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Iran to train Iraqi troops:
washingtonpost.com Ready, Willing and Evil?
By Al Kamen
Monday, July 11, 2005; A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/10/AR2005071000894_pf.html
Great news from Iraq last week.
Iran appears to have agreed to become the first member of the Axis of Evil to join the ever-dwindling Coalition of the Willing.
The U.S.-led coalition once included three dozen nations, but in the past year, more than a dozen countries have withdrawn or announced plans to leave. Ukraine and Poland have announced they will pull out by year's end, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said last week that Italy will begin withdrawing this fall.
So the news Thursday that Iraq and Iran have reached an agreement -- the precise contours were unclear -- for Iran to help train Iraqi troops appears to make Iran eligible for inclusion as one of the "willing." After all, a lot of teensy countries made the list while contributing nary a thing.
A State Department spokesman said Friday that "we certainly would encourage Iran to play a positive and productive role in helping the Iraqis, as we are trying to do, to establish a free democratic system and to build a prosperous and peaceful country."
There was some chatter that Iran has offered to train Iraqi police and military personnel before and may have done some training of Iraqi diplomats. No doubt the Iranians would not want to be formally inducted into the coalition and would just help out on a bilateral basis.
Well, that's not up to Iran. Washington decides who is in the coalition, and we recall that early on some countries had been admitted as members without even knowing they had applied.
But if Shiite Iran is being helpful -- Sunni insurgents in Fallujah might use a slightly different word -- then maybe North Korea's Kim Jong Il , the other remaining member of the Axis, might want to weigh in. He's surely got some spare troops he could ship over to train the Iraqis.
Perhaps it should be renamed the Coalition of the Willing and Evil?
Oh yeah:
Chatter continues that Pentagon types are looking at ultra-savvy media consultant Dorrance Smith , former executive producer of ABC News's "Nightline" and "This Week With David Brinkley" and former media affairs chief in Bush I, as a replacement for Lawrence Di Rita as top Pentagon spokesman.
Smith spent nine months in Iraq as a senior media adviser during the reign of viceroy L. Paul Bremer . Di Rita would stay on in a senior post to advise Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld . <...>