One week the inflammatory anti-American Iraqi cleric Mugtada Al-Sadr criticizes George Bush for not withdrawing American troops from Iraq, so, he apparently hopes, the Democratic government will collapse and he can rush in to govern like his fellow mullahs in Iran.

The next week the feisty pawn of Iran's presiding mullahs, President of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announces that his country will send a high-ranking delegation to the peace conference on Iraq at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik. We are not supposed to think about how, at the same time, he sponsors the shipment of Iranian arms to violent radicals in Iraq, all the better to make the nascent Iraqi government seem helpless and encourage the citizenry to resort to his clever clerical counterpart for governance.

While they apparently hope notbody notices their clever teamwork, it has the drawback of being so transparent almost everybody notices.