Saturday, February 17, 2007

Terror by proxy

By Creature

Wednesday, the president held a press briefing where he promised to "do something" about Iran. Later, I speculated that the president was indeed already doing something, that something being a proxy war wherein the United States supports the very same terrorist tactics that we have sworn to abhor. This was the news out of Iran on Wednesday:

A car loaded with explosives blew up near a bus carrying members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards in southeastern Iran, killing 18 of them, the state-run news agency reported today.

Iranian officials blamed the bombing on the United States and our backing of insurgents--al-Qaida affiliated insurgents, no less--who carry out such attacks in hopes of destabilizing the country. Yesterday, this low-level, allegedly U.S. backed, insurgency carried out another attack, which, along with Wednesday's attack, the Associated Press characterized as a "sharp flare-up of violence" in an area of Iran that is used to quite a bit of violence.

Police and insurgents clashed after a bombing in southeastern Iran late Friday near the site where an explosion killed 11 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards this week, Iranian news agencies reported.

The Associated Press also reported yesterday that one of the insurgents arrested in connection with Wednesday's bombing had spilled the beans and "confessed that the attacks were part of alleged U.S. plans to provoke ethnic and religious violence in Iran."

Ugly stuff, if true, and very much in keeping with the history and character of the men who currently occupy the White House.

Ironic, if false, seeing as how exaggerated, if not fabricated, evidence and baseless innuendo is the core of Bush's Iranian foreign policy today.

Update: And, as if wished upon a star, here is Glenn Reynolds, of wingnut fame, exemplifying the "ugly" and "ironic" in a few easy to digest sentences:

Hmm. Maybe I spoke too soon in criticizing the Bush Administration for doing nothing about Iran. On the other hand, this sort of thing has been simmering in Iran for a while, and Iranian claims of American involvement are hardly conclusive evidence. In fact, they're hardly evidence at all.

On the one hand, Reynolds is completely willing to accept our backing of terrorist activity in Iran (so, we are now fighting ourselves over there so we don't have to fight ourselves here) and, on the other hand, he reveals a baseline wingnut hypocrisy by questioning the evidence Iran has collected while he accepts every shred of evidence coming out of the Bush administration as smoking-gun gold.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

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