly that U.S. forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else," Crocker said.

Hersh said U.S. efforts were staged from Afghanistan, which also shares a border with Iran.

He said the program resulted in "a dramatic increase in kinetic events and chaos" inside Iran, including attacks by Kurdish separatists in the country's north and a May attack on a mosque in Shiraz that killed 13 people.

The United States has said it is trying to isolate Iran diplomatically in order to get it to come clean about its nuclear ambitions. But Bush has said "all options" are open in dealing with the issue.

Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed at providing civilian electric power, and refuses to comply with U.N. Security Council demands that it halt uranium enrichment work.

U.N. nuclear inspectors say Tehran held back critical information that could determine whether it is trying to make nuclear weapons.

Israel, which is believed to have its own nuclear arsenal, conducted a military exercise in the eastern Mediterranean in early June involving dozens of warplanes and aerial tankers.

The distance involved in the exercise was roughly the same as would be involved in a possible strike on the Iranian nuclear fuel plant at Natanz, Iran, a U.S. military official said.

In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor.

Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, warned other countries against moves that would "cost them heavily." In comments that appeared in the semi-official Mehr news agency Sunday, an Iranian general said his troops were digging more than 320,000 graves to bury troops from any invading force with "the respect they deserve."

"Under the law of war and armed conflict, necessary preparations must be made for the burial of soldiers of aggressor nations," said Maj. Gen. Mirfaisal Baqerzadeh, an Iranian officer in charge of identifying soldiers missing in action.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/06/29/us.iran/index.html

MyFoxOrlando reports:

The Orlando Police Department found dozens of city owned vehicles vandalized Saturday.

The vandal or vandals appear to have political intentions; most of the vehicles were spray painted with anti Obama sayings, with 'Obama' misspelled several times. Some of their vehicles had their gas caps removed.

Officials said that gas caps were removed from several of the vehicles and they aren't sure if gas was stolen or if something could have been added to the tanks that will damage the engines.

More details from WFTV Orlando:

Phrases including "Obmama smokes crack" and others phrases with racial slurs were written in blue spray paint on the white city cars and trucks.

Other vehicles appeared to have had their gas tanks tampered with.

Along with the paint, hundreds of business cards were left on windshields.

The cards contain criticism of Obama on one side, and support for Hillary Clinton and her family on the other side.

The same cards were left on channel nine vehicles in Daytona Beach several weeks ago.

The vandalism happened the same night the Obama campaign kicked off its Florida organization with parties across the state.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/29/anti-obama-vandalism-city_n_109834.html

Phoenix Journal

PHOENIX — When the men of the Phoenix Country Club saw their feeding ways in peril, they did not tarry. Some sent nasty e-mail messages, hectored players on the fairway and, for good measure, urinated on a fellow club member’s pecan tree.

The targets of their ire were the women, and some men, who have dared to speak up against the club’s policy of forbidding women in the men’s grill room, a center of power dining in Phoenix.

Barbara Van Sittert, one of those women, said her husband, Logan, 73, has been heckled while playing golf and once found his locker defaced.

“They hooted and hollered at him and called his wife a whore,” said Mrs. Van Sittert, 72, a petite, quiet woman with an elegant white bob. “It was not warm and fuzzy.”

Charges of sexism against private golf clubs are not uncommon; the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, where the Masters is held each year, does not permit women to be members.

But here in Arizona, where the governor, secretary of state, chief justice and Senate minority leader are women, it has rankled more than a few women that nonmember men have more rights than paying female members at the Phoenix Country Club, a century-old fixture in the city’s social and business life where it costs tens of thousands of dollars a year to belong.

Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, is not a member of the club, but Dennis Burke, her chief of staff, is. Mr. Burke has publicly opposed the separated dining rooms, and in an interview called them “indefensible.” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, does not belong to the club but has spoken there. (The McCain presidential campaign declined to comment on the separate dining rooms.) According to a 2007 club directory, Mr. McCain’s son, Andrew, is a member, along with scores of other notable Phoenix residents, including the rocker Alice Cooper.

TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/us/28countryclub.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

GOODNIGHT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer  June 28, 2008

According to the officials, three active-duty Army brigade combat teams, one Army National Guard brigade and two Marine regimental combat teams are being notified that they are being sent to Iraq in early 2009. Officials would not release the specific units involved because the soldiers and Marines and their families have not all been told.

Overall, there are about 146,000 forces in Iraq, and that number is expected to dip to about 142,000 by mid-July when that last unit is all out. That total is at least 7,000 more than the number of troops in Iraq before the buildup began early last year.

Petraeus told Congress in May that he is likely to recommend further troop reductions in Iraq, but he did not provide any details. If he decides in the fall that fewer brigades will be needed in Iraq during the next year, there is the chance that brigades could simply be directed to the war in Afghanistan instead.

There is a broad consensus that more troops are needed in Afghanistan, to both train the security forces and fight the insurgents. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Bush, earlier this year, told NATO allies that they would increase troop levels in Afghanistan in 2009 in response to the growing violence.

Newsweek is set to publish a highly embarrassing report on Sen. John McCain, revealing that the McCains have failed to pay taxes on their beach-front condo in La Jolla, California, for the last four years and are currently in default, The Huffington Post has learned.

Under California law, once a residential property is in default for five years, it can be sold at a tax sale to recover the unpaid taxes for the taxpayers.

The McCains own at least seven homes through a variety of trusts and corporations controlled by Cindy McCain.

McCain campaign scrambling... Developing...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/28/mccains-failed-to-pay-tax_n_109785.html

SEVEN HOMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  MOST AMERICANS ARE TRYING TO HOLD ON TO THEIR ONE AND ONLY HOME. 

WOW, AND THE REPUBLICANS SAY SENATOR OBAMA IS OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE AVERAGE AMERICAN! 

The false rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim spread quickly and widely throughout the internet. Obama has launched a website, FightTheSmears.com, to help combat this falsehood, along with others that crop up on the internet. The Washington Post today has an extensive article detailing how the rumor first appeared. An Obama supporter and scholar, Danielle Allen, received an email calling Obama a Muslim, and having met the Senator while working as a dean at the University of Chicago, and knowing the claim to be baseless, she was determined to discover how it started and how one could stop it.

The e-mail landed in Danielle Allen's queue one winter morning as she was studying in her office at the Institute for Advanced Study, the renowned haven for some of the nation's most brilliant minds. The missive began: "THIS DEFINITELY WARRANTS LOOKING INTO."

Laid out before Allen, a razor-sharp, 36-year-old political theorist, was what purported to be a biographical sketch of Barack Obama that has become one of the most effective -- and baseless -- Internet attacks of the 2008 presidential season. The anonymous chain e-mail makes the false claim that Obama is concealing a radical Islamic background. By the time it reached Allen on Jan. 11, 2008, it had spread with viral efficiency for more than a year...

...As an Obama supporter -- she had met the senator while she worked as a dean at the University of Chicago -- it made her angry. And curious.

"I started thinking, 'How does one stop it?' "

The man Allen found who takes credit for the first posting of an article falsely asserting Obama is a Muslim is a man named Andy Martin.

Martin, a former political opponent of Obama's, is the publisher of an Internet newspaper who sends e-mails to his mailing list almost daily. He said in an interview that he first began questioning Obama's religious background after hearing his famous keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. In an Aug. 10, 2004, article, which he posted on Web sites and e-mailed to bloggers, he said that Obama had concealed his Muslim heritage. "I feel sad having to expose Barack Obama," Martin wrote in an accompanying press release, "but the man is a complete fraud. The truth is going to surprise, and disappoint, and outrage many people who were drawn to him. He has lied to the American people, and he has sought to misrepresent his own heritage." Martin's article did not suggest an association between Obama and radical Islam.

Martin was trying to launch a Senate bid against Obama when he says he first ran the Democrat's name by a contact in London. "They said he must be a Muslim. That was interesting to me because it was an angle that nobody had covered. We started looking. As a candidate you learn how to harness the Internet. You end up really learning how to work the street. I sort of picked this story up as a sideline." Martin said the primary basis for his belief was simple -- Obama's father was a Muslim. In a defamation lawsuit he filed against the New York Times and others several months ago, Martin says that Obama "eventually became a Christian" but that "as a matter of Islamic law began life as a Muslim" due to his father's religion.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/28/false-obama-muslim-rumor_n_109740.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062703781_pf.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/2208856/Barack-Obama-to-visit-Britain.html

Only skeleton details of Mr Obama's trip have been agreed but an announcement of an outline programme is expected over the weekend.

