U.S. Troops Defending An Iraqi Government with Close Ties to Iran

There isn't a day that passes without references to Iran's responsibility in killing American troops in Iraq. But the Bush administration has those very same troops fighting and dying to defend a government that has close ties to Iran:

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then the pictures and film footage of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki holding hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak volumes. “The two leaders walked in to an ornate meeting room holding hands,” noted one of several reports. This picture, only the latest evidence of an extremely close relationship between the U.S.-supported Iraqi government and the Iranian regime, appeared on the U.S. evening news broadcasts on Wednesday night.

It raises the question: what are we fighting for in Iraq if the government there is closely tied to, perhaps dependent for its survival on, the terrorist state of Iran?

[...]On the same day that Al-Maliki was in Tehran, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, a senior U.S. military commander in Iraq, disclosed that Iranian weapons were responsible for one-third of recent U.S. combat deaths in Iraq. That’s more than 25 killed by Iranian-supported weapons.