Iran 'reaps benefit of Iraq war'

Herald Sun: US President George W. Bush's administration had created a volatile situation in Iraq that had benefited Iran and could degenerate into a civil war, an ex-top aide to former secretary of state Colin Powell said overnight.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Mr Powell's former chief of staff, said Iran's Shiite theocracy had exploited the chaos and political vacuum in neighbouring Iraq and had become the "principal winner" after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.

"The Persians are the ones who are winning from this whole thing," Mr Wilkerson said in a speech at the Centre for National Policy, a Washington think tank.

"For most purposes, Iranians own the south (part of Iraq)," he said, referring to the region where Shiites form an overwhelming majority.

There was a genuine threat of civil war in Iraq, and possibly not along sectarian lines, he said.
Time and lives were lost in Iraq due to what Mr Wilkerson called ineptitude and recklessness by the White House.

Mr Wilkerson, a Vietnam veteran and retired US army colonel, has become an outspoken critic of the Bush administration since resigning last year.

"We're looking at a strategic situation that may be more dangerous than the situation we faced before we went in (to Iraq)," he said.

He said the Bush administration was courting disaster by refusing to engage Iran and North Korean in direct diplomacy.

"If no one is going to talk to the people in Tehran who really matter, just as no one is going to talk to the people in Pyongyang who really matter, then we've got two very dangerous situations on our hands," he said. (...)

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Mr Wilkerson alleged that flawed intelligence on Iraq's weapons program was fed to the White House by Douglas Feith, a former undersecretary of defence.

Mr Wilkerson charged that Mr Feith persuaded some CIA employees to provide briefings that ran counter to more measured assessments by their superiors at the spy agency.

"Was he nefarious? Absolutely," he said, accusing Mr Feith of showing more loyalty to Israel and the right-wing Likud party than the US. "

Nota: Parece que já ouço a solução pelos suspeitos do costume - Guerra com o Irão ... pois ...