Support Our Troops They want us out of Iraq

By Justin Raimondo

".....Yet how can this be? Aren't we in Iraq precisely to support the very army and police units these soldiers say are killing Americans?

It makes no sense, unless one takes into consideration what Seymour Hersh calls "the redirection" of U.S. strategy in the region, which is geared to the next target of the neocons' "regime change" agenda: Iran. The redirection requires a sudden and radical shift in our alliances, sundering our ties with the Shi'ites and taking up the cause of the defeated Sunnis – with Saudi Arabia, our primary regional satrap, standing behind them. Those ambushed soldiers were caught in the shifting currents of the American about-face, and they will not be the only ones to suffer severe whiplash......

What they don't see is that this is part of a larger anti-Shi'ite, anti-Iranian strategic turn – that Washington is already fighting the next war, as the invasion and occupation of Iraq merges seamlessly into an armed conflict with Iran......

A Levin-Allawi-Sunni alliance amounts to the Democratic leadership helping to write the next chapter in the history of America's conquest of the Middle East – indeed, if, as is widely expected, the Democrats take the White House in '08, they'll be the primary authors of that bloodstained and thoroughly wretched saga. While this odd alliance presents the Sunni "moderate" case in terms of stabilizing Iraq to the point where our presence is no longer required – Allawi calls for aiming at a U.S. withdrawal two years from now – the revival of the Democrats' call for "benchmarks" is just a cover story for a darker, deadlier narrative.

The tempo of events is increasing as we approach the much-touted September report on "progress" in Iraq, in which Gen. Petraeus is expected to note the "gains" we have supposedly made by allying with our former Sunni enemies, while targeting the Iranians as the real obstacles to lasting success. There are increasing reports of border incidents, and we are very close, I believe, to a major confrontation between U.S. and Iranian forces. By taking up the Allawi lobby, the Democrats are helping to set the stage for a disaster that will dwarf our present predicament in Iraq by several degrees of magnitude – war with Iran. "