What Horseshit!!!

This narrative popped out a few months ago, and I greeted it with the same skepticism and annoyance then as I do now.

According to CNN, US military sources say: Iraqi insurgents are being trained in Iran

First, some choice snippets

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi insurgents are being trained in Iran to assemble weapons and Iranian-made weapons are still turning up in Iraq, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

The statement comes two months after the United States said it had asked Tehran to stop the flow of weapons into Iraq.

Coalition forces found a cache of Iranian rockets and grenade launchers in Baghdad on Tuesday, spokesman U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said Wednesday.

(snip)

He accused the Quds Force of supplying Iraqi insurgents with armor-piercing roadside bombs, called explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs.

Caldwell said extremists are getting training on how to "assemble and employ EFPs."

"We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to
assemble them and how to employ them," Caldwell said. "We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees' debriefs."

He said Shiite extremists are being trained inside Iran and said the use of such weapons requires "very skilled training." Much of the violence in Iraq is blamed on fighting between Shiite and Sunni insurgents. An overwhelming number of Iranians are Shiite.

(snip)

In an unusual development, he said coalition forces have found evidence that Sunni insurgents in Iraq received help from intelligence services in the Shiite nation of Iran.

"We have in fact found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence services have provided to some Sunni insurgent groups, some support," Caldwell said. "We do continue to see the Iranian intelligence services being active here in Iraq in terms of both providing funding and providing weapons and munitions."

First, it simply defies belief that Shia Iran, would choose to intercede in the Iraqi civil war (between Sunni and Shia) on the side of the Sunni by providing it the training, intelligence, and weapons used to kill its co-religionist in the sectarian conflict. The article and the official is pretty vague about its proof, and such has been the situation when it usually turns out to be false down the road.

Adding further than in the context of the administrations current attempts to isolate and demonize the Iranian regime, it also strikes me as very suspect (if logically baffling) for the US to claim that Iran is arming the faction (the Sunni insurgency) most responsible (80+%) for US casualties.

The vague sounding intelligence, the context, the lack of logic in the charges just does not add up to something...right. Its fishy, just as fishy as the last time they tried to tie Sunni insurgents with Iran.

Why is it that they are so sure that these arms must be from Iran: Too hard and complicated for Iraqi's to manufacture, and as the article above mentions "it requires very skilled training to use."

But is that really true?

Back when this issue initially popped up in February, Paul Kiel of TPMuckracker (excellent investigative reporters) pointed out something that questions this assertion:

Two weeks ago, the Bush administration organized an intelligence briefing for journalists in Iraq to demonstrate that Iran was providing weapons to Iraqi insurgents. According to the anonymous briefers, the weapons -- particularly
explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s -- were manufactured in Iran and
provided to insurgents by the Quds Force -- a fact that meant direction for the
operation was "coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government."
Well. A raid in southern Iraq on Saturday seems to have complicated the case.

There, The Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.), troops "uncovered a makeshift factory used to construct advanced roadside bombs that the U.S. had thought were made only in Iran." The main feature of the find were several copper liners that are the main component of EFPs. But, The New York Times reports, "while the find gave experts much more information on the makings of the E.F.P.'s, which the American military has repeatedly argued must originate in Iran, the cache also included items that appeared to cloud the issue."

Among those cloudy items were "cardboard boxes of the gray plastic PVC tubes used to make the canisters. The boxes appeared to contain shipments of tubes directly from factories in the Middle East, none of them in Iran."

Possibly, the Times muses, "the parts were purchased on the open market" and then "the liners were then manufactured to the right size to cap the fittings."

If you have LexisNexus than you might be able to get the Wall Street Journal article to verify, but the NYT article should be up. If not let me know and and I'll Lexis Nexus both of them and cite them, I'm too lazy now.

Anyways, the point is clear: These weapons that are so advanced that they must be manufactured in Iran, could easily have been manufactured by domestic Iraqi bombmakers in their own domestic workshops, using parts that could easily be found throughout the Middle East.

If that is the case, it further brings official assertions about Iranian aid to insurgents into doubt.
Do not get me wrong. I can totally believe that Iran 1) arms Shia militias and 2) possibly trains them. That I could totally believe -- in fact I'd be surprised if they didn't help their co-religionist in the civil war.

