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ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- The Bush administration is beating the drum for military action against Iran that could prove catastrophic, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran said Tuesday.
Moran, D-Va., spoke to more than 800 people at a town hall forum he sponsored, entitled "Is Iran Next?"
Moran, who sounded similar warnings during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said he is increasingly alarmed about Bush's intentions.
"I have been very much concerned with what appears to be a drumbeat of rhetoric that seems increasingly incendiary," Moran said. The harsh language only serves to strengthen hard-line factions within Iran, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Moran said.
In recent weeks, the Bush administration has stepped up its rhetoric regarding Iran. Last month President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
And at a speech last month in Leesburg, Vice President Dick Cheney said the U.S. and other nations are "prepared to impose serious consequences" if Iran continues on its present course. He made no specific reference, though, to military action.
Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan who is now a fellow with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, told the meeting that an invasion of Iran could only be sustained by reinstating the draft.
"The cost (of a military strike) would far outweigh the benefits," Korb said. "We learned during the Cold War that sometimes patience is the best way to go."
A representative from the conservative American Enterprise Institute who was supposed to offer an opposing viewpoint on the Iran issue at the forum did not attend.
Most in the audience said they were alarmed by the rhetoric from the Bush administration regarding Iran.
Matthew Bastani, of Fairfax, an Iranian American who came to the United States in 1959, said the Bush administration is "totally out of control." The U.S. should not be threatened by Iran, he said.
"Iran has not invaded a country" in hundreds of years, Bastani said. "Iran is a peaceful country, the opposite of the U.S."
The Bush administration's intentions toward Iran have been the subject of debate in Congress.
The administration successfully opposed congressional legislation that would have required congressional approval for military action in Iran. And earlier this year the Senate approved a resolution urging the State Department to label Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.
Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., said he feared the measure could be interpreted as authorizing a military strike in Iran, which he called Cheney's "fondest pipe dream."
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