McClatchy looks at the numbers on Iran and finds the lies

Again, McClatchy, at the time Knight-Ridder, was the only major news organization in the country to actually examine the pre-Iraq intel. That should not be forgotten.

They now seem to be applying the same standard to the administration's claims regarding Iran, and like the Iraq intel, there is no "there" in the administration's contentions.

A new U.S. intelligence estimate on Friday, however, concluded that Iranian and other outside meddling is "not likely" a major cause of the bloodshed in Iraq, and a new McClatchy analysis of U.S. casualties in Iraq found that Sunni Muslim insurgents, not Iranian-backed Shiites, have mounted most - but not all - of the attacks on American forces.....

The fact that some Iranian weaponry is flowing to the Mahdi Army, and that Mahdi Army fighters have attacked Americans, doesn't prove that the Iranians are targeting Americans, said a second U.S. intelligence official, who also agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

Plenty of Iranian weapons are also "floating around" because the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps created the militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and forces loyal to the Dawa party of U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, the official added.

Further compounding the problem, the three U.S. intelligence officials said, is that the Bush administration supports not only Dawa's Maliki, but also two major SCIRI leaders, Abdul Aziz al Hakim and Abdul Adel Mahdi, who are also in the government.

"So what do we do?" said one of the officials. "Accuse the Iranians of supporting the same guys we support? That's awkward."

Also: (LATimes) U.S. can't prove Iran link to Iraq strife. "Bush administration officials acknowledged Friday that they had yet to compile evidence strong enough to back up publicly their claims that Iran is fomenting violence against U.S. troops in Iraq."