It worked so well the first time....

Might as well try it again:

US MILITARY officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night.

Micah Brose, a privately contracted interrogator working for American forces in Iraq, near the Iranian border, told The Observer that information on Iran is 'gold'. The claim comes after Washington imposed sanctions on Iran last month, citing both its nuclear ambitions and its Revolutionary Guards' alleged support of Shia insurgents in Iraq. Last week the US military freed nine Iranians held in Iraq, including two it had accused of links to the Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force.

Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: 'They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there's clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I've had, I'd say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran.

'It feels a lot like, if you get something and Iran's not involved, it's a let down.' He added: 'I've had people say to me, "They're really pushing the Iran thing. It's like, shit, you know." '

We can see it coming, the blogosphere can see it coming, but, watch and see, the media will shriek and exclaim in surprise when Cheney loses his patience and orders the attack on Iran.

We need to have Congress order the military not to attack Iran. The people of the United States of America have so commanded it.

Update: What Cheney wants to bomb.

Is this so we will ever so conveniently have no one our diplomats can talk to?

General Petraeus, do you support a war with Iran? Do you support Bush and Cheney's obvious desire to attack Iran? What are you going to do about Iraq and Afghanistan if you start a third war? Have you considered what Iran's reaction will be if we do attack? Have you considered what the world's reaction will be if we do?

General Petraeus, do you have political ambitions?

The top US military commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, has accused Iran's ambassador of belonging to an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Gen Petraeus said Hassan Kazemi-Qomi was a member of the Quds Force, which the US believes backs foreign Islamic revolutionary movements.

Gen Petraeus said he had no doubt Iran was behind attacks that had led to the deaths of US soldiers.

Iran has so far not commented, but regularly denies any such involvement.

Separately, the US military said it had captured three Iranian-linked Shia militiamen believed responsible for abducting five British security contractors in May.

Oh yeah? Well I double dog dare ya!

Via Pygalgia:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army ``terrorist organizations,'' in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

``The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror,'' said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

We know Cheney is just waiting to triple dog dare Iran....

Asses of evil

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A top American commander on Friday accused Iran of supplying powerful roadside bombs to militants in Afghanistan and said the U.S. would "act decisively" if the cross-border flow continues.

Heavy battles in the violence-plagued south, meanwhile, killed 75 Taliban and at least six civilians, and a suicide car bomb in the capital killed a French soldier and an Afghan bystander.

Adm. William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, said Iran's Revolutionary Guard is supplying roadside bomb parts for the type of sophisticated and deadly bombs found in Iraq known as explosively formed penetrators.

"The Iranians are clearly supplying some amount of lethal aid," Fallon told The Associated Press during a trip to Afghanistan. "There is no doubt ... that agents from Iran are involved in aiding the insurgency."

Why would it be Iran? Remember this?:

Iran was not on good terms with the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan and sheltered hundreds of thousands of refugees. The Iranians publicly endorsed the U.S.-led fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida and cooperated with the United States in trying to limit the spread of narcotics from Afghanistan.

And this?:

Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards fought alongside and advised the Afghan rebels who helped U.S. forces topple Afghanistan's Taliban regime in the months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the guards' former leader says.

In an interview by e-mail, Mohsen Rezaie, a candidate in Iran's presidential elections next week, says the United States has not given Iran enough credit. He says Iran played an "important role in the overthrow of the Taliban" in 2001.

But if Iran is involved in helping the hated Taliban or the fanatical al-Qaeda, could it be because of this?:

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

Just exactly who is the terrorist, Mr. Bush?

And it will all be over by Christmas....

09/02/07 "The Times" -- - Washington -- THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.

With our mouths agape, citizens of the world look on. Do Bush and Cheney really think Iran and the rest of the megamillions of Muslims around the world will just sit there and take it? Do Bush and Cheney really think that the U.S. citizens will welcome the start of WWIII? Do Bush and Cheney think there are no consequences to their actions and to the Neocon agenda?

