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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen appeared to warn Israel on Wednesday against an attack on Iran. He said at news conference, “Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us . . . This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don’t need it to be more unstable.”

Mullen is afraid of all hell breaking loose in Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of an attack on Iran, and of all the Pentagon’s efforts in both places coming unraveled.

Mullen was a nominee of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is known to concur with Mullen on this matter. They are boxing up Dick Cheney, who, his former adviser David Wurmser said, was angling for an Israeli attack on Iran if an American one could not be arranged for.

It is not clear what would be attacked, anyway. Civilian enrichment labs permitted by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty?

Apparently under Cheney’s CIA it was it was not allowed for an analyst to say that Iran and Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction or that Iran had given up any weapons research in early 2003.

Baghdad is facing gasoline shortages after a pipeline coming up from the south was sabotaged. One of the things that puzzled me about PM Nuri al-Maliki’s assault on the Sadrists during the past three months is why he thought they would not take revenge on him by perforating some pipelines.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic on the security operation in Maysan Province against the Mahdi Army. It says that the Iraqi military attacked the house of Maysan Governor Adil al-Mahudar and arrested 30 of his private bodyguards. The governor was not at home.

Later on, they Said they became fortunate on arresting the governor

Police imprisoned the head of the local council for the province, Abd al-Jabbar Wahid al-Ukayli. He and other arrested officials were accused by the police of being Special Groups linked to Iran. This accusation is unlikely to be true, since the Sadrist dislike Iran and are Iraqi nationalists.

The Iraq War has soured so many military families on the Republican Party that the Dems may split their vote this year instead of only getting 25% of it. I wonder, though, whether the almost solidly Republican officer corps will also defect in any numbers.