by emptywheel

Reading through the Kyl-Lieberman amendment (hat tip Laura Rozen), you'd think that the Ryan-Crocker dog and pony show was designed to justify war on Iran. And you might be right. The amendment cites four Petraeus statements about Iranian influence in Iraq and four Crocker statements. And intersperses those with cherry-picked citations to create the illusion that Iran is the only outside force causing trouble in Iran. For example, when they cite Ahmadinejad talking about the vacuum US failure will leave in Iraq...

"The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," Mr Ahmadinejad said at a press conference in Tehran. "Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap,

They neglect to mention that Ahmadinejad nods to Saudi Arabia and Iraq in his statement...

... with the help of neighbours and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation."

(A detail that even Fox managed to include.) And when they cite from the NIE's list of neighboring countries likely to make trouble in Iraq...