Head of Israel's Shin Bet: "I'm not sure we won't come to miss Saddam"

[sabra]

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060217-115704-7804r

Commentary: Iraq, Iran unintended results

<snip>

The law of unintended consequences has sprung yet another unpleasant surprise. The kingmaker of Baghdad is now a sworn enemy of the United States who has pledged his support to Iran should the U.S. attempt regime change there, too

Radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who led his Mehdi army militia not once but twice against U.S. forces in 2004, has emerged from the last round of elections with a crucial swing vote of 32 seats. His latest gambit was to threaten civil war unless his choice for prime minister was accepted. It was. By one vote.

...

When president Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the last thing he anticipated was an Islamist radical calling the shots in a democratic Iraq. A glutton for geopolitical punishment -- which our enemies must see as congenital masochism -- the administration and Congress are crab-walking into an "Iran Liberation Act." The first tranche requested by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is for $75 million "to weaken Iran from within."

...

So far the administration's magic potion for democracy in the Middle East has produced a majority for Hamas and its Islamist leadership, a sworn enemy of Israel and ally of Iran, in the Palestinian territories, and an alarming election sally by the long banned Muslim Brotherhood, another sworn enemy of Israel and friend of Iran, in Egypt. Hezbollah, an adjunct of Iran in Lebanon, is also comfortably installed in the parliament in Beirut.

...

Yuval Diskin, the head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency, said recently his country might come to regret its decision to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "I'm not sure we won't come to miss Saddam," he told a group of students broadcast on Israeli TV. Last throes anyone?

Heckofajob, BushCo!