William Wehrum, President Bush’s nominee to head the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation (OAR), has earned a reputation in Washington as “the behind-the-scenes architect” of some of the Bush administration’s most controversial initiatives. Some lowlights:

- Wehrum was a lead author of Bush’s “Clear Skies” legislation, which would have loosened emissions caps on dangerous airborne toxins.

- In 2002, while serving as OAR’s general counsel, Wehrum shepherded through a rule written by forest products industry lobbyists that relaxed the emission standards for formaldehyde. Wehrum had previously represented those same timber interests as a lobbyist.

- In 2004, Wehrum implemented new industry-friendly mercury guidelines that substantially weakened the Clean Air Act. Again, Wehrum’s former lobbying firm played an instrumental role in drafting the rule.

- Just this week, a draft of a new air pollution rule, drafted under the oversight of Wehrum, came under fire from congressional leaders. The proposal would allow polluters to discharge thousands of pounds of airborne toxins while “virtually avoiding regulation.“

The good news: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) plans to put a hold on Wehrum’s nomination if it moves to the Senate floor.

- Mike Darner

A new report by Seymour Hersh finds that senior Bush administration officials are developing plans for a massive attack on Iran which could include nuclear weapons. Hersh points out that the Joint Chiefs of Staff — a panel of the highest-ranking military officials from each branch of the U.S. armed services — are strenuously opposed to the plan, so much so that some have threatened to resign if it goes forward:

[A] Pentagon adviser on the war on terror…confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to high levels.” The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.”

But such advice hasn’t fazed the ultra-hawkish members of Congress, who now refuse to accept any plan that doesn’t include the use of nuclear weapons:

A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee…said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” … “These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out”"”remove the nuclear option”””they’re shouted down.”

While senior military officials oppose the use of nuclear weapons, Hersh’s sources add that the idea “has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.”

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports a major scoop in the current edition of the New Yorker. AFP has an overview:

The administration of President George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.

“¦The former intelligence officials depicts planning as “enormous,” “hectic” and “operational,” Hersh writes.

“¦In recent weeks, the president has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of the House of Representatives, including at least one Democrat, the report said.

Hersh’s account is consistent with other recent reports. This week, the former deputy director at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Wayne White, told Forward Magazine:

In recent months I have grown increasingly concerned that the administration has been giving thought to a heavy dose of air strikes against Iran’s nuclear sector without giving enough weight to the possible ramifications of such action.

Joseph Cirincione, a respected non-proliferation expert who decribed himself as “the last remaining person in Washington who believed President George W. Bush when he said that he was committed to a diplomatic solution,” wrote in Foreign Policy Magazine last week that senior administration officials had already made up their mind about to attack Iran:

[C]olleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran“¦What I previously dismissed as posturing, I now believe may be a coordinated campaign to prepare for a military strike on Iran.

Read the whole story by Hersh.

“U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad warned in an interview broadcast Friday that
Iraq faces the possibility of sectarian civil war if efforts to build a national unity government do not succeed. He said such a conflict could affect the entire Middle East,” the AP reports.