Really, I don't know what else to say about this:
Intelligence suggested that Chalabi's security chief, Arras Habib, had what one top official called "contacts with the more nefarious creatures in Iran." Other U.S. officials said Habib might have given Iran information about U.S. operations in Iraq. A lawyer for Chalabi denied the accusation.Except that I'm inclined to give it more weight in light of the suspicions some bloggers have voiced recently. For example:
It is becoming increasingly evident from all the violence we have witnessed over the last year, that a proxy war is being waged against the US on Iraqi soil by several countries and powers with Iraqis as the fuel and the fire, just like Lebanon was during the late seventies and eighties. The majority of Arab regimes have a huge interest in this situation continuing, not to mention Iran, and Al-Qaeda.And:
What surprises me is the almost professional coordination of the uprisings in all of these areas. I'm assuming, of course, that the money and equipment supplied by our dear Mullahs in Iran is being put to use good enough, not to mention the hundreds of Pasderan and Iranian intelligence officers.. sorry I mean Iranian Shia pilgrims that have been pouring into Iraq for months now.It's not just bloggers:
Reports from inside Iraq continue to suggest that Iran's conservative Islamic government is meddling in the affairs of its neighbor, according to U.S. officials and lawmakers with access to information about the instability there.Then again, the article linked at the top of this post is from the Detroit Free Press, the paper that can't run a spell-check:
All agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because Bush dislikes public reports of dissension in his administration.That dissension, it'll get you every time. Posted by Ilyka at May 21, 2004 09:21 AM in news
All I can say is "Well...duh!"
I say this not as a slam toward you, but rather because you've managed to wrap it all up in a cogent fashion.
Anyone who'd been paying attention knew that this war was ill advised to say the least. Even Dubya's father knew this was a bad idea:
"We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability." ~Former President George H. W. Bush
His daddy called it, way back in the '90's.
This whole admistration has been the epitome of everything that the GOP has been moving toward in the last 20 years. This is why at age 41 I'm abandoning my independant stance and taking the side of the Democrats.
On the contrary, this war was not "ill-advised" -- it was inevitable. You, like George Bush Sr., preferred that confrontation with the "Arab world" (by the way, you do know that Iranians aren't Arab, don't you?) be left for some future generation to deal with. Well, we are that future generation. Would you rather have had your kids or grandkids deal with this? Whether you like it or not, the "Arab world" (actually, the power-hungry faction of the Muslim ummah, which seems to be rather large if not a majority of the Muslims in the world) has to be dealt with. Now is as good a time as any. Or would you rather wait until we are in the same situation with them as we were with the Soviets? Do you think we can afford another Cold War?
Posted by: Andrea Harris at May 23, 2004 02:40 AM