DUBAI (Reuters) - The leader of an al Qaeda-linked group in Iraq vowed in an audio tape on Sunday to attack Iranians unless Iran cut off its support for the Iraqi government within two months.

"We give the ... Persians in general, and leaders of Iran in particular, two months to withdraw their support and presence in Iraq," Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, said in the 50-minute audio tape posted on Islamist Web site which has often carried al Qaeda statements.

In the first such threat by his group, Baghdadi said that unless Iran met his demands, the group would wage a "brutal war" against Iranians.

Does this story surprise you as much as it did me? After all, the Qaeda in Iraq is the group that the MNF-I has been telling us for the last six months has been so heavily supported by the Iranians.

Baghdad, Feb 11, (VOI) – Iran is fanning the flames of sectarian violence and backing killings and attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force in Iraq (MNF-I) said on Sunday. "We have evidence that Iran provided insurgents with explosive devices and trained them to use these weapons, produced between 2004 and 2006," [MG] William Caldwell said in a press conference in Baghdad.

"The Iranian suspects detained in Arbil have confirmed these reports and we have found with them maps and explosives-related material. Those Iranians were trying to get rid of these documents in the lavatories," Caldwell added.

He said "the Iraqi government has notified us that they (the Iranians) were not diplomats and had no passports."

Remember now, “insurgents” are Sunnis; the folks that have been killing Americans, Shiites and other Sunni Iraqis for over three years, an are to a large extent specifically responsible for the civil war.

Now we are told that not only are they supplying their co-religionists in the Badr brigades and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, but also supplying the Islamic State in Iraq, which is the over-arching group which is franchised to al Qaeda in Anbar.

The Shiite Iranians are now also supposedly supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon, which does make some sense, since they are Shi’a.

Is this the “real” al Qaeda, or the Bu$h malAdministration version of al Qaeda which was rolled out within the last month or so?

That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term "Al Qaeda" to designate "anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq" is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

This is a worrisome trend. Will Mr Bu$h start whining about Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi and the “al Qaeda Democrats” when he rails against them for exercising their constitutional duty of oversight? There is an upside to that of course. Now he can claim that he’s been tapping their telephones since February 2001 because he knew they were traitors.

Now al Qaeda is warning Iran to back off, and get out of Iraq. Does this make them our allies? Or are they just competing with Iraq, Iran and everyone else in the BDS* competition?

* BDS - Bu$h Derangement Syndrome