Aaah, I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning...! I was scanning the news out of Iraq and two articles leapt out at me this morn. First this one jumped out at me with this headline: "US presses Iraq neighbours at security meeting." I said to myself that's interesting and notable that we're at least talking to them and I read it. I admired this particular snippet...

In a final communique, the participants "welcomed the positive cooperation between Iraq and its neighbours in the fight against terrorism," noting that such cooperation had already led to "an improvement in security".

"Control of the borders is the responsibility of Iraq and its neighbours," it said.

Apart from the US, the meeting drew diplomats from Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, as well as representatives from Russia, France, China, the UN and Arab League.

Okay, that's cool and so I continued along and lo and behold this one screamed at me! With this headline: "Iran says U.S. aids rebels at its borders." How could I pass that up? So I read it and some very interesting tidbits of info popped up, such as:

Analysts say the anti-Iranian groups are tempting assets for the U.S. They say it would be a surprise if the groups were not receiving U.S. funding, but that the strategy would probably not work.

"It will give more encouragement to Iran's hard-liners to step up their own efforts to assist anti-American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst now at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Among the most active groups is the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, known by its Kurdish acronym, PEJAK. It has hundreds of well-trained fighters along with camps in northern Iraq.

Hmmm... Who is PEJAK?

PEJAK emerged this decade as an Iranian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, an armed group formed to fight a separatist war against the Turkish government.

Former members say PEJAK was meant to circumvent Western restrictions on contacts with the PKK, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union.

"The PKK wanted to have a relationship with America, so it formed and used PEJAK," said Mamand Rozhe, a former commander who defected from the group four years ago.

Wow, we're subsidizing a known terrorist organization, but wait, there's more...

The secretive Mujahedin Khalq, also regarded by the U.S. and EU as a terrorist organization, may have little support among Iranians, but its networks extend deep into Iranian territory, and it is credited with exposing Iran's nuclear program in 2002.

Other groups include Jundollah, which operates out of the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, and Arab groups in Iran's southwest.

The leftist Komala Party of Iran hasn't staged any military operations inside Iran since 1992, but several hundred or so fighters continue to train at their base camp in Zergwe in the autonomous Kurdish northern region of Iraq.

Abdullah Mohtadi, a leader of one of two Komala factions, said he met with White House and State Department officials in 2005 and 2006 to discuss Iran.

Imagine that! We're aiding and abetting terrorist organizations against Iran in the region! What was Washington demanding at that Security meeting... Oh yeah...

Washington urges Iraq’s neighbours to show strong commitment in halting flow of terrorists, weapons to country.

The participants also noted...

"Terrorist facilitation networks operating throughout the region continue to be a significant threat to the stability of Iraq, and by extension, the entire region," the statement said.

"The influx of foreign-made weapons used by and seized from the criminal militia elements involved in fighting Iraqi Security Forces, which was thrown into stark relief during the recent flare-up of violence in Basra, the southern provinces, and Baghdad, is another serious threat which this group should address," it said.

There they go again, saying it's criminal elements, lets reflect back on those 'criminal elements'...

We have been repeatedly "informed" of highly questionable assumptions. Most prominent amongst them is that the "firebrand" and "radical" Moqtada Al-Sadr -- leader of the millions-strong Shia Sadr Movement -- led a group of "renegades", "thugs" and "criminals" to terrorise the strategically important city(Basra).

So as Crock o'shit says this...

US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has framed Iranian activities in Iraq as a "proxy war" with the Americans, even as administration officials have hailed the retreat of Al-Qaeda due to increasing involvement by Sunni tribal chiefs.

Crocker on Friday foresaw a similar reaction in Iraq, saying that Iran's support for militias fighting the Iraqi government may cause a Shiite "backlash."

Yet the Bush administration has launched "an interagency assessment of what is known about Iranian activities and intentions, how to combat them and how to capitalize on them," the Washington Post reported Saturday.

This is an excellent summation of the world of shit we're in...

Brookings Institution expert Suzanne Maloney said that "disastrous Bush policies fostered a sectarian Iraq that has helped empower Iranian hardliners.

"Rather than serving as an anchor for a new era of stability and American preeminence in the Persian Gulf, the new Iraq represents a strategic black hole, bleeding Washington of military resources and political influence while extending Iran's primacy among its neighbors."

Mission Accomplished, Shrub!