Iran will likely soon be referred to the U.N. Security Council. The State Department’s stated hope is that this move will coalesce world opinion leading into a new round of negotiations, which thus far have been undertaken with little to no direct involvement from three central players: Russia, China, and the United States.

In other words, this is a new effort to solve the issue diplomatically — not, as hardliners argue, to move directly to punitive measures like strict sanctions or military action. As Robert Joseph, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, said Wednesday, “We’ve always said that going to the Security Council is not an end in itself and did not signal an end to negotiations.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went even further:

“Nobody is saying that there have to be immediate sanctions in the Security Council,” Rice said in an interview with CBS News.

“Everybody wants to give the Iranians a chance to show us — to reconsider their position,” she said. …

“And then, we’re going to have consultations about what to do next,” she said. “I don’t think anyone is talking about sanctions today. We’re talking now about the referral and then we’ll see what’s necessary.”

Actually, someone is talking about sanctions today, describing them as the “number one item on the agenda.” Here’s Vice President Cheney, asked about Iran on Wednesday by Fox News’ Tony Snow:

Well, I think the next step will be probably to go before the U.N. Security Council. What would be probably the number one item on the agenda would be the resolution that could be enforced by sanctions, were they (the Iranians) to fail to comply with it.

So how long before we learn of a newly-formed White House Iran Group?

As President Bush continues his desperate campaign to sell his flawed Iraq strategy to the American public, a new CBS News poll finds that most Americans aren’t buying what President Bush is selling.

The trends over time tell an important story of President Bush’s failed efforts to shift the basic structure of American public opinion on Iraq:

– President Bush has lacked support and approval from a majority of Americans on Iraq for TWO YEARS. The last time a clear majority of Americans said that they approved President Bush’s handling of Iraq was December 2003, just after the capture of Saddam Hussein.

– Fully 58 percent disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the situation with Iraq – unchanged since he began his public relations offensive in late November.

– A majority of Americans (54 percent) support a timetable for withdrawal.

There have been some slight shifts on some certain questions – 49 percent say United States troops should stay in Iraq as long as it takes to make sure Iraq is a stable democracy, up 6 points since early November.

But overall, President Bush’s efforts to shift Americans’ opinions on Iraq, just as he failed to make the case for his Social Security plan last year.

A bipartisan majority of 79 senators in November supported a vote of no confidence in President Bush’s Iraq policy, calling on him to put forward a real strategy for success.

President Bush has failed to make his case. It is time for a new course.

– Brian Katulis

This morning, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) added his name to the growing list of conservatives who have expressed disapproval of Bush’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program, further undermining the right-wing spin that the only critics of the program are liberals. On ABC’s This Week:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you confident that the administration has acted lawfully in this case?

BROWNBACK: I think we need to hold hearings on it and we’re going to. Both in the intelligence committee, there will be closed hearings and then the judiciary committee will have open hearings.

I think we need to look at this case and this issue. I am troubled by what the basis for the grounds that the administration says that they did these on, the legal basis, and I think we need to look at that far more broadly and understand it a great deal.

I think this is something that bears looking into and us to be able to establish a policy within constitutional frameworks of what a president can or cannot do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You don’t think the 9/11 resolution gave the president the authority for this program?

BROWNBACK: It didn’t, in my vote. I voted for that resolution. That was a week after 9/11. There was nothing you were going to do to stop us from going to war in Afghanistan, but there was no discussion in anything that I was around that that gave the president a broad surveillance authority with that resolution.

Brownback’s view echoes that of Sen. Tom Daschle’s and that of the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. More and more people are seeing Bush’s policy for what it truly is: an unnecessary and unconstitutional power-grab.

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video.

Soldiers’ blogs are increasingly being shut down by the U.S. military.

In November, the Pentagon issued an advisory titled “Loose blogs may blow up BCTs [Bridade Combat Teams].” In an August video message, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker warns troops about the dangerous nature of blogs:

Our adversaries have the ability to take our utterances, our writings and our pictures and do all kinds of things to harm us.

New York Army National Guard Spc. Jason Christopher Hartley had his blog shut down, was fined $1,000, and was demoted from sergeant. Hartley noted that blogs “get shut down almost as fast as they’re set up.”

But not all blogs. “The ones that stay up are completely patriotic and innocuous, and they’re fine if you want to read the flag-waving and how everything’s peachy keen in Iraq.”

A recent Washington Post story backs up Hartley’s observation. The U.S. Marines were so happy with Bill Roggio’s right-wing blog “The Fourth Rail” that they invited him to come to Iraq and cover the war. When he needed an affiliation with with an organization to get media credentials, the conservative American Enterprise Institute graciously offered him one.

Today, President Bush attempted to justify his secret domestic spying program:

The NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers, called from the outside of the United States and of known al Qaeda or affiliate people. In other words, the enemy is calling somebody and we want to know who they’re calling and why.

In fact, according to this explanation, the program was not only illegal but unnecessarily puts the American people at risk.

If we know that U.S. persons are communicating with al Qaeda or al Qaeda affiliates, the surveillance would be approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. (Remember, doing so would not slow the process down because you can obtain the approval up to 72-hours after the surveillance has begun.) Evidence obtained with a warrant from the FISA court, in most cases, can be used to charge and prosecute a suspect. In fact, Section 218 of the Patriot Act amended FISA to make it easier to introduce evidence obtained with a FISA warrant to prosecute people.

Every conversation monitored under Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program is a missed opportunity to get someone who is talking with terrorists off the streets and behind bars.

Why? Becuase evidence obtained by Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program is probably not admissible in court. Convictions obtained with evidence from this program may be overturned. Suspected terrorists are already pursuing appeals.

Conversation between U.S. persons and a known terrorists should be monitored. But those conversations should be monitored in a way maximizes the security of the American people. Bush’s secret program doesn’t do it. We’d be much safer if he would cancel it and start following the law.

Add Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) to the list of conservative senators – which already includes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) – who have expressed serious concerns about Bush’s secret domestic spying program. From CNN’s Late Edition:

BLITZER: So you want hearings? You want hearings?

LUGAR: I do. I think this is an appropriate time, without going back and should the president have ever tried to listen to a call coming from Afghanistan, probably of course. And in the first few weeks we made many concessions in the Congress because we were at war and we were under attack.

We still have the possibility of that going on so we don’t want to obviate all of this, but I think we want to see what in the course of time really works best and the FISA Act has worked pretty well from the time of President Carter’s day to the current time.

Nevertheless, Bill Kristol still characterizes concern about the spying program as “paranoid liberalism.” Never let the facts get in the way of a talking point.