Getting tied down in Iraq is an objective, external constraint, which can't be conflated with a subjective, internal division in US politics. If a major division in the US power elite and ruling class had already developed in response to that objective, external constraint, there would have already been -- or there would be soon --
a major policy change toward Iran: dropping the campaign for regime change in Iran. That policy change -- even a strong push for such a policy change among the US power elite and ruling class -- has not come about. Hence the Iran Freedom Support Act. There is no discernible major division there.
> What if it could have been able to quickly install a puppet regime
> under Chalabi and withdraw it's new, more mobile, streamlined army that
> Rumsfeld boasted of?
<snip>
> And this is also precisely why the bipartisan US defence and foreign policy
> establishment is so unhappy with this administration.
What's the nature of unhappiness? It's unhappiness about not being able to move fast enough, easily enough, onto "regime change" in Iran.
That's very different from the kind of domestic, subjective restraints on foreign policy options created by the Vietnam War, which made Jimmy Carter waver and even led to the Iran-Contra scandal (the scandal wouldn't have come about if Congress had solidly supported the Contras and agreed to pay for them) in the Reagan era.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>