• And all we got was this lousy photo-shoot?

  

  Ahmadinejad’s visit with the Shiite government of Iraq is a useful reminder of what the permanent Iraq occupation means: an expansion of the power of Iran in the region, even as its nuclear bomb aspirations continue, and the slow emasculation of the US. Of course, the visit has inflamed the Awakening forces and widened the gulf that separates Sunni and Shia Mesopotamia:

  “I think Ahmadinejad is the most criminal and bloody person in the world,” said Emad Abbas, a university student in Samarra. “This visit degrades Iraq’s dignity, and it proves that Iraq is occupied twice, once by the United States and once by Iran.”

  In Kirkuk, where Sunnis are fighting efforts by Kurds to control the city, tribes and political parties rallied against the visit. “How can we tolerate this?” said Salman Abdullah Al-Hamad, an Arab tribal leader in Kirkuk. “Today we live under the regime of the clerics. The Iranian revolution has been exported to Iraq.”

  But no worry: the US will spend more billions and deploy 100,000 troops for decades if necessary to make Iraq safe for the Iranian mullahs and keep oil prices lower than they would otherwise be for Chinese industrialists. Bush is the gift to our enemies that keeps on giving.

  (Photo: Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty.)

  
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• 
  The U.S. military says it has more evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq:

  Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.

  Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman, also said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.

  There are three main bits of evidence pointing to Iranian involvement:

  1. The sophistication of the attack itself, using English-speaking attackers wearing stolen U.S. uniforms and armed with detailed knowledge of the base’s operations. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d normally expect the Shiite militias to pull off by themselves.

  2. Militant testimony. Much of the additional proof is based on what the military says captured militants revealed under interrogation. According to them, the militans all report receiving aid from Iran or working on behalf of Iran. Damning stuff, but this is the weakest link in the chain, because there’s no independent confirmation of the accounts and there’s always the suspicion that “interrogation” actually means “torture” and thus the resulting information is suspect.

  3. The fact that one of the captured militants, Ali Mussa DaqDuq, is a senior Hezbollah bombmaker. This is direct evidence of Hezbollah’s involvement. However, it is only indirect evidence of Iranian involvement. It’s always possible to argue that Hezbollah was acting on its own. On the other hand, several observers note that Hezbollah had little to gain from getting involved in Iraq; angering the United States would not help its efforts in Lebanon, and meddling in Iraq would make it seem more like the Iranian puppet it has long denied being.

  (continued at Midtopia)

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• The Iraq polls are increasingly grim for Bush, with 66 percent of people now saying get the hell out, with a full 40 percent of that total saying do it now. What’s a highly unpopular administration to do when the nation has lost all confidence in the war?

  Go back to the tried and true. Get NYT’s reliable Iran war drum beater and reporter Michael Gordon to pen yet another article beating the drum on Iran. Yup, he’s back, this time with some really extraordinary claims about Iran’s involvement in the Iraq:

  Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today…. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq…. American military officials have long asserted that the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has trained and equipped Shiite militants in Iraq. The Americans have also cited extensive intelligence indicating that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with the most lethal type of roadside bomb in Iraq, a bomb called the explosively formed penetrator, which is capable of piercing an armored vehicle.

  And it goes on and on from there. We’ve been here before, several times. In fact, back in February, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace was busy denying that we had any evidence whatsoever that the Iranian government was involved in arming Shiite extremists. Does this article do anything to further those claims with evidence? I’ll let Glenn take over from here:

  These are quite extraordinary claims the NYT is publishing, as they amount to an accusation that the Iranian Government, at its highest levels, is directing fatal attacks on American troops in Iraq, which constitutes, of course, an act of war. As Gordon himself points out: “In effect, American officials are charging that Iran has been engaged in a proxy war against American forces for years.”

  What is the basis for Gordon’s story? What sources does he use to convey these incomparably serious charges? One source and one source only, the only one he seems to know — military spokespeople, in this case Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner.

  Every paragraph in this article — literally — does one of two things: (1) uncritically recites the U.S. military’s accusations against the Iranian government, and/or (2) offers assertions from Gordon himself designed to bolster those accusations (e.g., “There is also extensive intelligence that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with the most lethal type of roadside bomb in Iraq” and “In Washington, Bush Administration officials have generally held open the possibility that the Quds Force activities might have been carried out without the knowledge of Iran’s senior leaders”).

  I defy anyone to scour Gordon’s article and point to a single difference, large or small, between its content and what a Camp Victory Press Release on this topic would say. Such a comparison requires little imagination, since it has become a clear rhetorical objective of the U.S. military to begin pinning the blame for violent attacks in Iraq not just on Iran, but on the Iranian government.

  Of course the objective of the U.S. military has been to pin the blame on the Iranian government. Not only does it further their case for war against Iran but it provides a momentary distraction from just how catastrophic this whole venture has been. And, yet again, Michael Gordon is the willing media stooge for their efforts. The NYT really should do something about him.

  

  
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