After an annoying month's worth of health problems, your weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war(s) is back--with a difference. The Bush crazies have become so intent on using their war with Iraq to both provoke and justify a war with Iran that it no longer makes sense to treat them as separate issues. So, we'll do what they do: mash them together.

George Bush slapped unilateral sanctions on Iran a couple of weeks ago, but virtually nobody noticed that the key word there is not "sanctions," but "unilateral": the real significance of George Bush's tough new sanctions against Iran is that they're being carried out unilaterally, walking away from both the support of European allies and the diplomatic process the Europeans have championed. Pointedly, the sanctions came without any parallel diplomatic overtures. Another sign pointing toward the Bush cabal's intent for war with Iran.

Not surprisingly, to get a true sense of the depth of the Bush drumbeat for war, it helps to read the (more skeptical) foreign press. The Times of London (a conservative, Murdoch-owned outlet) had a story that British SAS forces have repeatedly entered Iran in recent months from the southern Iraq border regions on America's behalf. The British newspaper The Herald reports that the US is upgrading its Indian Ocean air base at Diego Garcia in anticipation of Iran attacks. Back home, 29 other Senators signed Sen. Jim Webb's letter to George Bush saying he doesn't have Congressional authority to attack Iran. Obama and Biden did not sign, Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd did. So did both Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell (!) from Washington state.

In the "two can play this game" Dept., Iran announced last week it has "evidence" of U.S. support for terrorists in the Middle East, particularly separatist Kurds working from Northern Iraq who've mounted cross-border attacks into both Turkey and Iran. Those Kurdish separatists working in Turkey, the PKK, threatened to open up an ugly new front in Iraq's war. After a cross-border PKK raid, the Turkish military ramped up (and has continued to inflict) attacks in the rugged border areas, including across the border in Northern Iraq. Meanwhile, anti-Kurdish nationalism is sweeping Turkey in anticipation of war against Iraq, the Turkish parliament has given a go-ahead for military strikes and has also threatened sanctions against Iraq, and Iraq's parliamentary speaker retaliated by warning that Iraq would cut off flow of oil from Northern Iraq to Turkey. (Raising the interesting question of how else the Iraqi government could pay for its own continuing existence…) Happily, there's one thing on which all sides can agree: shared contempt for US troops. A US proposal to interject American "peacekeeping" troops into the contested border areas was received coolly by the Kurds and rejected outright by the Turks.

Back in the old war (well, the most recent of the old wars), the Iraqi government announced yesterday that it is revoking the law guaranteeing immunity for U.S. contractors. Of course, it still has to catch them, which, without cooperation from the U.S., will be virtually impossible, so it is in many ways a meaningless gesture. As is the Iraqi government itself. Meanwhile, it has developed that the State Department already promised immunity to the Blackwater guards who murdered 17 Iraqi civilians in September, thus "impeding" an investigation the Iraqis concluded in about three days.

Speaking of civilian deaths, a Sadr City raid by Americans last week killed 49 "militants" (says the US military, perhaps responding to the militant-issue dog tags around their necks). The Iraqi government, on the other hand, claims woman and children were killed. Score another one for winning hearts and minds.

Or maybe it's just heartburn: Gen. David Petraeus has a new bestest friend he's been introducing to his troops. It's none other than convicted thief and serial liar Ahmed Chalabi, who Petraeus has somehow given responsibility for the "next phase" of the surge escalation, to provide better services and reconstruction to the beleaguered Iraqi populace. Previous such efforts, you see, have been mired in waste and corruption. Chalabi is certain to get a handle on all that waste.

On a completely (almost) unrelated note, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconsruction reports that most of the $1.2 billion given to DynCorp to train Iraqi police is completely unaccounted for. And the Congressional Budget Office now says the war in Iraq (not Iran) will cost a mere $2.4 trillion through 2017. Remember when John Kerry was ridiculed in 2004 for saying the war would cost $200 billion? Only three years later, and this is 12 times that.

Lastly, in an uncommon burst of common sense, State Department Foreign Service Officers are enraged over being forcibly ordered to Iraq when nobody would volunteer. One suspects that they recognize a complete no-win clusterfuck even when their political appointee bosses don't.

--Geov Parrish. For sources and links on any of these items, e-mail editorial@eatthestate.org.