This time from the anti-administration New York Times. I would take this with a grain of salt if it was just the New York Times reporting on it but below I will also show what Defense Secretary Robert Gates has to say about it.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.
The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.
In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.
The focus of American concern is known as an “explosively formed penetrator,” a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.
Because the weapon can be fired from roadsides and is favored by Shiite militias, it has become a serious threat in Baghdad. Only a small fraction of the roadside bombs used in Iraq are explosively formed penetrators. But the device produces more casualties per attack than other types of roadside bombs.
Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile. The officials said they were willing to discuss the issue to respond to what they described as an increasingly worrisome threat to American forces in Iraq, and were not trying to lay the basis for an American attack on Iran.
This is in addition to what Robert Gates has publicly stated.
Serial numbers and markings on explosives used in Iraq provide "pretty good" evidence that Iran is providing either weapons or technology for insurgents there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates asserted yesterday.
Offering some of the first public details of evidence the military has collected, Gates said: "I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found," that point to Iran.
At the same time, he said he was somewhat surprised that recent raids by coalition and Iraqi forces in Iraq swept up some Iranians.
Just last week, Gates said that U.S. military officers in Baghdad were planning to brief reporters on what is known about Iranian involvement in Iraq but that he and other senior administration officials had intervened to delay the briefing to ensure that the information provided was accurate.
Speaking to reporters at a defense ministers conference here, Gates said yesterday: "I don't think there was surprise that the Iranians were actually involved; I think there was surprise we actually picked up some."
He and other U.S. officials have said for some time that Iranians, and possibly the government of Iran, have been providing weapons technology, and possibly some explosives, to Iraqi insurgents.
Iran again.
What can I say here? Iran has their hand in almost every conflict going on in the Middle East and no option is good in handling this.
Volatile is a very good word for this, because we cannot let Iran continue to supply weapons to insurgents and militias to kill our American soldiers or Coalition forces, so as of now, we are trying to disturb and break up the networks that supply, transport and manufacture these weapons.
More from NYT:
The Bush administration is expected to make public this weekend some of what intelligence agencies regard as an increasing body of evidence pointing to an Iranian link, including information gleaned from Iranians and Iraqis captured in recent American raids on an Iranian office in Erbil and another site in Baghdad.
The information includes interrogation reports from the raids indicating that money and weapons components are being brought into Iraq from across the Iranian border in vehicles that travel at night. One of the detainees has identified an Iranian operative as having supplied two of the bombs. The border crossing at Mehran is identified as a major crossing point for the smuggling of money and weapons for Shiite militants, according to the intelligence.
Read all three pages of the article....
From Captain's Quarters:
The Iranians understand the political climate here at home better than we think. As long as the violence rages in Iraq, they know that pressure will increase on the Bush administration to withdraw from the country. It doesn't make a lot of difference to Iran what form the violence takes, although they'd certainly be happy if the Shi'ites wiped out the Sunnis and the Kurds, as unlikely as that would be. They know that the Shi'ite majority will control Iraq in any case, especially while sectarian gang wars roil the capital. All they want to do is to exhaust American tenacity so that the war on Islamist terror fades before it reaches radical Islam's primary authors.
The White House needs to make its case and present as much of the evidence as possible, under the circumstances. There will be skeptics, and they will ironically call for a review of the intelligence in much the same manner that the White House asked for the same from Douglas Feith. If Congress authorizes it, it should get done, but they should acknowledge that they're doing the same thing that Carl Levin so angrily denounced yesterday. In any event, nothing should delay the national understanding of our true enemy in Southwest Asia.
Faster, please.
From Jules Crittenden:
According to prevailing standards of Monday morning quarterbackship, we should entirely ignore this, as it will turn out to be a trumped-up lie. Or, at least, a trumped-up exaggeration. Or maybe, a trumped-up inappropriateness. Though more likely, an unfortunate truth leading to consequences that make some people uncomfortable and compel them to look for scapegoats. See what I mean?
How do you deal with someone that wants armageddon? How do you "negotiate" with Hitler? I have compared that lunatic thug that runs Iran to Hitler before and I am sure I will again.
Talking to them is out of the question because you do not deal with terrorists when you have nothing to offer them except your own death.
Invasion is out of the question because.....welll, damma, just because!!!!
Sanctions, the ones that the UN can manage to get through after Russia and China water them down so much they aren't even effective, have done nothing to deter Ahmadinejad from causing whatever trouble, death and destruction as he can as well as continuing to enrich uranium for his nuclear ambitions.
Bombing their nuclear facilities does nothing for the fanning of flames they are doing in Iraq, nor the weapons they are providing.
To me, they are two separate issues.
We must deal with what they are doing in Iraq......we owe that to our soldiers. The nuclear issue must be dealt with as a separate issue.
Freaking Ahmadinejad. The man is a menace and if the international community does not get serious, this lunatic is going to touch off World War III, with nukes added into the mix.
Pleasant thought huh?
Wapo claims that Iran has arrested two al-Qaeda members traveling through Iran, then again, after Wapo's extremely bad screwup yesterday, who knows "which report" they are quoting from in this issue.
They did issue a correction from yesterday, but only after hundreds of others had blasted their original false story around the world.
Either way Iran is going to have to be dealt with and it is going to take experts far more knowledgable than me to figure out how.
Freaking Ahmadinejad. The man is definitely more trouble than he is worth.
If it were up to me, I would say that the Mossad should send a few of their special men in and just put a bullet through the lunatics head and be done with it....after all, if Israel does they can rest assured that our media, the international community and most of our American politicians will swear Bush did it anyway.
Tracked back by:
The Temple Mount: Much Ado About Everything from The American Israeli Patriot...
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