According to this morning’s NY Times the French are again interested in… doing something in the Middle East.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 19 — Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, arrived in Baghdad on Sunday on the highest-level visit by a French official to Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

The French Foreign Ministry said the surprise trip by Mr. Kouchner, a former United Nations administrator for Kosovo and a founder of Doctors Without Borders, was at the invitation of Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani. A ministry statement said Mr. Kouchner was in Baghdad “to express a French message of solidarity with the Iraqi people and to listen to the representatives of all communities.”

Expressing solidarity is all well and good. More importantly will they be able to exert any influence on the Sunnis to participate in the “newest” Iraq government that they have voluntarily frozen themselves out of? Comments by President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki seemed to have welcomed their participation, but when the Sunni declined to participate last week, the Shiites and Kurds went right ahead without them. Isolating 20% of the citizenry is a surefire way of bringing democracy to the Middle East.

Also in this story: MG Rick Lynch has insisted that the evil Iranians are participating in training Iraqi resisters. He says he happens to know that 50 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have been training Iraqis to fire mortars and rocket launchers.

In Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the American commander in charge of districts south of the capital, said that 50 members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps were operating in his area, training Shiite militias in how to use mortars and rocket launchers.

General Lynch conceded that no Revolutionary Guard members had been captured in his region but said that 217 weapons with Iranian markings had been seized since April. The accusations came days after United States officials said the White House might list the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

Not 48. Not 53. 50.

And they’re training people who’ve been resisting our occupation for four years? Does the Iraqi resistance not know how to train themselves? We’ve taken a lot of casualties from mortars over the last four years, and now MG Lynch has decided this was pure accident? I’m just a brokedown ole sergeant but I really think this is just one more example of the “Iran delenda est” syndrome that is making Mr Bu$h’s nose quiver.

IraqSlogger casually notes, “No members of the Revolutionary Guard have been captured, the general conceded, but 217 weapons with Iranian markings have been seized since April.”

A cynical man would note that Bill Kristol wasn’t on national television yesterday to advocate for unprovoked nuclear attacks against Iran, and his good friend General Lynch felt obliged to keep up the WAR! pressure.

And, hey! We somehow “lost” 190,000 AKs in Iraq. They were all made in the Balkans. When they start surfacing (and they will) on the streets of Iraq will there be a sudden demand for mushroom clouds over Belgrade? Or was this just General Lynch’s way of barking to get Mr Bu$h’s attention, and a recommendation for a promotion? After all, 217 weapons…. Obviously the evil Iranians are guilty as sin.

The WaPo also covers this invisible Iranian trainer story with a bit of finesse.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands U.S. operations south of Baghdad, said the men were sent by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps -- a military branch that the U.S. government has decided to label a "specially designated global terrorist" -- to train Shiite insurgents in firing mortars and rockets.

As a historical note, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is actually part of the national armed forces. This marks the first time the US Government has ever designated a state actor as a terrorist organization. This would be like North Korea designating the Marine Corps a terrorist organization

The Likudniks must really be leaning on Mr Cheney to get the war on, and save Israel.

Lynch said that no Iranians have been captured in his area of command and that U.S. troops have never found any illegal weapons in two months of patrolling 125 miles of the Iran-Iraq border.

But he said that the number of Iranian-made explosively formed penetrators -- sophisticated roadside bombs built to puncture the armor on Humvees -- has increased dramatically in recent months, while the accuracy of Shiite extremists' bombs and mortars has improved significantly.

"The enemy is more aggressive than it used to be and, candidly, in many cases he is more lethal," Lynch said.

Well, there ya go, then. They're getting more proficient so obviously they're getting outside help. After all, we American exceptionalists know the Iraqis, who are Arabs, are useless by themselves and can't do squat without external help. Damn those evil Persian Iranians!

Lynch also said Sunni insurgents are using Iranian weapons in southern Iraq, though he said he did not know how the weapons were obtained. More than 90 percent of Iran's population is Shiite, making it unlikely that the Tehran leadership would support Sunni fighters. One possibility, Lynch said, is that Shiites are selling the Iranian weapons on the black market in Iraq.

"I don't know how, but I know for a fact that Iranian munitions are making their way into the hands of Sunni insurgents," Lynch said.

He knows they're getting weapons to the Sunnis, their sworn blood enemies for 1,300 years, and he hasn't quite worked out the Iranians wouldn't give Sunnis a life preserver. I suppose the possibility that the Saudis are buying them on the black market and giving them to the Sunnis is politically impossible in Bu$h BizarroWorld.