It's About Iran, Stupid

It seems both incredibly frightening and obvious that Iraq has become a distraction serving to keep us off balance and unable to focus on the administrations actual intents (if it hasn't been that from the beginning). I don't pretend to know exactly what all of this is about beyond expanding executive power for its own sake, sick minds are unpredictable. But Jim Webb is right, the congress does need to get ahead of the White House on Iran. I've said it before, I actually thought it would happen sooner, but the administration obviously intends to bomb Iran. They have been planning and making obvious moves in that direction for a while, essentially using the same type of unsupported rhetoric and intelligence that they used to take us to war in Iraq. Supposedly the Iranians are arming insurgents but the British, who are in a better position to know, say it's not true. There's a reason that Blair has finally found a bandwagon he won't jump on, he has been damaged and tarnished enough, his legacy is obvious to him; even as Bush continues to assert that his legacy is assured through this continued march to madness.

Mark Hosenball writes in Newsweek: "U.S. officials still maintain that Iran is helping Iraqi Shia insurgents build bombs that are particularly deadly because they can penetrate armored vehicles. But three U.S. officials familiar with unpublished intel (unnamed when discussing sensitive info) said evidence of official Tehran involvement is 'ambiguous,' in the words of one of the officials." (White House Watch) Is it possible that the explosives penetrating armored vehicles have something to do with the 400 tons of explosives stolen after the invasion, revealed prior to the 2004 election and eventually buried. To my memory the story behind the disappearance has yet to be told.

And in terms of arming the insurgents, we have been more than helpful through black market sales and billions of unaccounted dollars, not to mention the infiltrated army and police.

Tom Lasseter writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it.

"U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of al-Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed. . . .

"'Half of them are JAM. They'll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night,' said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army's 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia's Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. 'People (in America) think it's bad, but that we control the city. That's not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It's hostile territory.'" (White House Watch)

They are rallying the Republicans in the Senate to keep the discussion on Iraq, using the surge, which even they don't believe will work, as a distraction. They are not focused on fixing Iraq, they never cared, it just helps to provide some pretext for hostilities with Iran. Everyone is so concerned with their electability that they are allowing the administration to continue damning the soul of the nation.