smilingassassin

Or maybe they want to get the intel right this time?

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Facts to a liberal is like Kryptonite to Superman.

-- Larry Elder

T_igger_cs_30

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FEAR NAUGHT

I don't work here ...I am an analyst!

Shek

More rumor for you Tigger

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"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

smilingassassin

Well the "leaks" thus far are quite intriguing.....

T_igger_cs_30

Ray

And while people fight, this is what happens in the background!

Austrian Weapons in Iraq: A Smoking Gun from the Alps - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

wabpilot

Count me as a skeptic on this so called evidence. Look at picture six (6) the round says "81MM HE 3-2006". Look at picture nine (9) the RPG says "LOT: 5-31-2006". Why would Iranian manufactured munitions use English characters? Why use the Christian year? Iran uses a different year and Farsi uses different characters than English. Further, 5-31-2006 is an American civilian way to write the date. Most of the rest of the world, and the US military would use 31-5-2006. As I said above, Muslims use a different year too.

I admit that the Bush administration has used up all its reserve of credibility with me. So, I may just not trust them. But, I need a lot more proof than this before I am willing to blame Iran for anything.

Bluesman

Okay, you're a skeptic. But Iran has been arming 'their' Iraqis almost from the beginning. The EFPs that have been killing so many of our troops are coming from Iran with the full knowledge of the government. That is a FACT.

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"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
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TheChosenOne

I've been down range for 11 months now. Trust me when I say that EFP's, mortars, and rockets have all been supplied from Iran. This information has been obtained from HVT's( High value targets) that have been caputred from not just our unit but from others. What I still have yet to come to a conclusion on, is to what degree the Iranian government is behind it. I guess I haven't seen information myself that leads to them. But if I were a betting man, someone in the Iranian government is behind it. Remember, plausibile denibility could be a factor on the parts of the Iranian leadership.

wabpilot

Iran is capable of some really stupid ideas. But, I find it hard to believe they are going waste their money arming Shias when we overthrew the Sunni dominated government and put in place a Shia dominated one. Seems like we did Iran's dirty work for them. Now if the allegation was Syria is arming Baathists and Sunnis, that would be reasonable. If the allegation was Saudi Arabia was arming the Sunnis that would be reasonable. But Iran? Bottom line, the briefing and photos do not rise to the level of proof of any fact.

wabpilot

Once we disbanded the Iraqi army lots of mortars, mortar rounds, AKs and rockets got loose. I have trouble believing that NONE of those were ever used against our forces.

Plausible deniability could very well explain the marks. But, that does not then lead to proof that Iran is supplying the insurgency, much less controlling it. Iran may be the source. But, we have a long way to go in proving that.

xerxes

Mr Wabpilot ... the moment it became know that US will invade Iraq and from the moment Saddam writing was on the wall, Iran started a massive campaign to prepare Iraq at its battleground should US turn its cross-hair on Iran, however many of Shia mercenaries groups that Iran helped also US a lot in their bid to overthrow the bathist. In Iraq, there are Shia groups that are heavilly affiliated with Iran and some of those are used both by Iran and US.
I think you are mistaken on the fact that iran is not arming Shia. Iran is indeed arming certain groups of Shia that are loyal to its ideology ... and they are being used as a trump card should US decides to attack Iran. today there is only teasing ...

however, certain members on this board for some funny reason feel linking Iran to the Sunni insurrgency. I believe that they are WRONG, 100 percent. Iran will not create a wild animal that it cannot tame once US has left Iraq. To put it simply ,,, US presence is temporary in Iraq, but Iran knows that it will have deal with those Persian-hating Sunni the moment US withdraws .... but again for some reason people seem to like to link Iran to the Insurgency, the sameway they linked Iraq to Al-Qaida, in 2003. and for some reason the same people avoid all question regarding the Sunni kingdoms ... infact OOE is the only person on this board who came close to entertain the idea that Saudi Arabia might be financing them ....

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TheChosenOne

wabpilot,

You are 100% correct. I didn't realize I had posted that ALL of the weaponary was coming from Iran. I needed to proof read that one before posting. I had meant to say that some of it was and your point is well taken.

The bottomline, weapons are flowing from Iran. Who's responsible remains to be the question that needs answering. I have yet to see 'strong' evidence that points directly to the Iranian leadership but obtaining 'strong' evidence I feel is rather tricky. Beyond any doubts, I at least believe Iranian leadership is involved to a degree.

Bluesman

Point #1: Arming the Shias is NOT a stupid idea, nor a waste of money, from the Iranians' point-of-view. That's how you buy influence in the region; that's how you insert yourself into the affairs of a neighboring state, and co-opt what might have otherwise been a strictly Arabist/nationalist strain on Shiism. It has worked, too: the Mahdi Army and the Qods Force are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Tehran.

Point #2: That Shia-dominated government is no friend of Iran's. We didn't do Iran's dirty work for 'em; we just put in place an American'guaranteed democracy that, if not killed in it's crib, will be an existential threat to the Ayatollahs. It's one of the reasons we invaded in the first place. The Iranians got the point; you seem to have missed it.

Point #3: You are arguing a conspiracy theory that deserves no respect at all. Please lay out the implications you're making re: the US is faking-up bogus evidence and intel (not merely mistaken; this requires an active effort to decieve). That is total nonsense, as any rational observer will be able to discren with a single moment of logical thought.

Bluesman

I am not being pedantic when I post this, because it's key to a full understanding, so bear with me.

TheChosenOne, you were correct when you wrote that quote above. It's true: all of those items HAVE been supplied by Iran.

What would've been incorrect would be if you'd said, 'Trust me when I say that ALL EFP's, mortars, and rockets have been supplied from Iran.'

That's what wabpilot mis-read it as.

No, he wasn't.

You didn't post that. But it seems you both read it that way later.

No, you didn't. We all need to read more carefully, though.

Well, some of each of those items ARE coming from Iran, so you were correct in the first place. And wabpilot's point was incorrect.

Absolutely correct, regardless of who may believe it or not.

It's been authoritatively answered already.

Well, Iranian government employees are presumably not running a country-wide rogue operation that is immune from a supposedly completely ineffectual police state that has yet to punish those elements that reach all the way up into the ruling heirarchy, so I'm going to go ahead and make the analytical leap that Tehran knows about and supports to the hilt everything that's going on.

To the LAST degree; this is state policy, not some wild-hare black op that some zealous Revolutionary Guard guys got up to.