Americans don't want to be tricked into another unjustified, unvetted war. We've got to clean up our mess in Iraq before we even consider fighting anybody else.

That's why we applaud Sen. Dick Durbin's bill that would require President Bush, who has been ratcheting up his threats against Iran, to seek congressional approval before ordering another invasion.

"If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it'd be a dangerous threat to world peace," President Bush said. "So I told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

The president is right to talk tough about stopping nuclear proliferation in Iran, which is engaged in uranium enrichment ostensibly to develop nuclear weapons. Its Revolutionary Guard corps has supported terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened to destroy Israel.

Durbin is with Bush in acknowledging the threat. "Make no mistake, Iran cannot be ignored," Durbin said. "It has fostered a foreign policy that supports some of the worst actions in the Middle East, from Hezbollah to Hamas."

But sanctions that freeze the Iranian military's assets, ban Americans from doing business in Iran and encourage our allies and the United Nations to pressure Iraq are a more reasonable approach than threatening to bomb Iran and replace Ahmadinejad. That's what Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have intimated they are eager to do.

Bush insists his October 2002 authorization from Congress to fight terror gives him the right to order the military to respond to aggression without seeking further congressional approval. That sounds like war to us. And if Ahmadinejad doesn't suspend Iran's nuclear program, how long will this administration be able to resist initiating another war?

"I continue to be concerned that this administration is going to move too far, too fast, toward military action against Iran," Durbin said.

Practically speaking, the United States doesn't even have enough soldiers to fight in Iraq. We've outsourced the war to mercenaries. We haven't even had enough National Guard troops to help with the California wildfires.

Most Americans agree that the United States went to war in Iraq for the wrong reasons. Bush's suggestion that restoring democracy in Iraq would help us win the war on terror turned out to be as evasive as those scary weapons of mass destruction that never turned up in Iraq.

The problem is that terror doesn't have a specific geographical address. Wouldn't it have made more sense to root out Osama bin Laden and lop off the brain trust of al-Qaida than to split our focus and invade another country on a different continent, as we did in Iraq?

We should take a lesson from our failures in Iraq and try to handle our conflict in Iran with more level-headed diplomacy.

The Iraq war already has cost the United States its global credibility. Even Ahmadinejad has played up our tarnished image, denouncing the sanctions as "bullying powers." If the United States takes on Iran by itself, it will only inspire more terrorists and create more enemies, both of whom will be working toward our demise.