Iran in Iraq

The "evidence" proving a link between Iran and the insurgency is thinner than a condom on a fire hydrant. Why on earth would Iran want to destabilize the pro-Tehran government now at least nominally in charge in Baghdad? According the Juan Cole (citing an Arabic language source), the Iraqi government itself does not endorse the U.S. charges.

The officials said they would speak only on the condition of anonymity so the trio's explosives expert and analyst, who would normally not speak to reporters, could provide more information. The analyst's exact job description was not revealed to reporters.

The refusal to divulge the job description is the telling point. I'm sure you've played the "six degrees of separation" game. How many degrees separate that analyst from Michael Ledeen, Achmed Chalabi or Doug Feith, I wonder?

The official did make it clear that declassifying the material took place only after several weeks of analysis on what information could be useful to insurgent forces — information that has mostly been kept out of the public eye since the E.F.P.’s began turning up in Iraq.

Oh ho. So the material is declassified. Why, then, is everything so hush-hush?

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The only good thing about a propaganda rollout like this is that it eases the task of discovering which major media scribes are on the payroll. I once considered offering an annual award called "The Spooky" to the mainstream journalist who toiled most efficiently for his government masters. Glenn Grenwald has compiled a list of hacks who deserve nomination this year's Spooky award. Of ABC News' Terry Moran:

Manifestly, Moran -- just like Halperin -- is eager to show that he is pro-military and was desperate to convince Hewitt that he is not one of those dirty anti-American subversive liberals. To achieve that goal, Moran paraded in front of Hewitt and smeared his fellow journalists as being "deep[ly] anti-military" and claimed that they have a "dangerous" hostility to "American projection of power around the world."

"Deeply anti-military"? We want the truth about the Iraqi insurgency to come out precisely because we care about our serving men and women.

And the truth is this: By far, the bulk of the attacks come from Sunni insurgents, who are -- almost certainly -- receiving help from Saudi Arabia. The Saudis probably do not want involvement in Iraqi affairs, but they feel compelled to come to the aid of their co-religionists. Did any of the "journalists" covering the anti-Iran propaganda event ask about Saudi Arabia and the Sunni insurgents? Nope.

At least Patrick Cockburn sees clearly:

The allegations by senior but unnamed U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The U.S. has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.

The insurgent groups have repeatedly denounced the democratically elected Iraqi government as pawns of Iran. It is unlikely that the Sunni guerrillas have received significant quantities of military equipment from Tehran. Some 1,190 U.S. soldiers have been killed by so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

But most of them consist of heavy artillery shells taken from the arsenals of the former regime and detonated by blasting caps wired to a small battery. The current is switched on either by a command wire or a simple device such as the remote control used for children's toys or to open garage doors.

Remember when we learned that the U.S. pretty much allowed any Iraqi who wanted weaponry to raid Saddam's old stockpiles?

I like the way this blogger puts it:

If a person believes that a clash between U.S. and Iranian interests is inevitable (or even desirable) then one must ignore evidence that points to the source of U.S. casualties in Sunni militia held provinces like al Anbar. Most of the U.S. casualties have come from Diyala, Salahuddin, Babil, or Sunni guerrilla districts in Baghdad. Again, the only way to rationalize this is to ignore the specifics and conflate "Insurgent-Al Qaeda-Sunni-Shia-al Sadr" into one conglomerated mass and hope that someone will believe that therefore the Iranians are supporting "THE" insurgency.

Iran has made peace overtures to the United States; we have spurned them. With the exception of the hostage crisis, Iran has never attacked us, our interests, or its neighbors. Iran was not the aggressor in the Iran-Iraq war. The coming air strikes will result in a missile attack on one of our aircraft carriers. Bush and Cheney, I believe, consider expendable the lives of those serviceman; they want a justification for a nuclear counter-strike.

The result: The deaths of millions, the radiological poisoning of a region -- and, quite possibly, the eventual end of our own superpower status, as the rest of the world spends the next forty years seeking vengeance against us.

A thought for the conspiratorially-minded: We know that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by making threatening noises against Israel and by sponsoring that obscene Holocaust revisionist conference, is doing everything he can to facilitate Bushco's propaganda blitz. He has followed the "bad guy" script so precisely that some have wondered whether he really is an American hireling. In the light of that paranoid thought, I would like to ask one question:

Has Ahmadinejad ever mentioned the October Surprise?

Has he ever provided documentary or other evidence supporting the long-heard allegations that the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 made a secret deal with Iran?

Ahmadinejad certainly would be in a position to know -- and to reveal -- the truth of that event. Why would he provide cover for the Republican party?