"You will be hearing something very soon," a senior Obama aide told The Telegraph.

During Mr Obama's visit to Britain, likely to take place around the middle of July, he will call on Gordon Brown and, if time permits, David Cameron, the Conservative leader.

A fundraising event to attract campaign donations from wealthy Americans is also understood to be under consideration.

A recent Telegraph poll showed that Mr Obama is overwhelmingly preferred to Mr McCain in Britain and Europe.

Three times as many Britons said they would vote for him as those who indicated they would back Mr McCain, if able to cast a vote in the US election.

But Democratic strategists are concerned that scenes of "Obamamania" in Europe could damage the candidate back home.

In 2004, John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was mocked for "looking French" while in 2000, George W Bush turned his relative lack of foreign travel into a political asset.

Mr Obama, 46, has not been to Iraq since 2004, a fact that his opponent John McCain, 71, the presumptive Republican nominee and a regular visitor to Baghdad, points out frequently.

His extensive foreign trip – unusual at the height of a presidential campaign – is designed to burnish his comparatively thin foreign policy credentials.

The Illinois senator met Mr Brown for the first time in April at the British Embassy, when the Prime Minister also received calls from Mr McCain and Hillary Clinton, who was them still battling for the Democratic nomination.

Mr Obama has visited Downing Street once briefly during a congressional trip.

On a previous trip to Britain in 1996, he was a guest at the wedding of his half-sister Auma, who has since moved back to Kenya, in Bracknell and went his brother-in-law's stag night in Wokingham.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has already invited Mr Obama to visit the Elysee Palace and Downing Street aides are understood to be pushing for him to stop in London before Paris as a signal that he considers Britain to be America's pre-eminent ally.

From NBC/NJ’s Matthew E. Berger
CINCINNATI, Ohio -- McCain told conservative leaders that he would speak out more to highlight his pro-life record and views on other social issues to garner more Christian conservative support, leaders in the room said Thursday.
 
“He needs to find his voice a little better in Ohio,” said Mike Gonidakis, executive director of Ohio Right to Life, one of several leaders who met with McCain for more than an hour. “He pledged to us we’d hear a lot more from him and that he’d be speaking his voice on these issues.”
 
The officials said they walked away impressed with McCain’s positions, and said they believed the “ship is turning” in conservative support for the Republican presidential candidate.
 
The group spoke about McCain’s pro-life voting record, as well as his support for state amendments banning gay marriage (though he did not support a federal one). They urged him to highlight these stances, especially in events in their swing state.
 
The leaders said McCain also acknowledged where they disagree, specifically on embryonic stem-cell research, which McCain has supported. The candidate received literature on new research developments which they said made use of the cells from embryos unnecessary.
 
When McCain asked for advice on how to win more conservative support, the leaders said they told him to speak louder and longer.
 
“We made it very clear to him that if he doesn’t start speaking on family issues, he’s going to lose Ohio,” said Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values. “He needs to make the issues he agrees with us on very clear...

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/26/1171065.aspx 

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/25/america/bush.php

By Jesse McKinley June 25, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO: Reagan has his highways. Lincoln has his memorial. Washington has the capital, and a state, too. But President George W. Bush may soon be the sole president to have a memorial named after him that you can contribute to from the bathroom.

From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water-treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.

The plan - hatched, naturally, in a bar - would place a vote on the November ballot to provide "an appropriate honor for a truly unique president."

Supporters say that they have plenty of signatures to qualify the initiative and that the renaming would fit in a long and proud American tradition of poking political figures in the eye.

"Most politicians tend to be narcissistic and egomaniacs," said Brian McConnell, an organizer who regularly suits up as Uncle Sam to solicit signatures. "So it is important for satirists to help define their history rather than letting them define their own history."

