Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni: "I think we're headed toward (U.S.-Iranian) confrontation."

[sabra]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20070215-0014-theiranconnection.html

<snip>

But both Zinni and Joost Hiltermann, a respected Mideast political analyst, see a new “dangerous game” under way involving the weapons.

To Zinni, it's the Iranians who risk further destabilizing Iraq by arming Shiite militias, one side in Iraq's civil war. “They're working against Iraq coming together,” he said. “I think we're headed toward (U.S.-Iranian) confrontation.”

...

“What's not clear is whether the Bush administration is trying to provoke Iran into lashing back, which then gives a pretext for an attack on Iran,” Hiltermann said by telephone from Amman, Jordan.

...

As U.S. reconstruction funds dwindled last year, the Iranians stepped in, earmarking $1 billion to help rebuild Iraq's electric grid and other infrastructure. An Iranian aid group has sent ambulances and doctors to Iraq. Iranian businessmen are investing, particularly in Iraq's Shiite-dominated south. Hiltermann's research group reported in 2005 the Iranians had built an intelligence network, including paid informers, in Baghdad and elsewhere.

...

But both ex-officers said the Bush administration should talk directly to Iran about Iraq, as recommended by James Baker's blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group, on which Hughes served as a military adviser.

“There has to be some kind of dialogue,” said Zinni.

[Leopolds Ghost]

1. They're destabilizing Iraq by investing in it -- depriving US interests

of business opportunities.

Our foreign policy experts have been openly saying that about a number of countries we've invaded.

Why do you think the Washington Post neoliberals always consider "Open Markets" the first and only sign of democratization?

[iconoclastic cat]

2. What the hell are they thinking? nt

[frylock]

3. you can take it to the bank..

anybody who can't see that was either in a coma in 2002, or they're just really not very bright.