Democrats proving useless yet again

From TomPaine.com via Common Dreams:

As the Bush administration ratchets up its military threat to Iran, the leadership of the Democratic party is providing a free pass to continue on that potentially disastrous course. Congressional leaders have tacitly or explicitly accepted the necessity of keeping the “military option”—meaning a massive, unprovoked air attack on Iran—“on the table,” as have all three of the leading candidates for the party’s presidential nomination.

The Democratic leadership in Congress has defined the Iran issue only in terms of congressional prerogatives to declare war; none have seen fit to say that threatening Iran with an unprovoked attack is an unacceptable option. Leading Democrats refuse to reject the option of aggressive war against Iran because they have bought into one of the central myths of the U.S. national security elite: that the U.S. must use its unchallenged military dominance to coerce Iran on uranium enrichment.

The three leading candidates in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination have all stated their support for continuing to consider the option of military attack. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., told the AIPAC annual convention at the end of January, “In dealing with this threat ... no option can be taken off the table.” Former senator John Edwards was even more vehement in a speech on Iran last month at the Herzliya Conference in Israel. “To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table,” he said, and then repeated the point for emphasis. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., appearing on “60 Minutes” recently, declared, “I think we should keep all options on the table.”

An attack on Iran would be illegal under the UN Charter and the Kellogg-Briand Pact and would violate Article VI of the Constitution of the United States of America. Apparently it is risker to be viewed as weak (though you'd have to be bloodthirsty to see obeying the law as weak, in this case) than to chance being a thug by keeping war crimes "on the table."