The wonderful folks who brought us the debacle in Iraq aren't done yet. They have plans for President Bush to leave office with another bang in the Middle East.

In a recent encounter with Sen. Patty Murray on campus, I told her that many of us were growing concerned about what seems to be preparations for a U.S. attack on Iran.

I urged her to put out the same message Sen. Barak Obama recently made in Clinton, Ohio.

"George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear ... you don't have our support, and you don't have our authorization for another war," he said during the speech.

Sen. Murray assured me that the president would have to come back to Congress for another resolution for Iran, adding that Congress has grown increasingly "cynical towards this administration" and their assertions of power.

Pressing further, I said that according to professor Barnett Rubin and other respected Middle East specialists under the Cheney-Addington interpretation of the Constitution, the administration would not need to come back to Congress.

If the State Department were to designate the Revolutionary Guard of Iran a "terrorist organization," then a military attack would fall under the original Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001, which gave the president authority to attack not only terrorist organizations themselves, but "those who harbor terrorists."

Sen. Murray quickly responded to me: "[We] won't let that happen."

Her words didn't put me at ease.

Some senators have tried to put actions behind their words. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va) tried to insert language in a recent war supplemental that would've prohibited funding for a strike on Iran without congressional approval.

But due to intense pressure from The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other lobbying groups, the Democratic leadership removed the language, leaving the president a blank check.

Recent developments, however, are more alarming.

In a provocative and bellicose measure, the Senate overwhelmingly passed an amendment yesterday that Webb says could, "read as a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action [against Iran]."

In an article titled "U.S. Officials Began Crafting Iran Bombing Plan," Fox reporter James Rosen said, "Everyone in town is now [talking] about the costs and benefits of military action against Iran," sometime in the next 8 to 10 months.

The Sunday Telegraph joins the drumbeat to war asserting that, once expressly opposed to the military option, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is now prepared to join Cheney and sanction military action.

"The decision to attack was made some time ago," CIA officials Vincent Cannistraro and Robert Baer said. "There will be an attack on Iran."

And adding to the fervor, former Ambassador John Bolton said the United States will support an Israeli preemptive strike.

This is important because of the threat of an accidental war, or worse, the reported "end run" strategy by the vice president's office.

The strategy consists of 'nudging' Israel to launch a small-scale attack on Iran's facilities with the assumption that Iran would retaliate against the massive U.S. buildup in the gulf. The rest, as they say, would follow naturally.

That scenario is much more worrisome and probable. So who is going to stop this war?

Democrats have already squandered numerous chances to prevent this president from starting a war unilaterally. It's still possible for Congress to pass legislation to head off this catastrophe — but I'm not holding my breath.

Maybe the military will step in as Representative Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) suggested to me. After all, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are unanimously opposed, as well as the head of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Admiral William Fallon.

And in a stunning rebuke of one of the administration's main rationales for war, former CENTCOM head General John Abizaid said, "[There] are ways to live with a nuclear Iran."

Nevertheless, George Bush is still Commander-In-Chief (of the Armed Forces) and unsympathetic, outspoken generals tend to be replaced under this administration.

As conservative commentator Pat Buchanan observed: "If Americans sickened by the carnage of Iraq wish to stop an even more disastrous war on Iran, they had best get cracking."

[Reach contributing writer Aditya Ganapathiraju at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]