The Next Quagmire

Report: Iran accuses Bush of fanning 'Iranophobia'

(CNN) -- Top Iranian officials heaped scorn on President Bush's visit to the Middle East, with one of them saying the American leader was attempting to stir up "Iranophobia," a state-run Iranian news agency reported Monday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki reportedly accuses President Bush of fomenting tensions.

Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency noted the comments of Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and Ala'eddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.

President Bush, in a speech Sunday in Abu Dhabi, labeled Iran as the "world's leading sponsor of terror" and asked allies to join the United States in confronting Iran "before it's too late."

But Mottaki -- who made his remarks to Al-Jazeera news network Sunday -- said the United States "was the main cause of extremism in the region as it has been supporting terrorist and extremist groups during the past six years."

He said Bush was trying to foment tensions in the Persian Gulf over the Strait of Hormuz incident on January 6. The U.S. military described a confrontation between U.S. ships and Iranian boats, but Mottaki called the American version of the story fabricated, the Islamic Republic News Agency said.

The report paraphrased Mottaki as saying that "fanning the fuel of Iranophobia was the objective of Bush's visit to the region."

Mottaki also noted growing bilateral cooperation between Iran and its neighbors, saying that U.S. officials can't "understand the historical, religious and cultural commonalties between Iran and other regional countries."

The Iranian news agency, paraphrasing Boroujerdi, said Bush's talk about Iran "is the saber-rattling of a defeated man."

He indicated that Bush embarked on the trip to shore up support for his unpopular policies and that his visit to the West Bank and the Persian Gulf "was just a political propaganda campaign as he knew his policies in the region were futile."

Boroujerdi said that referring to Iran as a threat won't affect the country's ties with its neighbors.

"Bush would achieve no results from his visit to the region given Iran's current cooperation with the regional states as well as Tehran's firm decision to safeguard regional security with the help of the regional countries," the lawmaker said.

Doesn't an initiative to go into Iran seem to be the last thing the Bush Administration should be doing? Crazytown!

Iraq is a mess, back home everything is being sucked down a financial black hole, but yet, suddenly, going into Iran seems like a good idea? And what the hell happened to Osama Bin Laden? Wasn't he supposed to be in Pakistan? Why is no one looking for him anymore? I guess it's not important, because he wasn't the purpose to pre-emptively strike this region of the world, anyways.

I watched the documentary "Why We Fight" on CBC Newsworld last night. It was very interesting and disturbing. Even Eisenhower warned of the collusion of the industrial-military-political complex in 1960. The entire face of nationalized militarism has completely changed in the past ten years thanks to Bush cronyism, and is now so corporatized I'm not even sure we could change things to something less deadly if we wanted to. The U.S. Government spends three-quarters of a trillion dollars on defense budgets annually and I would take a guess that most of that goes to capitalists and the Congresspeople they give 'finders fees' to. Where is this money coming from? Oh yeah, magical fiat-currencyland. It's all a big crock of manipulative, deceitful corrupt bullshit.

Best quote from the documentary? "Now that war has become extremely profitable, you can only expect more of it."