If this is true, this could be very, very bad:
“The rhetoric coming out of the Bush administration has convinced Iran that military conflict is inevitable and rather than await an attack at a time and place of America’s choosing, the Iranians will try to inflict significant damage to U.S. forces on Iraqi soil by means of the Mahdi Army and other Shi’a groups,” an informed intelligence source told This Is Rumor Control. Senior officials of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency would not comment on these reports, but a former senior intelligence officer said that the conclusion was “a no brainer.” As he noted: “If you had U.S. troops on your doorstep and George Bush calling you a part of the axis of evil you would take steps to protect yourself. And it would be better to protect yourself on Iraqi soil than to have to do so on Iranian soil. That is what they are doing. Are we surprised? We shouldn’t be.”
As if we weren’t in a bad enough position already, now Bush’s incessant sabre-rattling has gone and apparently stirred up another hornet’s nest. We could be in a world of hurt soon, if this comes to pass.
When this was all getting started, there were a few satirical articles floating around (that I don’t have time to search out links for right now) taking all of the US’s stated reasons for invading Iraq and turning them around as if it were the US that was going to be invaded due to our stockpiles of WMD’s, propensity for invading sovereign nations, and so on. Things like this sometimes make me wonder if we might not be that far away from that actually happening (realistically, probably not — we’re still perceived as far too much of a superpower to be on the receiving end of an invasion — but we’re certainly not making any friends in the world right now).
Scary stuff.
(via Dave, BOP and The Republic of T)
iTunes: “Your Eyes are Like a Cup of Tea (Al Yunic Sharbouni Ate)” by Master Musicians of Jajouka from the album Brian Jones pres. the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka (1995, 10:34).