It's a Good Thing We Have Elected Officials

...to give us pearls of wisdom like this:

"The military option is the last option but cannot be taken off of the table." John McCain, who gets paid to say stuff like this.

Well of course it's the last option. That's like observing that your car keys are in the last place you look. After you find them, you stop looking. And when you're bombing the snot out of Tehran, it means the time for diplomacy is long gone.

Thanks for clearing that up, Senator.

Update: Over the past few weeks or so, the rhetoric between Iran and, well, pretty much everyone else has gotten increasingly heated, including threats to refer Iran to the IAEA and the UN Security Council for sanctions, with even Russia on board with the idea. Iran's Ahmedinejad sounds increasingly like a lunatic who is begging for an excuse to push the button. The U.S. is rotating air force units into an unnamed nation in "Southwest Asia," and Israel has worked out a deal to use Kurdish airstrips in northern Iraq to hit Iranian targets. Even France and Germany have talked about sanctions.

I've read bloggers predicting active U.S. bombing before the end of February. Personally, I think it will take a few months more (Bush will probably tread more lightly here than he did with Iraq -- more's the pity), but absent some intervening factor, all-out war with Iran looks like a very real possibility.

With that as a background, note that France just started back-pedalling on its tough-talk. Now note the trends at work, here. Every nation in the world is ramping up calls for Iran to stand down, to avoid a conflict by disavowing nuclear research -- except for France. So what does John McCain think is the appropriate posture for his public comments to the news media? Following the French example, it would seem.

I hope all his talk about running for Pres in '08 is just part of a running joke that he hasn't explained yet.

Update: Michelle Malkin's got a huge round-up of comments, for those of you with plenty of time.