Bush's "Democratic" Iraq

Robert Dreyfuss has an excellent article looking at how Iran is supporting the Shiites in Iraq - the same Shiites that the USA is loudly supporting - as they torture and kill Sunnis. He calls it "Bush's Shiite Gang In Baghdad".

Dreyfuss points out that violent Shiiite militias like the Badr Brigade are receiving funds from the Iranians, while the US turns a blind eye. He points to this excellent KR story:

The Iranian-backed militia the Badr Organization has taken over many of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's intelligence activities and infiltrated its elite commando units, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

That's enabled the Shiite Muslim militia to use Interior Ministry vehicles and equipment - much of it bought with American money - to carry out revenge attacks against the minority Sunni Muslims, who persecuted the Shiites under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, current and former Ministry of Interior employees told Knight Ridder.

The officials, some of whom agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity for fear of violent reprisals, said the Interior Ministry had become what amounted to an Iranian fifth column inside the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, running death squads and operating a network of secret prisons.

The full article, which includes evidence of a "death squad" operating from within Iraq's Interior Ministry, is well worth a read. For instance, here is the senior U.S. military official in Baghdad, shrugging off the problem:

Everybody says you have a Badr guy in the MOI. Well ... he was elected. And they say he's appointed a bunch of Badr guys. We have a Republican administration in America, and guess what? They've appointed a lot of Republicans. You elected SCIRI, and SCIRI is Badr.

Or what about this:

Col. Joseph DiSalvo, who commands a brigade of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division in eastern Baghdad, where there's a heavy Shiite militia presence, said it would be all but impossible for the American military to defeat the militias...

"The coalition forces cannot enforce it (the law forbidding militias). We cannot negate the militias. It would be like having a 2 million-man tribe, and all of a sudden saying, `Tribe, you do not exist,'" DiSalvo said. "You'd have to have more manpower than is feasible."

Dreyfuss then quotes a Washington Times interview with a leading former Iraqi general who says that the network of torture prisons run by SCIRI, Badr, and the Iraqi interior ministry is overseen by an Iranian intelligence officer, Tahseer Nasr Lawandi, nicknamed “The Engineer.”

The Iranian officer not only masterminded interrogations, tortures and executions at the prisons, but also would take part in torture sessions, often using an electric drill, Gen. al-Samarrai said.

Some of the tortured prisoners were found in morgues with drill holes in their legs and eyes, according to another security source, who declined to be identified.

As Dreyfuss says, this sort of information "utterly destroys the Bush administration’s contention that the United States is building “democracy” in Iraq."