Is this just more anti-Iranian propaganda:
Iran Caught Red-Handed shipping Arms to Taliban
The April convoy was tracked from Iran into Helmand province and led a fierce firefight that destroyed one vehicle, according to the official analysis. A second vehicle was reportedly found to contain small arms ammunition, mortar rounds and more than 650 pounds of C4 demolition charges.
A second convoy of two vehicles was spotted on May 3 and led to the capture of five occupants and the seizure of RPG-7mm rockets and more than 1,000 pounds of C4, the analysis says.
It strikes me as odd that Afghanistan's Helmand Province is along the Pakistani border, where you would be more likely to find "Taliban allies," yet they are saying it is arms shipments from Iran. It strikes me twice as odd given previous claims like this that have been discredited in the past.
The previous evidence discussed in these new reports by ABC, and previously debunked by your local liberal brewery:
The White House was told twice to redo the PowerPoint presentation purporting Iranian ties to American deaths. According to The National Journal the intelligence community demanded that the presentation be rewritten and washed of overstated claims:
At least twice in the past month, the White House has delayed a PowerPoint presentation initially prepared by the military to detail evidence of suspected Iranian materiel and financial support for militants in Iraq. The presentation was to have been made at a press conference in Baghdad in the first week of February. Officials have set no new date, but they say it could be any day.
Even as U.S. officials in Baghdad were ready to make the case, administration principals in Washington who were charged with vetting the PowerPoint dossier bowed to pressure from the intelligence community and ordered that it be scrubbed again.
This still wasn't enough scrubbing top get the facts straight and so some of the misinformation still persists. The NewsTimes provides one of the many arguments to support Murtha's plan to require fully trained and EQUIPPED American soldiers before they can be deployed in theater:
News Times Live Editorial:
"Almost four years later, the armor problems remain. It's not a matter of money; it's a matter of planning.
This week, the Pentagon admitted that there is a shortage of armor to protect troops involved in the president's so-called 'surge' that will add more than 20,000 American military personnel to the Iraq war.
The president spent part of Wednesday's news conference alleging that Iran is supplying new deadly weapons to Iraqi insurgents. But what is he doing to require that American troops have the armor they need to protect themselves against these new weapons?
Known as 'explosively formed penetrators,' these weapons are now inflicting 70 percent of the American casualties in Iraq."
Yes the armor problems still remain, but so does the misinformation campaign that the lying Bush administartion intended to seed in the news. There are two major problems with the "evidence" supplied by the military and the Bush administration.
1. About 170 out of the over 3000 American deaths are POSSIBLY attributable to the Iranian supported Shia militias. Why? Because that is the total number killed by all shite in that time. A drop in the bucket. And certainly not all of the US forces killed by Shia insurgents are not all linked to Iran. A drop in the bucket. The vast MAJORITYof the IED's and other weapons used to kill Americans are planted or used by the Sunnis. A group that Iran does not support. However, Saudi Arabia sends truckloads full of money to the Sunnis is Iraq, the Sunnis that are largely responsible for the most deaths and injuries of American soldiers in Iraq. I don't think the Sunnis are buying cakes and cookies with that Saudi money.
2. Some of the weapons that the military showed as evidence of being supplied by Iran had markings written in English. Iranians mark weapons they manufacture in Farsi, although, Pakistan manufactures the same/similar weapons and marks them in English. Other weapons, like EFPs, that are purported to be too sophisticated to have been made by the Shia or the Sunnis, and therefore "must be coming from Iran", are similar to weapons that many other groups like Hezbollah and the IRA have made in the past, according to Middle East expert Juan Cole. (Scroll down, click on the Juan Cole video)
The Danbury NewsTimes bit on the EFPs lie, and blaming Iran. As noble as the real thrust of the Editorial may be, it is still perpetuating Bush propaganda.
The evidence clearly points to countries that are known supporters and financiers of the Sunnis (IE: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.) and/or just the easy spreading of information on typically used weapons amongst terrorism groups everywhere. And just whose name pops up to reenforce this manipulation of inteligence?
U.S. military commanders in Iraq have shown members of Congress explosive devices that bear Iranian markings as evidence Tehran is supplying Iraqi militants with bombs, a senior U.S. government official said Saturday.
