Juan Cole (Salon): The Iraq war is over, and the winner is... Iran

[Jack Rabbit]

From Salon.com (Subscription or Day Pass Required)
Dated Thursday July 21

The Iraq war is over, and the winner is... Iran
Hamstrung by the Iraq debacle, all Bush can do is gnash his teeth as the hated mullahs in Iran cozy up to their co-religionists in Iraq.
By Juan Cole

Iraq's new government has been trumpeted by the Bush administration as a close friend and a model for democracy in the region. In contrast, Bush calls Iran part of an axis of evil and dismisses its elections and government as illegitimate. So the Bush administration cannot have been filled with joy when Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and eight high-powered cabinet ministers paid an extremely friendly visit to Tehran this week.

The two governments went into a tizzy of wheeling and dealing of a sort not seen since Texas oil millionaires found out about Saudi Arabia. Oil pipelines, port access, pilgrimage, trade, security, military assistance, were all on the table in Tehran. All the sorts of contracts and deals that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had imagined for Halliburton, and that the Pentagon neoconservatives had hoped for Israel, were heading instead due east.

Jaafari's visit was a blow to the Bush administration's strategic vision, but a sweet triumph for political Shiism. In the dark days of 1982, Tehran was swarming with Iraqi Shiite expatriates who had been forced to flee Saddam Hussein's death decree against them. They had been forced abroad, to a country with which Iraq was then at war. Ayatollah Khomeini, the newly installed theocrat of Iran, pressured the expatriates to form an umbrella organization, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which he hoped would eventually take over Iraq. Among its members were Jaafari and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. On Jan. 30, 2005, Khomeini's dream finally came true, courtesy of the Bush administration, when the Supreme Council and the Dawa Party won the Iraqi elections.

Read more.

This is a further consequence of the neoconservatives thinking that what would happen after the invasion would be as much a cakewalk as putting troops into a defenseless country. They simply didn't know what they were getting into.

[madrchsod]

1. that is why daddy bush and the rest of his war

cabinet refused to go into bagdad. they knew this would happen if saddam was no longer in power...daddy can`t bail out his big baby anymore

[readmylips]

2. Like they say; Blood is thicker than Water....

Those are very strong cultures bound by religion. No different than all the Latin cultures of the world. When something goes wrong, they all run to aid and support the hurting Latin country. Americans don't understand the cultural differences that bound and bring them together. In the case of Israel. Israel doesn't have any other country of the same culture and religious background. They need the US and the evangelicals who belief in the jesus holly land whoopla.

[RedEarth]

3. Outstanding article.........too bad bushco didn't consult with Cole

prior to the Iraq fiasco. I make it a point to read his site several times a week....a true expert on the middle east.