Iraq: A Small War Guaranteed to Damage a Superpower

By Patrick Cockburn, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on May 11, 2007, Printed on May 11, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/51730/

Iraq may have been a pushover in the invasion, but the price of occupation for America could exact a heavy toll on its empire.

At 3 am on January 11, 2007 a fleet of American helicopters made a sudden swoop on the long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in northern Iraq. Their mission was to capture two senior Iranian security officials, Mohammed Jafari, the deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. What made the American raid so extraordinary is that both men were in Iraq at the official invitation of the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who held talks with them at his lakeside headquarters at Dokan in eastern Kurdistan. The Iranians had then asked to see Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, in the Kurdish capital Arbil. There was nothing covert about the meeting which was featured on Kurdish television.