"Troops Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq"

File this under "About damned time!" From the Washington comPost:

The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran's influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort.

For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The "catch and release" policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go.

WTF? "Avoid escalating tensions with Iran"? Pardon my French here, but what kind of pansy-ass shizit is that? Yeah, let's not piss off a country that (a) wants to nuke us and (b) is killing our soldiers on the battlefield! No damned wonder Americans think we're losing the war in Iraq!

Continuing:

Last summer, however, senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran's regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing. The country's nuclear work was advancing, U.S. allies were resisting robust sanctions against the Tehran government, and Iran was aggravating sectarian violence in Iraq.

"There were no costs for the Iranians," said one senior administration official. "They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back."

With stupid-ass p#ssy policies like THAT, it's obvious that politicians, not soldiers, are bungling the war! Need further proof of that? Here it is:

The wide-ranging plan has several influential skeptics in the intelligence community, at the State Department and at the Defense Department who said that they worry it could push the growing conflict between Tehran and Washington into the center of a chaotic Iraq war.
...
Advocates of the new policy -- some of whom are in the NSC, the vice president's office, the Pentagon and the State Department -- said that only direct and aggressive efforts can shatter Iran's growing influence. A less confident Iran, with fewer cards, may be more willing to cut the kind of deal the Bush administration is hoping for on its nuclear program. "The Iranians respond to the international community only when they are under pressure, not when they are feeling strong," one official said.

If our gutless and shameless politicians really "support the troops", how about stop playing footsies with maniacal dictators who are trying to get our brave ones killed and let the soldiers do their damned jobs?