Connecting the Dots

I don't ever jump blindly onto the Conspiracy Theory bandwagon, I usually like a liberal dose of fact-checking before I join those crazy lefties. Has anyone read the piece in the Rolling Stone called "Iran: The Next War"?

There is a disturbing string of facts presented in the article that suggest that the Israeli lobby in the US had a hand in bringing our country into the conflict in Iraq.

Larry Franklin has pleaded guilty to passing on classified information to the Israeli government.

Chalabi's house was raided in 2004, and there were reports of sensitive information that he had passed on to Iran.

On August 4th, 2005, Rosen, (director of foreign-policy issues at Israel's powerful lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and Weissman,(AIPAC's Iran expert), were indicted, and on January 20th, 2006, Franklin, who had earlier pleaded guilty, was sentenced to twelve years and seven months in prison.

And there are questions that nag at me that remain unanswered.

America seems uninterested in working for any sort of cease-fire in the current conflict in Lebanon, are we giving Israel the breathing room to draw Syria and Iran into some sort of World War III as people like Newt Gingrich and William Kristol suggest?

Why did we invade Iraq on such flimsy intelligence and make no effort to win the war? Were the phony WMD reports a pretext for establishing bases to wage a war against Iran?

Did Chalabi work as a double agent for Iran, convincing the US to take out Saddam Hussein, Iran's major rival? Taking out Saddam and establishing a Shiite majority in Iraq was a victory for Iran, they no longer have to worry about the threat on their borders, they are now able to focus on regional dominance. Did the neo-cons inadvertently assist Iran in becoming a major power in the region?

These conspiracy theories are troubling to me because there are too many facts that are true, and too many things that are inexplicable.

And while I hope for a path to peace in the Middle East, I believe that we have f-ed it up beyond any resolution, and the best thing for us to do today is to get out completely.

We are part of the problem, not the solution.

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