Its just beyond belief that Iran would arm the Sunnis against the Shia.

Why are they putting blame on Iran for arming insurgents? That is the question. I suspect it has to do with the fact that Sunni insurgents and Sunni al-Qaeda elements are responsible for 80+% of US casualties, so its helpful for the administrations cause to tie Iran in to the death of so many of its own soldiers for reasons of international politics.

What is ironic about this situation is that, pretty soon, it will be the Shia militias and any EFPs they have that will come to inflict ever greater casualties on US soldiers. Why? Because the truce between US forces and the Shia militia of Muqtada al-Sadr is over and its leader is calling for renewed attacks on the US.

Shia and Sunni fighters and their EFP's will both come to bear on US soldiers in the coming days, weeks, and months, and that bodes ill for US forces and for the vaunted Surge that is already failing at this early stage.

Sigh. Sometimes covering this is depressing....

Oh, one more thing before I go. Echoing sentiments and conclusions many of us have long since come to (especially about the ill effects of the Iraq War), comes a study in a UK think thank. I haven't read the actual study but it more or less repeats what many of us already knew:

US-British 'War on Terror' Backfires (Agence France Presse)

The US-led and British-backed war on terror is only fuelling more violence by focusing on military solutions rather than on root causes, a think tank warned Wednesday.

"The 'war on terror' is failing and actually increasing the likelihood of more terrorist attacks," the Oxford Research Group said in its study, titled "Beyond Terror: The Truth About The Real Threats To Our World."

It said Britain and the United States have used military might to try to "keep the lid on" problems rather than trying to uproot the causes of terrorism.

It said such an approach, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, had actually heightened the risk of further terrorist atrocities on the scale of September 11,
2001.

"Treating Iraq as part of the war on terror only spawned new terror in the region and created a combat training zone for jihadists," the report's authors argued.

It pointed out that the Islamist Taliban movement is now resurgent, six years after it was overthrown in 2001 by the US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

"Sustainable approaches" to fighting terrorism would involve the withdrawal of US-led forces from Iraq and their replacement with a United Nations stabilisation force, it said.

It also recommended the provision of sustained aid for rebuilding and developing Iraq and Afghanistan as well as closing the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where most suspects are held without charge or trial.

And it called for a "genuine commitment to a viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

The study warned that military intervention in Iran over its nuclear ambitions would be "disastrous," calling instead for a firm and public commitment to a diplomatic solution.

Iran insists the programme is peaceful, despite claims from Washington that it masks a drive for nuclear weapons.

The study also said the British government's plans to upgrade the submarine-based Trident nuclear deterrent could produce international instability.

"Nuclear weapon modernisation is likely to serve as a substantial encouragement to nuclear proliferation as countries with perceptions of vulnerability deem it necessary to develop their own deterrent capabilities," it said.

Just a couple days ago I mentioned:

They have seen the US bungle an occupation, further marginalize itself, trap itself in a quagmire in Iraq, then they see that the US leadership is so proud, so bullheaded that it cannot even come to terms with its failure and extricate itself and cut its losses. The lesson learned: We are so stupid we will fight an unnecessary war against a nation with little to do with the war on terror, then we are too stupid to leave due to pride.

Terrorist recruitment is up (as are overall terrorist incidents), the image of the US is at all time lows, its back at its full strength after its setbacks in Afghanistan, and it has a cadre of new, battle-hardened troops trained in Iraq and ready to spread
its knowledge to the surrounding regions. Yes, the radical groups are emboldened, and we have George W. Bush and his initial decision to invade Iraq to blame for that. The terrorists have been emboldened; they are not waiting for the US to pullout to reserve their judgment.

Frankly, I'm sure their study reads alot like some of my old term papers except theirs is more authoritative and in depth (and longer).

In any case, yet another reason to be depressed. Not in the clinical sense of course. Its just sometimes seeing what goes on, the mistakes made, the harm being done not only to the world, but to the country one loves so much because of poor leaders...it really eats at you inside. Sometimes I'd like nothing better than to stop hearing news.

Heh, in fact that is what I do from time to time. I often read books to read something not about current affairs though I often end up reading books about politics and foreign affairs anyways!!

Peace out folks, I'm going to go out and enjoy my day...screw politics and stuff....at least till tomorrow.