from Truthdig:
Joe Conason: Our Iraqi Friends Befriend Our Enemies
Posted on Jan 18, 2007
By Joe Conason
Should the United States attack Iran, which side would the Iraqi government support? The answer to that simple question is far from clear, despite the thousands of lives and billions of dollars we have sacrificed to support the ruling coalition in Baghdad. While the Bush administration seeks to isolate and even overthrow the Iranian regime as well as its Syrian ally, its partners in Iraq are establishing closer relationships with both.
Indeed, the most powerful elements of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s political coalition regularly collude with the Iranian intelligence apparatus—which the Bush administration has accused of arming the insurgents and terrorists who are attacking our forces, committing sectarian atrocities and undermining the new Iraqi democracy. The Maliki government has resumed diplomatic relations with Syria, signed a billion-dollar aid agreement with Iran and encouraged the expansion of Iranian consulates and border stations.
Friendship with Iran and Syria is endorsed not only by Shiite fundamentalists such as Moqtada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army warlord, and his rival Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, chief of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq—but also by President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Kurdish leaders who believe in secular democracy and actually like the United States.
Nothing better illustrates the profound differences between the U.S. and Iraq over relations with Iran than the recent raid by American soldiers on an Iranian office in the northern city of Irbil, where they arrested five alleged Iranian subversives. During a tense confrontation, the Americans faced the cocked weapons of Kurdish troops, who surrounded the Iranian facility.
Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, described those prisoners as “foreign intelligence agents in this country, working with Iraqis to destabilize Iraq and target coalition forces that are here at Iraq’s request.” But Zebari rejected that accusation and demanded their immediate release. He told the Los Angeles Times that his government’s policy is to “engage
constructively”—notably in a security agreement just signed between the two countries. ....(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070118_joe_conason_our_iraqi_friends_befriend_our_enemies/
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