The United States has been engaging Iran "below the CNN line" for several years. We had barely toppled Saddam when the first American commandos were sent across the border into Iran, snooping for nukes.
The Kurdish areas of Iraq have been a staging ground for Kurdish paramilitaries to train and group and cross the border into the Kurdish areas of Iran and ambush Republican Guard troops.
The United States has been accused of shooting down Iranian aircraft on at least two occasions, killing Republican Guard soldiers.
Now, we learn that the United States has captured Iranian operatives inside Iraq, and they stand accused of plotting attacks against Iraqi security forces. It is - or at least should be - a major embarrasment to the Bush administration that
at least two of the Iranians were in this country on an invitation extended by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit to Tehran earlier this month. It was particularly awkward for the Iraqis that one of the raids took place in the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, who traveled to Washington three weeks ago to meet President Bush.Okay - get your programs out folks. We have the Wahabbist Sunni Saudi's summoning Vice so they can, in person, threaten to fund and materially support the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. We have a Shi'ite dominated government in Iraq that snuck off into the bedroom with Iran and we hear moaning sounds coming down the hallway. We catch Iranian fomenters of violence who are in the country at the invitation of the president in the compound of a Shi'ite power-broker who was less than three weeks ago a guest of the US president at the White House.
When we consider the stability of the region, we have to consider the refugees who have fled the violence of Iraq - about 1.5 million - and relocated to Syria and Jordan, where they are affecting the social fabric of their foster cities.
An overall picture of stability int he cradle of civilization is not inspiring. Syria and Jordan are being internally compromized because they have absorbed many more Iraqi refugees than the social fabric of those countries can bear. (You only think the US has immigration problems!) Then you have your Iranians backing Shi'ite militias and most likely death squads, too. Throw in the threat by the Saudi's to fund the Sunni insurgents that are giving US forces in Iraq fits, and you have four countries with common borders to Iraq that are directly affected by or getting directly involved in the Iraqi Civil War.
And the saddest part of the whole thing is, some of us tried to tell them this would happen, and we cited our sources. We weren't merely dismissed, we were scorned. Those of us who opposed the invasion for months before it was launched were called traitors - and worse. Hatred was fostered by pro-war politicians and their operatives that branded political opponents as the enemy.
The United States went to war on false pretenses at the whim of an idiot child. And the results we see? A treasury going broke, an Army that's broken, three thousand dead Americans, ten thousand wounded and unable to return to service, and an economically vital region of the world on the precipice of regional warfare.
Now I ask once more, and think carefully before you answer: Was toppling Saddam worth any of this?
