We've known for weeks that Cheney is trying his hardest to get Bush to bomb Iran (and more proof just keeps surfacing). Fortunately, David Gardner helps to shed some light on the matter.

US commanders seem to have no trouble detecting the hand of Tehran everywhere. This largely evidence-free blaming of serial setbacks on Iranian forces is a bad case of denial. First, the insurgency is overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni, built around a new generation of jihadis created by the US invasion. Second, to the extent foreign fighters are involved these have come mostly from US-allied and Sunni Saudi Arabia, not Shia Iran. Third, the lethal roadside bombs with shaped charges that US officials have coated with a spurious veneer of sophistication to prove Iranian provenance are mostly made by Iraqi army-trained engineers – from high explosive looted from those unsecured arms dumps.

Just to review, the insurgency is not Iranian per se but rather Iraqis reacting to the US invasion, any foreign fighters are much more likely to come from Saudi Arabia than Iran, and roadside bombs that Bush et al keep trying to link to Iran in fact more closely align with Iraqi engineers and our bungled protection of armed depots.

But what the heck, it's probably still better to believe that ever-truthful Cheney, right?