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Iran's influence in Latin America worries U.S.

Iran is making allies in Latin America to counter Washington's traditional influence in the region and could use them to threaten U.S. security, a top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday. "We are worried that in the event of a conflict with Iran, that it would attempt to use its presence in the region to conduct such activities against us," Thomas Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, told Reuters. Left-wing governments in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia have all become allies of Iran in recent years, and other countries in Latin America have diplomatic ties with the Islamic republic.

And now with Lebanon in civil war, all eyes are on Iranian support of Hezbollah.

It serves the ambition of General Petraeus, by implicitly blaming Iran for the failure of his "surge": Petraeus has hinted that he wants a bigger war, a story like this supplies a plausible cover to his next escalation, and it was designed to lend itself to that use. Also, by invoking the name of Hezbollah--until now, an obscure Lebanese party to most Americans--Gordon and the Times pick an enemy of Israel to connect with an enemy of the U.S.
Something is in the air. Nobody is talking about Iran and everybody is talking about it, from Hillary Clinton in her run for president to Condoleezza Rice in her run for vice-president. When Senator Clinton said that for Israel's sake she would "obliterate" Iran, she was entering a new terrain of recklessness. In the past, in America, it has been mainly generals who talked this way.
Obliterate was a favorite word and idea with General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command and the prototype of General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove. The only politician to talk freely of obliteration, before Hillary Clinton, was not John McCain but another retired pilot and senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater.
What are Bush and Petraeus looking for? Probably, at first, a small or medium- small war, with tactical bombing raids across the border to assist McCain in the fall and have him inherit in January. And yet, the administration is ready for worse. And if Iran makes a war possible by violent counteraction, the last days of the Bush administration will be euphoric and satisfied.

The ways that W can manipulate and lie to get us into Iran keep building. And the consequences keep getting bleaker.