WASHINGTON After a weekend in which 29 Americans died and the 82nd Airborne deployed in Baghdad, what the Iraq war will mean to the politics of 2008 becomes clear. Hillary Clinton's early Saturday announcement of her exploratory committee was brilliantly executed and captured front page, cable and network coverage all weekend. But it was a decision forced upon her. Barack Obama, the "rock star," has been poaching on Hillary's donor lists and offering Democrats a post-Bush-Clinton-Bush politics that says, "Goodbye to all that." John Edwards has decried President Bush's surge as "the McCain Doctrine," called for immediate withdrawal of 40,000-50,000 U.S. troops and thrown down the gauntlet to Hillary, declaring, "Silence is betrayal." By midweek, Hillary was out with her own plan for redeployment. The Democrat nominee will likely be one of these three. In every national or Iowa-New Hampshire poll, they are first, second or third. But there is a wild card. On Feb. 25, America will watch the Academy Awards, where the Oscar for best documentary will likely go to "An Inconvenient Truth." If Al Gore wins the Oscar, addresses the nation for two minutes on global warming and the war, then appears on Oprah, Leno, Letterman, Stewart and Colbert, a subsequent declaration of candidacy would put him in the top tier. And unlike Edwards and Hillary, Gore opposed the war in Iraq. In the Democratic Party, the Iraq war is a lost cause and any candidate who has not come to that position by February will not be in the hunt. In the Republican Party, the war is less likely to bring about the unity Democrats will have achieved by year's end. Already, near a fifth of the Republicans in the Senate, including Chuck Hagel and presidential candidate Sam Brownback, have come out against the surge. Front-runners Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney, however, still back the president. But while McCain is far out in front in raising money and lining up support, he is also the national figure, beyond Bush and Dick Cheney, most identified with the least popular war in U.S. history. If McCain wishes to be president, it would be best for him for this war to be in its final act by 2008. If the war has been lost by then, McCain can say: Rumsfeld lost it because he fought it the wrong way and we shall never do that again. But if the war is still going on, it will be the issue of 2008, and it is hard to see America voting to embrace the "McCain Doctrine" and escalate by sending in 100,000 more troops. Is there anything that might alter the course of events and affect the war picture by 2008• Indeed: a pre-emptive strike on Iran. Should it occur, writes Wayne White, an intelligence officer at the State Department until 2005, "such action would likely involve not only taking out widely dispersed nuclear-related targets and nearby anti-aircraft defenses, but also portions of the Iranian air force assigned to defend these targets. ... Such a plan probably would also include taking out Iran's array of anti-ship missiles along the northern coast of the Gulf, its Kilo-class submarines, other naval assets and even some targets related to Iran's long-range missile capabilities." Is such an attack being considered• Nick Burns, No. 3 at State, was at the Herzileah Conference last weekend. "Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon -- there's no doubt about it," Burns told the Israelis. "The policy of the U.S. government is that we cannot allow Iran to become a nuclear weapons state." Burns was echoed by ex-Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz: "The year of 2007 is the year of decisiveness. ... The free world doesn't have the privilege to drag its feet on Iran and hope for the best." Democrats failed to stop this war. Can they stop the next one• Or do they suspect and support what they think is coming? Pat Buchanan edits The American Conservative magazine.

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