Monday, July 09, 2007
Someone's Been Eating My Porridge
Oh those perfidious Iranians! According to the Bush administration and it's stenographers they've been sending weapons and aid to Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq for a long time now (and as we know, all Sunni insurgents are now Al Qaeda). According to other reports in the tame rightwing media, anonymous US officials also say they've helped Al Qaeda to establish training camps inside Iran. Not satisfied with all that, now they've convinced Al Qaeda's umbrella group in Iraq to throw us poor liberals off the chase by issuing a statement threatening their secret masters in Teheran with holy war.
My sentiments exact. Clearly, al-Qaeda in Iraq is inventing hostility between their salafist takfirist followers and their Shiite brethren with whom alliance and mutuality of interests comes naturally. After all, they're all Islamofascists. Nuff said, right?
But seriously, the Bush administration has twisted itself into a pretzel with this one. Sadly, our national media isn't in the habit of highlighting such inconsistency and factual inaccuracy. We'll see if the Times' public editor can help put into practice what he has admirably preached regarding the over-hyping of al-Qaeda's presence in Iraq (hopefully extending the journalistic standards to claims of Iranian involvement with Sunni groups in Iraq as well).
On a side note related to the general incoherency of our strategy in Iraq, these lines from the AP story stood out:
Iraq's Shiite-led government is backed by the U.S. but closely allied to Iran. The United States accuses Iran of arming and financing Shiite militias in Iraq — charges Tehran denies.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. It's quasi-official US policy to arm and finance Shiite militias in Iraq. You'd think we'd be thanking Iran for going dutch.
Recall, the Iraqi government is comprised of SIIC with its Badr Corp. militia, Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia (at least for now) and myriad other smaller militias loyal to lesser Shiite political outfits. Not to mention the Kurds with their pesh merga (not technically a Shiite militia, but a militia nonetheless). Many of these same militia-members now fill out the ranks of the Iraqi armed forces, after having gone "legit" by doing little more than donning the official uniform. Far too often with this sartorial swapping, however, the clothes don't make the man. The loyalties and underlying motivations remain tied to narrow, sectarian, militia-based agendas.
Tehran shouldn't deny that it's arming and financing Shiite militias in Iraq. They should just accuse us of outspending them.
