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From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

If there's one thing that can distract the nattering nabobs from the war in Iraq, it's rumors

of a new war in Iran.

This week, the press and the public responded to reports that no options are off the table for dealing with the perceived Iranian threat,

not even the possibility of using nuclear bunker buster bombs to take out Iran's burgeoning nuclear capabilities.

The plans came to light last weekend in an article by New Yorker reporter Seymour Hirsch.

It made Slate columnist Fred Kaplan wonder not only about President Bush's intentions, but also those of Hershey's

anonymous sources. Kaplan proposed four explanations for why insiders would leak word of a possible

nuclear option to the press. He called the first one the madman theory, the idea that portraying a trigger-happy president

could back an enemy down.

It's a scenario with a clear historical precedent.

When Richard Nixon was president, he came into office thinking that he could get the North

...