Not surprisingly, those Republicans in a city that voted 83 percent Democratic in 2004 are not thrilled with the idea. Howard Epstein, chairman of the ever-outnumbered San Francisco Republican Party, called the initiative "an abuse of process."

"You got a bunch of guys drunk who came up with an idea," Epstein said, "and want to put on the ballot as a big joke without regard to the city's governance or cost."

The renaming would take effect on Jan. 20, when a new president is sworn in. And regardless of the measure's outcome, supporters plan to commemorate the inaugural with a "synchronized flush" of hundreds of thousands of toilets that would send a flood of water toward the plant, now named the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant.

"It's a way of doing something physical that's mentally freeing," said Stacey Reineccius, 45, a supporter of the plan. "It's a weird thing, but it's true."

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=3&docID=news-000002905663  

By Alex Wayne, CQ Staff

A House panel Wednesday approved bipartisan legislation intended to encourage the widespread adoption of electronic records in the health industry, though SOME  REPUBLICANS SAID THEY HOPE TO WEAKEN PRIVACY PROTECTIONS IN THE BILL BEFORE IT PASSES.

The bill (HR 6357) was approved by the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee by voice vote. The subcommittee briefly debated three amendments but did not vote on them.

Two of those came from Rep. Mike Rogers , R-Mich., who is among a handful of Republicans concerned that the legislation, sponsored by Energy and Commerce Chairman John D. Dingell , D-Mich, and the committee’s senior Republican, Joe L. Barton of Texas, would create new opportunities for lawsuits against health providers. Without changes that would limit their legal liability, he believes doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and other providers may be dissuaded from adopting the technology.

“If we don’t have a health IT system that providers will use, then we have done nothing,” he said.

Congress has been debating ways to promote greater use of health information technology, or “health IT,” for at least four years.

There is widespread agreement that the use of electronic medical records can improve efficiency and cut down on medical errors, reducing health costs. But legislation to encourage the technology’s adoption has been stalled by concerns about privacy, cost and over-regulation.

The Dingell-Barton bill would authorize $575 million over five years to provide grants and loans to health providers — especially small physician practices and rural providers — to buy health IT systems. It would create a system of advisory panels to recommend technical standards for the technology, and it would require the government to begin adopting such technology for its own health programs once standards are decided.

A similar bill in the Senate (S 1693) has been stalled for several months because of privacy concerns.

Lawmakers are trying to strike a balance between privacy advocates, who want patients to have absolute control over their records, and health providers and data-mining companies, who want to use the records in limited ways without patient consent.

In 2004, facilitated by the Bush administration, we American taxpayers began financing “Al Hurra.”  That’s right we finance Al Hurra, an Arab-speaking television station in the Middle East whose name means “The Free One.”  How about that?

Well, here are a few interesting facts pertaining to The Free One television station:

…”The Free One is seen by most Arabs as the U.S. government station, ‘The Cheney Channel’ … and that perception [hurts the U.S.] in [the] region;” (1)

…It has “loose financial and editorial controls;” (1)  

…It “is not seen in the U.S. and no translation is provided to U.S. government overseers or the Congress;” (1)  

…It has aired “anti-American” propaganda; (1) & (2)  

…It has aired stories denying the Jewish “Holocaust and other anti-Israel propaganda;” (1) & (2)

…It has aired stories that “supported terrorism;” (2)

…It has aired a story “featuring a militant who pushed for the death of American soldiers in Iraq;” (2)

…Some Middle Easterners and U.S. diplomats have complained it lacks “quality” and “professionalism;” (1)   

…For at least 2 ½ years, “The whole newsroom [took] three-hour lunches in-between programs;” (1)  

…Current station director, Larry Register, says for at least 2 ½ years the station was “dysfunctional, extremely dysfunctional;” (1)  

… For at least 2 ½ years, “staff was mostly Lebanese Christian, which undermined its credibility in the broader, Islamic, Middle East;” (1)  

… For at least 2 ½ years, “management from the Board of Governors on down [did not speak] Arabic fluently [yet they were responsible for] monitoring what was on the broadcast day in and day out;” (1)  

…The station is viewed as “irrelevant says Dr. Shibley Telhami, a top researcher of Arab public opinion;” (1)  

…”After half a billion dollars spent on Al Hurra, the effect in the region … in terms of public opinion [has been] less than zero.” (1)   

Sources:

(1)  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/19/60minutes/main4196477.shtml

(2) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25350097/  (In the mid-section of the transcript)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/24/dodd-and-feingold-try-to_n_108963.html

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) released the following statement today in response to the announcement that the Senate this week will consider the compromise legislation that would reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA):

This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called 'compromise' legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President's warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans.

