I caught Joe Klein on The Daily Show the other night and at one point, John Stewart observed he just couldn’t get Klein to break a smile but, given what Klein was discussing and the implications for the remainder of the second Bush term, I can understand as there really wasn’t anything to smile about.

Then after a little bit of searching, here are two interesting articles worth reading from the New Yorker’s website:

Seymour Hersch:

The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids.

and another interesting overview of the country by Joe Klein himself

Khatami, Khamenei, Khomeini, Rafsanjani: the names are easily confused by inattentive Westerners, who tend to have only two indelible images of post-revolutionary Iran—the furious visage of Ayatollah Khomeini and, in 1979, the blindfolded, stumbling Americans held hostage in the Tehran Embassy compound by radical students.

I’m hearing a new protest song in my head,

Khatami, Khamenei, Khomeini, Rafsanjani... let’s call the whole thing off!