As you probably know, the latest tactic in the US government's campaign to attack Iran is its claim, unveiled by anonymous US forces on the weekend, that Iran is providing Iraqi insurgents with "explosively formed penetrators" and other weapons.
The big advantage to this story, if the Bush administration can make it stick, is that it allows them to attack Iran as part of the war in Iraq, a war for which they already have something that resembles Congressional approval.
If Iran is part of the war on Iraq, then US President George W. Bush doesn't need to ask permission to extend the war to Iran via missile strikes on Iran's "suspected" nuclear weapons facilities and other strategic targets. They can just go ahead and do it, Hillary Clinton's embarrassing all-things-to-all-people warnings notwithstanding.
Unfortunately, as the unnamed, faceless officials in Iraq were showing their PowerPoint presentation (which makes a lot of insinuations but doesn't actually prove anything), US Marine General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was busy telling reporters he sees no evidence that the Iranian government is meddling in Iraq.
It is clear that Iranians are involved and it is clear that materials from Iran are involved. But I would not say based on what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit.
CNN correspondent Ed Henry, apparently one of the US reporters who hasn't had a frontal lobotomy, tried to pin White House Spokesman Tony Snow on why this discrepancy exists.
Predictably, this was like nailing jello. In the process of trying to writhe out of acknowledging his government's absurdity, Snow turned the charge around in what may be the most unintentionally ironic statement of the year.
Let me tell you what - I think a lot of people are trying to whomp up a fight here that doesn't exist.
D'you think, Tony?