"If the Senate does proceed to this legislation, our immediate response will be to offer an amendment that strips the retroactive immunity provision out of the bill. We hope our colleagues will join us in supporting Americans' civil liberties by opposing retroactive immunity and rejecting this so-called 'compromise' legislation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/2182070/Israel-%27will-attack-Iran%27-before-new-US-president-sworn-in%2C-John-Bolton-predicts.html

By Toby Harnden in Washington

The Arab world would be "pleased" by Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, he said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

"It [the reaction] will be positive privately. I think there'll be public denunciations but no action," he said.

Mr Bolton, an unflinching hawk who proposes military action to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons, bemoaned what he sees as a lack of will by the Bush administration to itself contemplate military strikes.

"It's clear that the administration has essentially given up that possibility," he said. "I don't think it's serious any more. If you had asked me a year ago I would have said I thought it was a real possibility. I just don't think it's in the cards."

Israel, however, still had a determination to prevent a nuclear Iran, he argued. The "optimal window" for strikes would be between the November 4 election and the inauguration on January 20, 2009.

"The Israelis have one eye on the calendar because of the pace at which the Iranians are proceeding both to develop their nuclear weapons capability and to do things like increase their defences by buying new Russian anti-aircraft systems and further harden the nuclear installations .

"They're also obviously looking at the American election calendar. My judgement is they would not want to do anything before our election because there's no telling what impact it could have on the election."

But waiting for either Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, or his Republican opponent John McCain to be installed in the White House could preclude military action happening for the next four years or at least delay it.

"An Obama victory would rule out military action by the Israelis because they would fear the consequences given the approach Obama has taken to foreign policy," said Mr Bolton, who was Mr Bush's ambassador to the UN from 2005 to 2006.

"With McCain they might still be looking at a delay. Given that time is on Iran's side, I think the argument for military action is sooner rather than later absent some other development."

The Iran policy of Mr McCain, whom Mr Bolton supports, was "much more realistic than the Bush administration's stance".

Mr Obama has said he will open high-level talks with Iran "without preconditions" while Mr McCain views attacking Iran as a lesser evil than allowing Iran to become a nuclear power.

William Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative, told Fox News on Sunday that an Obama victory could prompt Mr Bush to launch attacks against Iran. "If the president thought John McCain was going to be the next president, he would think it more appropriate to let the next president make that decision than do it on his way out," he said.

Last week, Israeli jets carried out a long-range exercise over the Mediterranean that American intelligence officials concluded was practice for air strikes against Iran. Mohammad Ali Hosseini, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, said this was an act of "psychological warfare" that would be futile.

"They do not have the capacity to threaten the Islamic Republic of Iran. They [Israel] have a number of domestic crises and they want to extrapolate it to cover others. Sometimes they come up with these empty slogans."

He added that Tehran would deliver a "devastating" response to any attack.

On Friday, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, said military action against Iran would turn the Middle East into a "fireball" and accelerate Iran's nuclear programme.

Mr Bolton, however, dismissed such sentiments as scaremongering. "The key point would be for the Israelis to break Iran's control over the nuclear fuel cycle and that could be accomplished for example by destroying the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan or the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

"That doesn't end the problem but it buys time during which a more permanent solution might be found.... How long? That would be hard to say. Depends on the extent of the destruction."

Earlier this year, after former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was tragically assassinated, pundits speculated that the shocking attack may have benefited Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) politically. Now, McCain’s chief strategist, Charlie Black, tells Fortune that the “unfortunate event” of Bhutto’s death “helped us.” Asked if another terrorist attack on U.S. soil would help McCain as well, Black told Fortune that it would be “a big advantage to him“:

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.