What will Bush say about this LA Times report? “Sunni extremists from Saudi Arabia make up half the foreign fighters in Iraq, many suicide bombers, a U.S. official says.”
Most estimates of the foreign insurgents in Iraq that I have read from the military put their numbers at 2% to 4% of the total insurgency. We'll take the high number as the example here and assume that it is 4%.
We now learn that half of them are from Saudi Arabia. Take away 2%... Which leaves us with 2% of the insurgents that are from various other countries. Just think about how little influence Iran has in Iraq. It has been proven time and time again that the supposed "arms links" are completely bogus. (You know? The propaganda arms connections that Joe neocon Lieberman is always screeching about...) And now that we are learning that half of the foreign insurgents are from Saudi Arabia, Joe's answer is to bomb Iran? Forgive me if I laugh in your face.
Bear in mind that most of the 911 hijackers were Saudies, and most of the money going into Iraq to fund the insurgency traces back to... You guessed it! Saudi Arabia. And now, half of the foreign insurgents are from Saudi Arabia too.
And the neocon wetdream is to bomb Iran?
Recently the criminally warmongering idiotocracy in Washington has even tried to say that Iran was behind the kidnapping of some American soldiers. When the investigation was finished all that was proven was that it was Iraqi policemen and insurgents that had taken part in and planned that insurgent operation. In otherwords, some people were flat out lying to the American people.
Remember back in January when Iraqis made a brazen attack on a U.S. base in Karbala and they killed and kidnapped U.S. soldiers? Remember how the military blamed it on Iranian agents and financiers? Well...forget it.
According to a U.S. Army investigation, the Iraqi Police assisted a brazen January assault on U.S. troops in the southern city of Karbala -- an attack that a U.S. military spokesman tied to Iranian operatives earlier this month.
USA Today obtained a copy of the Army's February 27 report. The report found that the Karbala policemen exploited "a level of trust" that U.S. commanders placed with them to provide security for a provincial headquarters where a contingent of soldiers were stationed. In the assault, one of the most sophisticated on U.S. troops to date, gunmen passed themselves off as part of a U.S. security team and entered the compound past police checkpoints, eventually killing five soldiers.
USA Today reports that in advance of the attack, Iraqi police abandoned their stations, as did Iraqi civilian employees of the compound's PX. The gunmen exhibited signs of knowing how U.S. forces would defend themselves under attack, and used that apparent knowledge to pin down and abduct soldiers and officers.
I guess that makes these people look kind of foolish. It's always amusing when a bit of the military's psychological operations is exposed for the baloney that it is. I hope Joe Lieberman doesn't cry. This news gives the lie to Lieberman's recent opinion piece:
According to Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, the Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members.
Gen. Bergner also revealed that the Quds Force -- a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps whose mission is to finance, arm and equip foreign Islamist terrorist movements -- has taken groups of up to 60 Iraqi insurgents at a time and brought them to three camps near Tehran, where they have received instruction in the use of mortars, rockets, improvised explosive devices and other deadly tools of guerrilla warfare that they use against our troops. Iran has also funded its Iraqi proxies generously, to the tune of $3 million a month.
Based on the interrogation of captured extremist leaders -- including a 24-year veteran of Hezbollah, apparently dispatched to Iraq by his patrons in Tehran -- Gen. Bergner also reported on Monday that the U.S. military has concluded that "the senior leadership" in Iran is aware of these terrorist activities. He said it is "hard to imagine" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- Iran's supreme leader -- does not know of them.
Except it turns out that that '24-year veteran of Hezbollah' was Gen. Bergner's source for the Karbala attack. Bergner was either lying through his teeth, duped, or 100% wrong. Pity the fools that listen to a word the neo-cons say
Just look at the evidence of the propaganda that the bush criminals are illegally tossing at you in a steady stream of BS:
Austrian Rifles via Iran?: Another Crock
An extremely well-informed observer sent me this comment on the story that Iran is sending high-powered Austrian rifles to Iraqi Shiites. Like the whole USG story about Iran supplying deadly weapons to dangerous Shiite militias, this one turns out to be riddled with falsehoods.The original article about Austrian rifles in Iraq appeared in the Daily Telegraph and is full of inconsistencies. For instance they say that the US found 100 of these rifles in Iraq and 170 American and Coalition troops have been killed by that weapon.
As far as I know 170 is the total of US and Coalition troops killed by Shiite militias; total combat casualties are about 3000! The vast majority has been killed by IEDs and other explosives. The article bases its accusations on a US display of weaponry designed to prove that Iran has been supplying Shia insurgents in Iraq, but there is no single line about the Austrian rifles. (Juan Cole)
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. (DLiNM)
Perpetuating the PowerPoint LiesAny and all of these lies and propaganda always seem to find a way out of Joe Lieberman's big gaping piehole at some time or another. Either Joe neocon Lieberman is taking part in a criminal act of spreading propaganda to be used against Americans OR he is the dumbest fuck in American politics that is being duped again and again by his criminal bush pals.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:
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 EQUIPED American soldiers before they can be deployed in theater: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.
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. 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?Republican Neocon extremist and propagandist Joe Lieberman. And pushing a lie that was already laid to rest over year ago: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.
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...
(DLiNM)
Now, I have never underestimated Joe LIEberman's ability to lie, nor have I ever thought him to be particularly stupid, but allowing him the benefit of the doubt here I will ask him to clarify:
Which are you Joe? Dumb as fuck OR a criminal?
Not that I will necessarily believe your answer either way. But the simple fact remains that the evidence is piling up in the wake of your disastrous lies and propaganda actions. And we will make sure that you are held responsible for them.
