IRANIAN WEAPONS IN IRAQ? IS BUSH PLAYING THIS CRAPPY TUNE AGAIN?

I thought we had debunked this whole Iran-in-Iraq thing. Maybe the Bushies thought that the Iranian detention of the 15 Brits set the stage for people to buy this bullshit story about Iran "destabilizing" Iraq.

The best post I've read so far about it is here at Americablog. The title of the post gets it just right:

" Iran reportedly training Sunni insurgents. In related news, government is full of it."

Here's a great quote from the CNN story linked above:

"The death and violence in Iraq are bad enough without this outside interference," Caldwell said. "Iran and all of Iraq's neighbors really need to respect Iraq's sovereignty and allow the people of this country the time and the space to choose their own future."

The sheer fucking arrogance of this is unbelievable--the U.S. is the "outside interference" that did not/does not "respect Iraq's sovereignty!" Who is fooled by this utterly transparent fakery? I guess the piddly one-third of the populace who still clings to Bush and his stupid, horrible war, that's who. Oh, and of course, the media.

From the same story, here's another way you know this shit is fake:

"We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them," Caldwell said. "We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees' debriefs."

Iraq and Iran established diplomatic relations in 1990 but still have a lot disputes. Caldwell doesn't given any specifics about the detainees he mentions, but one can imagine that if they're Iraqis and/or being tortured, why the hell wouldn't the Iraqis try to pin something on Iran? After all, these detainees may figure that the U.S. will leave Iraq to go after Iran, which is what people fighting againt the U.S. would like to see. So it's perfectly logical for an Iraqi detainee to blame "EFPs" on Iran.

Also, since it's probably very obvious what the U.S. forces want to hear during "interrogations," detainees--particularly if they're Sunni--are more than happy to blame something on Iran so that we'll go over to Iran and leave the detainees' domestic operations alone.

One more thing

One more quote from the CNN story:

"Munitions from Iran were found in a black Mercedes sedan in Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood on Tuesday after a tip from a civilian, he said. An Iranian-made rocket was found in the back seat and Iranian weapons were found in the trunk and around a nearby house, Caldwell said."

Let's suppose that it's actually true that Iranian weapons were found in Iraq. That does not necessarily mean that it is the stated policy of the current ruling government of Iran to provide Iraqi insurgents with weapons. For all we know, insurgents go into Iran and steal weapons.

Plus, so what if Iran trains Iraqi insurgents? The U.S. doesn't own the world--Iran is a sovereign country and has a right to conduct foreign policy according to international law. Is it anymore illegal under international law for Iran to sell weapons to Iraq than it is for us to rush cluster bombs to Israel in the midst of a conflict (which I guess would mean pretty much at any time)?