fundamentalist military conglomerate

* nyt ed today:

"Iran's Best Friend: At the rate that President Bush is going, Iran will be a global superpower before too long. For all of the axis-of-evil rhetoric that has come out of the White House, the reality is that the Bush administration has done more to empower Iran than its most ambitious ayatollah could have dared to imagine. Tehran will be able to look back at the Bush years as a golden era full of boosts from America, its unlikely ally.

[snip]

There is now a real risk that Iraq, instead of being turned into an outpost of secular democracy challenging the fanatical rulers of the Islamic republic to its east, could become an Iranian-aligned fundamentalist theocracy, challenging the secular Arab regimes to its west."

at this point, you'd be disappointed (even if it bores you already) if i didnt come back to this exchange between joe wilson and larisa

"Raw Story: And now we see that Iraq and Iran have just signed a military treaty. Is that what we wanted?

Wilson: Iran is the big winner in this.

Raw Story: Is the goal a fundamentalist military conglomerate? Is that what we wanted?

Wilson: Sitting right on the border of the Kuwait and eastern Saudi oil fields...

Raw Story: Right, if that is what we wanted…

Wilson: Then we have achieved it."

i still havent quite got my head around the whole thing - but Wilson seems to be claiming that this was the actual goal, not just some 'unintended consequence'. And we can see yet again, despite the administration's demonstrable incompetence, they sure seem able to fall uphill, again and again.