Who You Gonna Believe

The President has made a habit lately of telling foreign leaders that they don't know what they're talking about. He disagreed with Hamid Karzai, who called Iran a friend and a help to his efforts in Afghanistan, and yesterday he called Nouri al-Maliki an idiot, which may not be far wrong, but look at the way in which he treats the government he likes to call a democracy like a bunch of children.

Now if the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart-to-heart with my friend, the Prime Minister, because I don't believe they are constructive. I don't think he, in his heart of heart, thinks they're constructive, either. Now maybe he's hopeful in trying to get them to be constructive by laying out a positive picture. You're asking me to speculate.

This "I know what he's thinking, Maliki's just lying to the Iranians to get them to help" idea is pretty destabilizing, wouldn't you say? Way to overturn a day's worth of negotiation.

Bush has continually flown in the face of evidence with regard to Iran because his government, led by Fourthbranch, really does want to go to war with them.

At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said.

Bush wasn't specific, and a State Department official refused to elaborate on the warning.

Behind the scenes, however, the president's top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran's support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.

The debate has been accompanied by a growing drumbeat of allegations about Iranian meddling in Iraq from U.S. military officers, administration officials and administration allies outside government and in the news media. It isn't clear whether the media campaign is intended to build support for limited military action against Iran, to pressure the Iranians to curb their support for Shiite groups in Iraq or both.

It's clear to be that Iran is being used as the convenient excuse for failure in Iraq. To the extent that Iranian agents are involved in Iraq, it's because the Shiite theocratic forces that were installed as the ruling party were put into place by elections the Americans demanded. But they're implicated just enough for them to be used as the overall reason for failure. So we can make an argument, based on scant evidence, that the way to win in Iraq is to take out Iran. It's absurd, of course, but that's the connection they're making.