Under the best of circumstances this kind of pressure to nail the blame on a particular cause is dangerous. With this administration, it's particularly of concern. In addition, even if the interrogators do their job properly, and the informants don't decide to gain favor by creating evidence, and the administration doesn't cherry-pick–it's clear that by focusing all of this attention on one particular branch of inquiry, other information is going to be missed. You can't gain a true picture of what's going if you're spending all your time trying to prove one single theory.

Iraqi fighters 'grilled for evidence on Iran' | World | The Observer

David Smith in Baghdad

Sunday November 11, 2007
The Observer

US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night.

…

Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: 'They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there's clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I've had, I'd say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran.

'It feels a lot like, if you get something and Iran's not involved, it's a let down.' He added: 'I've had people say to me, "They're really pushing the Iran thing. It's like, shit, you know." '

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'It now really depends on who gets elected President in the US. If nothing changes in the current course, I'd say military action is inevitable. But we have to hope there will be a change of course.'

He denied ever being asked to fabricate evidence, adding: 'We're not asked to manufacture information, we're asked to find it. But if a detainee wants to tell me what I want to hear so he can get out of jail... you know what I'm saying.'

Other military intelligence officials in Iraq refused to comment, but one said: 'The message is, "Got to find a link with Iran, got to find a link with Iran." It's sickening.'

Kudos to Google, at least, for arguing that allowing Iranians to use GMail doesn't constitute "doing business with Iran". But shame on Microsoft and Yahoo! for not having the guts to wait until the government complains.

Iran booted from Yahoo!, Microsoft lists - UPI.com

SEATTLE, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Two U.S.-based e-mail services, Microsoft and Yahoo!, have taken Iran off their country lists. Yahoo! issued a statement saying it continually reviews its business operations to comply with U.S. restrictions on "conducting business in specified countries, such as Iran." "

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Iran remains an option for Google G-mail users. The company said it did not believe that keeping Iran on its country list violates the sanctions.

Sanctions in general are a mistake–they hurt the people who you most want on your side. But in all battles, information is a weapon, and in the modern age, the access to the internet is a critical component of that. Iran, China and other governments know that very well, and do their best to limit their people's access to information. When we impose sanctions that help them, we are playing right into their hands.

Farsi is currently one of the top-ten blogging languages. Until Iran blocked access, Iranians were the third largest group of users (after Brazil and the U.S.) of Google's Orkut social networking service. Somehow I don't think the Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami (سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی) is doing a lot of blogging.

P.S. That last piece of Farsi was a test case. Someone who can actually read it, please let me know if it displayed correctly. I'm also interested as to whether Farsi displays correctly when entered in the comment forms (not that I'll be able to read any comments you leave in Farsi, but I can get them translated, so feel free.)