While I used to follow the US press when I was in India itself, it wasn't all that of immediate relevance to me. But when I came here, I started following US new editions more carefully, gleaning for information with their content and context. Enough said about the BBC, now its time for Reuters.

Some days back when I was reading through the daily news, I came upon this article. It's a 3 page article and needless to say, touches one of the most stormy issues in the International politics today. Inspite all these, the flow of the article and the news that it conveys is, IMHO, simply inconsistent with general journalistic judgment.

Sample these:

"The purpose appears not to be to shore up Iran's political partners in Iraq against the Sunnis, but to cause problems for American troops," said a former intelligence official who closely monitors events in the Middle East.

.........

The secretive Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards has circumvented Shi'ite organizations like the Mehdi Army to enlist individual militants and train them in the use of explosively formed penetrators, the officials said.

These allegations against Iran are all made by unnamed, unidentified "Officials"-there are no attributions to any one. Remember these were the same tactics used earlier before the war on Iraq. Now, its an open secret on who the public opinion was manufactured leading to Iraq War.

The heights of such scandalous attribution comes here:

WARNING TO U.S TROOPS?

Some experts believe Iran has supplied traceable weapons to show the United States what ground troops might face in any military intervention.

"Tensions between these two countries have escalated dramatically since 2003, and everybody has suspected for a long time that Iraq could become a battlefield," said Vali Nasr, Middle East expert at the Naval Postgraduate School.

"I'm sure these (munitions) have been used to let it be known that the Iranians have these capabilities in Iraq."

Added an intelligence source: "They could be saying, 'This is the merest taste of what you would face if you came across the border or bombed us or knocked out our nuclear reactors'."

Here, the sentence structure seems so like that the quote "I'am sure these have been....." can easily me mistaken for Vali Nasr, whereas in reality it is again said by some "intelligence source". What is this, but stroking hysteria? A population already scared with 9/11 and yet to come back to normal doesn't need further than these words to panic.

I have just one question- What Next?