Is the US Funding Sunni Extremists?

According to a new report by Seymour Hersch, the Bush administration is diverting funds (without authorization) to fund Sunni extremist groups. This is apparently being done for two reasons: 1) strike at Iran and Iranian influence, and 2) counter the rise of Shia power which US intervention in Iraq has fueled. You know that we have problems when our blowback is getting blowback.

Our funding of extremists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union, blew back into al Qaida, and then our support for the Taliban, became inconvenient. Our support of a "friendly dictator" (Reza Shah) in Iran became a shia fundamentalists revolution, which we countered with another "friendly dictator" in Iraq by the name of Saddam Hussein.

Now the US has removed Hussein and destabilized Iraq which is forging ties with Shia Iraq, which may link to a shia takeover in Lebanon. So now we have the US funneling money to sunni extremists (al Qaida is largely sunni) aimed apparently at blocking rising Shia influence and a "Shia Crescent" of power in the region. In other words, the US is helping to fuel civil war outside Iraq - and likely inside Iraq as well.

Of the "insurgent" groups inside Iraq, it is reported that most of the attacks against US forces are Sunni; while publicly the US funds and fights for a predominantly Shia government seeming intent on eliminating the Iraqi sunni population.

Out of all of this gibberish" and "redirection" (or "misdirection)," a frightening image emerges. That image is that it is in somebody's interest to have civil wars all over South Asia and the Middle East. Those civil wars are being fueled along Islamic sectarian lines, and the US is funding both sides of the struggle. Further, US troops are sitting in the middle of a manufactured maelstrom - a maelstrom created by their own government.

Does anyone else find all of this just a bit too machivellian? Who exactly is supposed to sweep up the "prizes" when this is over? That is assuming that war without end is not the goal of the whole foreign policy of the United States.