You would think that the guys who brought you Iran-Contra would, of all people, know that governments and countries often have serious internal divisions. But I'm getting ahead of myself. By now, you may have read about the evidence presented by unidentified "senior defense officials" that Iran is supplying explosive devices to the Iraqi insurgents (the Shiite ones, anyway). The evidence is so poorly cooked that the senior military official in Iraq, General Pace, isn't buying it. Perhaps it might have something to do with the ordinance probably being Pakistanti in origin and lacking any Farsi or Arabic script. Curse those Iranians, they're using our own alphabet against us!
The real story isn't that the conservatives are fabricating evidence: they did that in Iraq (Got Centrifuge Tubes?). What is remarkable is the persistent view that Iran is a monolithic entity, even though the U.S. experience in supporting insurgencies demonstrates that different parts of governments often work at cross-purposes. What do I mean? The Boland Amendment.
History definitely has a sense of irony. The Boland Amendment was passed by the Congress to prevent military aid to the contras in Nicaragua; the attempt to circumvent the legislation ultimately led to the Iran-Contra scandal. Public opinion at the time was overwhelming against supporting the contras, and the Congress passed legislation to that effect. And Reagan went ahead and did it anyway.
You would think that neoconservatives, such as Michael Ledeen who helped arrange the arms sale to Iran, would realize that governments do not always act in lockstep and can have rogue elements.
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Speaking of Pakistan, while Purvez may be more-or-less not our explicit enemy (sorta,) I'd wager that the ISI is our (Enlightenment culture) enemy more than any other government group in the Muslim world.
Perhaps I'm too easily confused but when you say, "governments do not always act in lockstep and can have rogue elements" I simply do not understand which rogues in what governments you are referring to.
...which rogues in what governments you are referring to.
Many of the clergy in Iran [the real rulers] have views that do not coincide with the civil government headed by Ahmadinajad, whom they think may have gone too far.
Re Iran
Attached is a link to another point of view relative to the probable development of nuclear weapons by the whackjobs running Iran.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1170359851111&pagename=JPost…