A U.S. deal with terrorists

Los Angeles Times: The Bush administration is looking for a quick fix, but this is one that could easily turn into a long-term problem. No, this isn't the tax cuts that threaten to create huge deficits; it's the cease-fire agreement that American officials have reached with Iranian terrorists based in Iraq who have murdered Americans and are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. By cutting a deal with the 15,000-member Moujahedeen Khalq, or People's Holy Warriors, the administration is undermining its ability to fight terrorism.
The United States sometimes has little choice but to do business with thugs. The administration's reasoning in this instance is clear, if unpersuasive. Reaching an agreement with the Iranian militants has two advantages for the U.S. First, the group can help distract the Tehran government, which is trying to stir up anti-American Islamic fundamentalism in southern Iraq. Second, Moujahedeen Khalq, whose members were bombed by the U.S. during the recent Iraq war, has agreed not to fight American troops. In return, under the agreement terms, Moujahedeen Khalq gets to keep the weaponry it received from Saddam Hussein, which it wants to preserve in case of attack from Iran.
Unintended consequences
Blowback -- the professional intelligence term for operations that backfire -- has haunted the United States. Nowhere has blowback been more apparent than in the Middle East. None other than Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Baghdad in 1983 and 1984 as emissary for President Reagan to create new ties with Saddam, who was battling Iran. The short-term thinking then was that Saddam would be a good ally against Iran's notorious Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It's beyond understatement to suggest that the alliance with Saddam came back to bite the United States.
In the same decade, the CIA helped fund, train and arm the Afghan resistance to Soviet rule. Once the Soviets retreated, Osama bin Laden took over the Islamic militants and transformed them into a global terror network. When they helped engineer 9/11, members of this U.S.-trained resistance movement became the United States' worst nightmare.
Today, the Iranian fanatics could easily turn on U.S. forces; they killed American soldiers and civilians in Iran before the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979. What's more, allowing a paramilitary group to remain largely intact is no recipe for long-term Iraqi stability.
Short-term arrangements with thugs, as U.S. experience shows, rarely make for wise long-term political gain. In making an accord with Iranian radicals based in Iraq, the administration is undermining its ability to fight terrorism.