Everything that comes from Chimpy’s administration and his SCLM sternographers, that is. Via Uruknet, comes this Times report which should tell you a thing or two about the Iranian “threat:”

Marie Colvin
THE HEAD of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps slipped into the green zone of Baghdad last month to press Tehran’s hardline position over the terms of the current talks with American officials, it was claimed last week.

Iraqi government sources say that Major-General Mohammed Ali Jafari, 50, travelled secretly from Tehran. Jafari appears to have passed through checkpoints on his way into the fortified enclave that contains the American embassy and Iraqi ministries, even though he is on Washington’s “most wanted” list.

Last year Washington declared the guard a “foreign terrorist organisation” and imposed sanctions on it.

One of the accusations that led to the designation was the charge that the Quds Force, a branch of the guard, was supplying rockets, mortars and roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) to Shi’ite militias in Iraq.

In recent days there has been a sharp increase in the use of such bombs against American troops, and last weekend five Iranian speedboats were said to have harassed three American Navy ships, radioing a threat to blow them up. which of course turned out to be a completely bullshit interpretation of events that day.

On his tour of the Middle East yesterday President George W Bush put Tehran on notice over its support for the insurgency in Iraq. “Iran’s role in fomenting violence has been exposed,” he said in Kuwait.

Iran and the United States have held three rounds of talks over security in Iraq. They have made little progress so far but are considered a breakthrough because they are the first face-to-face encounters since 1980.

At the insistence of the Americans, the talks between Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, and Hassan Kazemi Qomi, his Iranian counterpart, have been kept to the issue of security in Iraq. But Tehran wants them broadened to include the release of Iranian diplomats being held in Baghdad by the Americans. It is understood Jafari was sent to Baghdad to ensure that this happened.

A couple of things to note. Even in a UK paper, we still get the propaganda version of recent events re: the US and Iran. Not that the Iranians are any better, but still, gotta love that uncritical repetiton of Republican spin. Secondly, it says something about how much “control” we have in Iraq, if we’re negotiating with the Worst Enemy Army Since the SS, or whatever Hillary voted to condemn the RevGuard for being. People with power don’t have to negotiate with their avowed worst enemies.

Here’s where almost all the candidates really fail me. If I were John Edwards, I’d be making a huge row over this, and point out the hypocrisy and impotence of the administration’s Iran policies, as well as the stupidity of any Democratic candidate taking a similar stance.

But I guess it’s just too much to ask any American presidential candidate to treat the Iranian people as human, and their government as one that must be dealt with carefully, soberly, and with fact-based information. We must always have an Enemy, or something, I guess.