"We Hate The Persians Even Worse"

Scenes from a quagmire: after four years, U.S. troops still man traffic checkpoints in Iraq. This amazes me. If a list of priorities exists somewhere, shouldn't turning over that job to Iraqis be near the top? AP:

With a thunderous rumble and cloud of dust and smoke, a suicide car bomb brought down a section of highway bridge south of Baghdad on Sunday, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding six from a checkpoint guarding the crossing and blocking traffic on Iraq's main north-south artery.

And more on the emerging theme of arming Sunni insurgents to take on....the Persians:

In Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, whose forces control the area of the bombing, spoke at length about U.S. efforts to draw Sunnis into the security forces.

"There are tribal sheiks out there who say 'Hey, just allow me to be the local security force. I don't care what you call me....You can call me whatever you want. Just give me the right training and equipment and I'll secure my area.' And that's the direction we're moving out there," the Third Infantry Division commander said.

In a meeting with reporters, Lynch said contacts with the Sunnis, who make up the bulk of the insurgency, were a matter of pragmatism.

"They say: 'We hate you because you are an occupier, but we hate al-Qaida worse and we hate the Persians (Iranians) even worse'... you can't ignore that whole population," Lynch said.

On the relative hate scale, at least, we're positioned nicely for the next decade or so.