Thoughtcrime:

Back when the preznit was convincing everyone we needed to preemptively invade and occupy Iraq, he threatened us with the specter of a nuclear explosion: "we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Pretty scary. Scary enough to convince enough people to support a near unilateral war against a faraway country that had not attacked us and -- as we later learned -- could not possibly have attacked us.

But we did learn. So we won't fall for that trick again! As the preznit himself says, "fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice... ... ... won't be fooled again".

So now that the preznit wants to invade and occupy another faraway country that has not attacked us and cannot possibly attack us, how can he gain support for it? I mean, he's already played the "nuclear explosion on American soil" card, and it was proven -- to all but the dumbest among us, the increasingly lonely and isolated twenty-four percenters -- to be the most base and cynical kind of propaganda, an utterly false lie designed to play on our deepest fears. He knows it can't work again.

And yet he must strike against Iran. So he needs a stronger, bigger, more monstrously frightening image.

Thus:

From the preznit's Wednesday press conference:

Q: But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?

Preznit: ...Yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace. But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.

Got that? World War III.

Either we start a war with Iran, or.... WWIII!

But not just that. It's not good enough for us to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. But from knowing how to build a nuclear weapon.

So, see, then when we bomb them and go in there and search around through their country and don't find any evidence of nuclear weapons, people like me won't be able to go "AHA! I knew they didn't really have nuclear weapons!"

No. Because, see, preznit never actually said they actually had nuclear weapons, just that they knew how to build them. So, let's see you prove they didn't have THAT, why dontcha, mr. smartypants blogger!!