NYT: Opening a New Front in the War, Against Iranians in Iraq

[sabra]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/washington/politicsspecial/15strategy.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Opening a New Front in the War, Against Iranians in Iraq

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 — For more than two years after Saddam Hussein’s fall, the war in Iraq was about chasing down insurgents and Al Qaeda in Iraq. Last year it expanded to tamping down sectarian warfare.

Over the past three weeks, in two sets of raids and newly revealed orders issued by President Bush, a third front has opened — against Iran.

Administration officials say the goal is limited to preventing Iranians from aiding in attacks on American and Iraqi forces inside Iraq. But in recent interviews and public statements, senior members of the Bush administration have made it clear that their agenda goes significantly further, toward foiling Iran’s dream of emerging as the greatest power in the Middle East.

...

Even some of Mr. Bush’s fiercest critics do not question that the administration’s conviction that Iran’s ambitions are large is correct. A few midlevel administration officials wondered even in 2003 whether Iran was a far more potent threat than Mr. Hussein.

...

“You heard this argument in meetings all the time,” a senior official on the National Security Council, who has since left the administration, recalled recently. “Iraq would make the harder problems of Iran and North Korea easier.”

[heldmyw]

1. I don't think the troops...

... are taking a lot of time to 'vet' the nationalities of their opponenents.

I mean. For better or worse, if it comes down to 'you or me', I don't care much if you're a Nepalese temple cleaner pointing that AK in my direction.

[hedda_foil]

2. WHAT has happened to PNAC Ken Pollack?

“The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq,” Kenneth M. Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said Sunday. “There’s a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive — that this is a way to get into a spiral with Iran that leads you into conflict. The likely response from the Iranians is that they are going to want to demonstrate to us that they are not going to be pushed around.”

[Quantess]

3. Awesome! Just what we always wanted!

:sarcasm: