The Iran Drumbeat grows louder.

You're kidding me, right?

The administration of President George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.

The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.

"That's the name they're using," the report quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying.

A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying that "this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war."

The former intelligence officials depicts planning as "enormous," "hectic" and "operational," Hersh writes.

This may just be posturing to shape negotiations, but I doubt it. Sy Hersh, as one of the breakers of the Abu Ghraib story as well as others, is not the person they would over the board leak to if they were running a "pressurize Iran" operation. Certainly, it could have been done backchannel without his knowledge he was being used, figuring his credibility as an administration enemy would lend weight to the threat, but I'm still inclined to think that this may be real.

Also, c'mon guys. Hitler? I thought Saddam was Hitler. And then wasn't Osama like Hitler, Mao and Stalin?

Here is the original New Yorker piece. It's long and discursive, but it has a lot of inormation and is well worth the read.