War With Iran on the Horizon
The rhetoric is being heavily upped as are naval and air forces. (The ground forces have been all but used up, but the Pentagon has all these flashy and expensive toys that aren’t being used and if they don’t find something for them to do, people might start cutting their budget to start helping the poor sods on the ground.)
U.S. military officials on Sunday accused the highest levels of the Iranian leadership of arming Shiite militants in Iraq with sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs that have killed more than 170 American forces.
. . .
Three senior military officials who explained the display said the “machining process” used in the construction of the deadly bombs had been traced to Iran.
Ooh! A “machining process”! That certainly sounds ominous, yet oddly not terribly convincing. And why is it that these military officials don't want to be named? At least when Colin Powell blew his load four years ago to sell a bullshit case for attacking Iraq, he did it publicly. This time the evidence is apparently so strong nobody wants their name attached to it.
The display appeared to be part of the White House drive that has empowered U.S. forces in Iraq to use all means to curb Iranian influence in the country, including killing Iranian agents.
It included a PowerPoint slide program and a handful of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades which the military officials said were made in Iran.
Wow! Powerpoint slides! I can't believe anyone would be skeptical. So who are these weapons going to, anyway?
The EFPs, as well as Iranian-made mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades, have been supplied to what the military officials termed “rogue elements” of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He is a key backer of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The U.S. officials glossed over armaments having reached the other major Shiite militia organization, the Badr Brigade. It is the military wing of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political organization, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leaders also have close ties to the U.S.
So let’s see, some to the Mahdi Army who hasn’t fought the US since August of 2004 and who generally haven’t used roadside bombs when they did fight them. Oh, and they’re arming the US-backed government forces. Sounds really troublesome. Any real evidence that weapons from Iran are killing US troops?
“We know more than we can show,” said one of the senior officials, when pressed for tangible evidence that the EFPs were made in Iran.
Well, that’s awfully reassuring. As another fellow said:
So, you see? This case is different. This time we can trust the "intelligence" sources. Because, last time, we'd merely had crews of trained inspectors swarming the country for years, and they reported confidently that there weren't any WMD there. This time, we have amateurs observing the situation in the middle of guerrilla warfare, and they say they've got the goods but can't reveal them. So, you see, it's different.
I hope that what you know doesn’t turn out to be that you know all this is so much bullshit and you can’t offer tangible evidence because none exists. We’ve been down that road with the Iraqi WMD’s and frankly I doubt people wil quite as forgiving when you start yet another war on false pretenses.
Of course, it will be too late by then.