One of the lawmakers, independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, said he has seen some of the evidence, though he would not be specific. “I’m convinced from what I’ve seen that the Iranians are supplying and are giving assistance to the people in Iraq who are killing American soldiers,” said Lieberman, who was attending an international security conference in Munich.
Republican Neocon extremist and propagandist Joe Lieberman. And pushing a lie that was already laid to rest over year ago:
Against the inference that this all comes from Iran is the concept that Iraqis themselves would be capable of copying a design and therefore do not need to get bombs from Iran.
And there have been a number of news reports over the last year expressing scepticism, even among military personnel, about the link to Iran.
The Washington Post reported last October that British troops in the south doubted the claim.
A year ago, the London Times said that British officers in Basra had stopped making any such claim, saying only that the technology matched bomb-making found elsewhere in the Middle East, including Lebanon and Syria.
While reporters and news agencies across the country are starting to catch whiffs of Bush Neocon propaganda, and pointing out some of the stinkers, they are still missing some of the really BIG lies. And most of them relate to the Drumbeat for War with Iran that is just a repeat of Iraq lies all over again:
Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, diplomatic sources in Vienna said today. The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.
That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran and raises the possibility that the US could resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.
I'm just waiting for the fictitious mushroom clouds to start to reappear...
Obviously, there is good reason to doubt the veracity of the ABC reports of Iranian ties to a Sunni group that is well known to be their enemy. The interesting spin here is this little quote from the ABC junk:
"These clearly have the hallmarks of the Iranian Revolution Guards' Quds force," said Jones.
The coalition diplomatic message says the demolition charges "contained the same fake U.S. markings found on explosives recovered from insurgents operating in the Baghdad area."
Now they are saying that what used to prove that it more likely came from Pakistan (markings on the weapons English), is just a trick by the Iranian Revolution Guards. But please ignore the fact that Helmand province is right along Pakistan's border, not Iran's border, and most certainly ignore evidence like this from
StevenD at the Booman Tribune:
Here's where it gets confusing for me. One day the top US general in Afghanistan says one thing about Iran supplying their former enemy, the Taliban with weapons ...
No Proof Iran Supplying Weapons to Taliban, US General Says By Katherine Poythress
CNSNews.com Correspondent
June 06, 2007
... [General Dan] McNeill, the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), spoke live from Afghanistan at a Pentagon briefing Tuesday. He said it is not uncommon in Afghanistan to encounter weapons that originate in other countries. However, "I haven't seen conclusive evidence there's anything in the way of formal sanctioning by the Iranian government to provide weapons to the Taliban," he said.
Mortar rounds of Iranian origin were found in one of the convoys, and plastic explosives similar to the U.S.-made C-4 were uncovered in the other. "Beyond that, there's not much significant to report on these two convoys," McNeill said.
... and President Karzai is, like all buddy-buddy with Teheran.
snip
Why doesn't the President of Afghanistan and the senior American general in that country simply support the administration's line that Iran is arming it's former enemy the Taliban? An enemy, by the way, Iranian politicians claimed to have helped the US military depose back in 2001:
Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards fought alongside and advised the Afghan rebels who helped U.S. forces topple Afghanistan's Taliban regime in the months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the guards' former leader says. In an interview by e-mail, Mohsen Rezaie, a candidate in Iran's presidential elections next week, says the United States has not given Iran enough credit. He says Iran played an "important role in the overthrow of the Taliban" in 2001 ...
Current and former U.S. troops and officials confirm Iranians were present with the Northern Alliance as U.S. forces organized the rebels in 2001. ...
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman says he has "no knowledge of (Iranian) assistance." The CIA refused to comment.
Former CIA Afghan team leader Gary Schroen says there were two Iranian guard colonels attached to a Northern Alliance commander, Bismullah Khan, outside Kabul when U.S. Special Forces arrived in September 2001.
Makes you wonder how valid is this "evidence" of Iran's clear involvement with the Taliban when our own top general in the area refuses to confirm it. And our own man in Afghanistan says Iran is his country's BFF. And when past efforts to show Iran is a primary supplier of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq didn't exactly pan out. Not that Bush and the Pentagon would ever lie to us about the danger Iran poses to America -- would they?
The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.
Propaganda and disinformation? Things that make you go -- Hmmmm. Well, so to speak, that is.
Hmmmmm. I'm thinkin' about it. I'm thinkin' it is all more propaganda aimed at us to stir up a war that would never happen under a more ethical administration.
