Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to Iowa Democrats, which apparently exists online only as a JPEG (via Michael J. Smith). It’s about her vote to encourage President Bush to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. She wants Iowa Democrats to know:

Let me be clear on Iran —- I am opposed to letting President Bush take any military action against the country without full Congressional approval. And I see nothing today that would justify giving that approval.

Really. Does anyone doubt that if President Bush decided to seek full Congressional approval for military action against Iran, he would get it? He won’t seek it, but if he did, would he get it? Would Senator Clinton give it to him? Her big idea for aggressive diplomacy with Iran is evidently to declare a branch of its military a terrorist organization. She also supports sanctions, which are never effective. As far as I know she doesn’t disagree with any of Bush’s accusations against Iran (which seem much worse than the accusations against Iraq in 2002 and 2003), but apparently she doesn’t consider those accusations to justify military action. Yeah, right. If President Bush went to Congress tomorrow claiming that Iran had just massacred a bunch of American troops or had magically developed a working nuclear weapon overnight, would Senator Clinton give her approval to military action? Hell yeah!

So what difference does it make? I remember a few months ago when we were all supposed to contact our folks in Congress and voice our support for Jim Webb’s bill to require the president to seek Congressional authorization for military action. Why? I’d support a bill that says Congress will not authorize military action against Iran. But what, at this point, is a bill to require Congressional authorization? A fig leaf of fake legitimacy for the president if he chooses to accept it.

I am opposed to letting President Bush take any military action against Iran. I don’t care whether he does it with full Congressional approval or not.