Welcoming the Newest Member of the League of Justice Jim Hoagland, certainly has joined the cause of "that fucker tricked me" brigade, most particularly in his last column before today's missive. And once again, he calls out the Michael Ledeen-like slot of the Bush-legion.

Bush policymakers and spies have made fear of Iran a driving -- and highly distorting -- force in the continuing war in Iraq. They now resemble the LBJ-era Cold Warriors who were so intent on defeating China and the Soviet Union in Vietnam that they lost sight of the stakes and dynamics of the real war they were fighting. In Iraq today the CIA is building an Iraqi spy agency from the ruins of Saddam Hussein's Mukhabarat -- the secret police unit that was at war with Iran and Syria for two decades. Like ex-Nazis recruited to fight the Soviet peril, these Iraqis come with useful skills and experience in trying to destabilize Tehran. Some of them were on the job during the Iran-Iraq war, when the Reagan administration (in which Shultz served) shared U.S. intelligence with Hussein's regime to prevent the revolutionary ayatollahs of Iran from taking Baghdad. Old intelligence connections die hard. But the inordinate fear of Iran is rapidly contaminating U.S. relations with the Shiite majority of Iraq. It is also complicating U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi's effort to name an interim Iraqi government. The White House hopes to get the government named and a new Security Council resolution on Iraq approved before President Bush goes to Europe next week.