One of the reasons we can't win in Iraq is that the Bush administration has never focused its full attention on the insurgency. It's instead so worried about containing (or perhaps provoking) Iran that it's willing to undermine the Iraqi government and indirectly fund the insurgents.

What am I talking about? A recent report reveals that Saudi Arabia has been trying to hinder the Maliki government by supplying funding and volunteers to join the Sunni insurgency. Half the foreign fighters that enter Iraq each month are estimated to come from Saudi Arabia. Just last week the Bush administration expressed frustration over the Saudi's involvement. Yet only a few days, the administration promised $20 billion in high-tech weapons sales to Saudi Arabia over the next 10 years.

Why sell weapons to a country funding an insurgency that is taking American lives and undermining the mission in Iraq? To isolate and put pressure on Iran, says Condoleezza Rice.

"We have the same goals in this region concerning security and stability," the US Secretary of State said, during a stopover on the way to the Middle East in Shannon, Ireland.

"There isn’t a doubt, I think, that Iran constitutes the single most important, single-country challenge to ... US interests in the Middle East and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see."

The real problem is that Iraq has evolved into a staging ground for a power struggle in the Middle East. Iran wants to gain influence over the Shiite-controlled government of Iraq, partially to secure itself from a U.S. attack and to expand its power in the region. Saudi Arabia wants to maintain influence in the Middle East and prevent Iran from gaining control of Iraq, and by siding with the Saudis, we are effectively undermining the very government our soldiers are working to secure and establish.

The ironic part is that we've sided with the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia because we've declared Shiites in Iran as the greatest threat to U.S. security. But the terrorists responsible for 9/11 were almost all Sunnis from Saudi Arabia.