All the lying and campaigning for Iraq proved just a bit too taxing on the administration. Too much to repeat for Iran, anyway.

That's why, if Pat Buchanan's American Conservative mag is correct -- and, let's face it, Buchanan can be loony so take it with a heap of salt -- Cheney is preparing a plan whereby we strike Iran with nuclear weapons in the event of a major terrorist attack in the US.

Doug Ireland notes that the source for this gossip is "former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vince Cannistraro," and that there's a long history of bickering between the CIA and the administration, so there's certainly no love lost between Cannistraro and Cheney

Still he notes that:

"one wouldn't be wrong in thinking that the fact that this well-placed prominent veteran of a lifetime in the U.S. national security apparatus spent a lot of time at the highest levels of the intelligence community gives him and his subordinates access to some pretty juicy Pentagon gossip."

"It will be interesting to see if some major news organization -- ABC News, for example, Cannistraro's employer -- tries to run this story to ground to see if it's true."