Iraq woos Iran, Iran builds bomb, US threatens more "action":

The Shi'ite majority in Iraq is eager to build bridges with their Shi'ite neighbour, Iran, a sworn enemy of the United States.

As the SMH reports, "the Iraqis sent a delegation to Tehran, presenting it as a neighbourly visit. But the Americans would have been stunned by the inclusion in the team of their hand-picked candidate as the likely next leader of Iraq - the returned exile and former banker Ahmed Chalabi.

US retaliation was swift. It closed all but three of the crossing points on the Iraq-Iran border. This was presented by the chief of the US occupation, Paul Bremer, as just another security measure, but observers here saw the border tightening as a rebuke to the Iraqi Shiites.

The Shiites responded by making it known that they might oppose a role for the United Nations in brokering an agreement on the shape of Iraq's next interim government. "

Indeed, the Iraq Governing Council is refusing to invite the UN into the country, a critical step if the US is to hand over power on June 30th as Bush has pledged.

The affair is further complicated by Iran's continuing charades with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It now seems likely that they are intent on building a nuclear bomb and well advanced on the path to joining Pakistan and North Korea in the nuclear "club". The US is threatening action, which could well mean UN Security Council approved bombing of Tehran.

"If they continue in this manner, to deny and to put out the kind of statements as they did, they'll find that the international community will be prepared to take action" Colin Powell says.

"I won't prejudge now what those actions might be, but the Iranians need to understand that the international community is not going to just sit by idly while they continue to move in the direction of a nuclear weapon."

Imagine how Iraqis will react to a US bombing campaign on their Muslim "brothers". And don't imagine that all Iraqis and Iranians are enemies just because they had a decade-long war. Remember, that was Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim with an interest in stoking relgious hatred, who waged that war. And - as Homer Simpson reminds us - the USA was right behind him.

And just to make matters worse for the USA, "OPEC plans to cut official production by four percent from April 1 to 23.5 million barrels per day. " The move, sponsored by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who says US forces are trying to stage another coup in his country, is now likely to go ahead. High prices at the gas station will do nothing for the re-election chances of Bush and Howard later this year.

This war sure isn't going the way you planned, is it George?

Indeed, as King Pyrrhus of Epirus said after the bloody battle of Heraclea in 280 BC: "One more such victory and we are ruined."