Bryan at Why Now? says it best:

A US attack on Iran will be viewed as an existential threat by Iran. They will react with everything they have, so you can forget oil production out of the Persian Gulf for months, if not years. The world economy will tank. The American economy will tank. The Shi’ia in Iraq will launch an all-out attack on US forces. It will be a disaster.

The response of these idiots to hurricane Katrina is a prime example of their competence. They lied us into an unnecessary and unwise war with Iraq. What is the point in starting more wars we can’t win?

Pull out of Iraq. Finish the job in Afghanistan. Catch Osama bin Laden. Rebuild the Gulf Coast. Those are doable, worthwhile objectives.

He's not leaving until he gets to push the red button

Cheney urging military strikes on Iran

WASHINGTON — President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.

At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said.

Bush wasn't specific, and a State Department official refused to elaborate on the warning.

Behind the scenes, however, the president's top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran's support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.

Just what does Cheney think will happen when he makes the Air Force bomb Iran? Does he think Iran and the Islamic world will sit there and take it? Does he think we will be stunned into silence? Just what does Cheney think will happen?

I will own all the oil in the world.....

Iranians? What Iranians?

Oohhhhh, you mean THOSE Iranians we took in Iraq. The ones Iran says are diplomats and we say are connected to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The ones Cheney did not want to let free:

Iranian diplomats have been given access to five Iranians for the first time since they were detained by US forces in January.

The US military says the men are linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards and were working with armed groups in Iraq.

Iran has insisted they are diplomats and are demanding they be freed.

Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, Iran's ambassador said the meeting was "a step forward and positive".

[snip]

Iraq has been pressing the US and Iran to hold a second round of talks in Baghdad after a meeting in May where senior envoys from the two sides discussed the violence in Iraq.

"We hope this humanitarian gesture will help to ease tensions and facilitate further dialogue between the two countries," Zebari said.

Cheney's version of diplomacy: Hit them first and then talk to them as they are lying on the ground....

And here it goes...

Iran nabs Brits inside Iranian waters:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iranian naval vessels on Friday seized 15 British sailors and marines who had boarded a merchant ship in Iraqi waters of the Persian Gulf, British and U.S. officials said. Britain immediately protested the detentions, which come at a time of high tension between the West and Iran.

In London, the British government summoned the Iranian ambassador to the Foreign Office: "He was left in no doubt that we want them back," Britain's Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said after the meeting.

A spokesman for the U.S. Navy, which operates off the Iraqi coast along with British forces, said Iran's Revolutionary Guard naval forces were responsible.

Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet said the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had radioed a British warship explaining that no harm had come to the 15 Britons and that they were seized because they were in Iranian waters. The British Defense Ministry said the Iranians took custody of the sailors and marines in Iraqi waters.

I told you and I told you this would happen! You pack the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz with huge warships and this is what you get!

I was unaware the five Iranian delegates were still being held.

Did we keep them in Abu Ghraib?

BAGHDAD (AP) - Five Iranians detained during a U.S.-led raid in northern Iraq in January could be released as early as next week, Iran's ambassador said Wednesday.

Hassan Kazemi Qomi said U.S. officials had informed Iranian delegates at a weekend security conference here that they were in "the final stage" of the investigation into the case. Qomi said he hoped the five could be released before the Iranian New Year, which falls on March 21.

The U.S. military said the five Iranians, who were arrested in the northern city of Irbil, were part of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard force that provides funds, weapons and training to Shiite militias in Iraq. Two days after the raid, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said President Bush approved the strategy of raiding Iranian targets in Iraq as part of efforts to confront Tehran.

Iran had insisted that the five detained Iranians were engaged exclusively in consular work.

Notice how the Bush administration deals with personal responsibility:

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman on Wednesday referred all questions about the detained Iranians to the State Department, while a State Department official said reporters should ask the Pentagon about the matter.