Quick! Tell dick and george: Saudis funding insurgents in Iraq

[babylonsister]

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/16822106.htm?source=rss&channel=twincities_news

Saudis funding insurgents in Iraq
U.S. fears proxy war with Iranian-backed Shiites could widen
BY ERIC ROSENBERG
Hearst Newspapers

WASHINGTON — During his inaugural appearance before Congress last week, the new U.S. intelligence czar made a rare public reference to one of Washington's secret dreads.

Mike McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said there are funds coming from Saudi Arabia, an ostensible U.S. ally, to help Sunni insurgents in Iraq, while Iran is supporting the Shiite militias there.

McConnell's testimony undergirds U.S. concerns that the Iraq civil war could turn into a direct Saudi-Iranian confrontation, with American military forces caught between warring combatants for Islam's two dominant strains.

Separately, Brian Jenkins, a military expert with Rand Corp., a national security and foreign policy research organization, said: "What we already are seeing in Iraq is an emerging proxy war between Saudi-backed Sunnis and Iranian-backed Shia."

If that proxy war cascades into a direct Iranian-Saudi military clash, it could imperil much of the world's oil supply. Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq are Nos. 1, 3 and 4, respectively, in terms of proven oil reserves.

Nawaf Obaid, then a security adviser to the Saudi government, alluded to the tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia in November when he warned in an op-ed column that a U.S. withdrawal of forces from Iraq would result in "massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis." The Saudis fired Obaid after the column was published in the Washington Post.

Tensions between the two nations are the main topic at a summit this weekend that Saudi and Iranian leaders were holding in Saudi Arabia.

more...

[Dhalgren]

1. The big problem that no one in DC seems willing to address is

that the Saudi-backed Sunni insurgents are killing US troops. The Iran-backed Shiites (which does not include al Sadr's militia) are not (in a comparable way) killing US troops. What is wrong with this picture and what does it say about why the hell the US is really in Iraq?

[TheBaldyMan]

2. Diick and Dubya were at the meeting when it was OKed.

that Saudi money is in the same suitcase as funds from the VP's office safe.

It's probably Dubya's suitcase but he's such an idiot and probably believed Dick when he told Bush that the funds are for a victory parade in Tehran.