Shout outs to boilerman10 and idredit for the information that sparked this story.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Utter crap. Scoffed at by another Brit newspaper. Patrick Cockburn's

TARGET:TEHRAN - The Independent, UK

"The allegations against Iran are similar in tone and credibility to those made four years ago by the US government about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of 2003.

The allegations by senior but unnamed US officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The US has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.

The US stance on the military capabilities of Iraqis today is the exact opposite of its position in four years ago. Then President Bush and Tony Blair claimed that Iraqis were technically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and to be close to producing a nuclear device. Washington is now saying that Iraqis are too backward to produce an effective roadside bomb and must seek Iranian help....

It is likely that Shia militias have received weapons and money from Iran and possible that the Sunni insurgents have received some aid. But most Iraqi men possess weapons. Many millions of them received military training under Saddam Hussein. His well-supplied arsenals were all looted after his fall. No specialist on Iraq believes that Iran has ever been a serious promoter of the Sunni insurgency.

The evidence against Iran is even more insubstantial than the faked or mistaken evidence for Iraqi WMDs disseminated by the US and Britain in 2002 and 2003. The allegations appear to be full of exaggerations. Few Abrams tanks have been destroyed. It implies the Shias have been at war with the US while in fact they are controlled by parties which make up the Iraqi government.

(emphasis added)

US has no moral authority.

Well, "You can't vote for war and disown the results"

They just don't even care enough to make a believable case for what they're about to do next.

"Little people are very stuff-intensive."

This could be a smoking gun that prevents a war, but only if it is read beyond this site. How does this information get disseminated?

Michaela

Several years ago, there was a report (I can't remember which network) which had a package discussing the improvised explosive devices and how they were now more sophisticated and FROM SYRIA. These were the new "shaped charges" that were in use in the theater.

The problem was, these SYRIAN devices had ALL ENGLISH labels. No other language was printed on the device.

I tried to find that image again, but no luck.

This mortar story is not the first like it.

My husband is a pretty avid military historian, and he's laughing and crying at the same time! Now, of course, there's no reason to believe this isn't black market munitions (it very likely is) and that Iranian factions like Hezbollah aren't smuggling them in. But that's not the Iranian government, as a whole--or at least, correlation does not imply causation.

The best way to insure that Iran (along with Russia and China) are impossible to deal with for a decade or more is to push this issue beyond talking and simply lob a few bombs at them.

A very high level, vocal and well publicized meeting of rational voices on all sides needs to occur now. If that's not the government, then it may have to be others. I fantasize that voices like Shinin Ebadi, along with real American moderates like Feingold, perhaps Richardson, Carter...might meet in Jordan or Qatar and actually talk together.

Michaela

Back when Reagan aided the Mujahaddin in Afghanistan (yes, those Islamist extremists) we gave them guns, bombs and other armaments and set up training camps to make sure they used them effectively. But we didn't give them American weapons, no siree, Bob! The CIA scoured the various black markets for Chinese and other weapons so that we would have deniability - even though what we were doing was no secret to the Soviets (for further deniability we did all this through the near-autonomous Pakistani intelligence service). Two points: if the weapons were Iranian it doesn't mean they were sourced from the Iranian government as anyone could buy them pretty much anywhere, and if the Iranian government really did want to supply arms to Iraquis they sure as hell wouldn't give them Iranian arms as they can buy from black markets the same way as we did.

Steve coll's Ghost Wars is a fascinating history of our involvement in Russia's blunder in Afghanistan. Iraq could well bring down the US the same way Afghanistan did the Soviet Union.

The evidence doesn't have to make sense, all they care about is convincing their hardcore base so they have supporting voices to shout down opposition.  And the media seems to be buying it too, so they obviously have a vested interest in profiting from another war.

What I don't get is how Cheney and company can think this is a good idea.  They do realize that the Iraqi government we're propping up is going to support Iran in this conflict, right?  Violence in Iraq is going to skyrocket after they do this, I guess they're counting on that spike in violence to prove their point that Iranians are heavily involved there already.  I think it will only serve to further turn a disaster-averse public against the losers (our "leaders") who spark the new violence.  

CNN is running a crawl saying this is a "deliberate move by an elite group under the direct control of the Supreme leader. That's an enormous jump from finding weapons that were bought and then supplied to the Shi'a by some faction.

This must stop. Who can stop it?

Michaela

Tehran denies aiding Iraqi militants

Iran today hit back at US accusations that it was behind the roadside bombs that have become the deadliest weapons against American troops in Iraq.

One day after the US went public with what it said was evidence of Iranian complicity at the highest level with insurgent attacks on American forces, Iran's foreign ministry dismissed the charges.

"Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence," said the foreign ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, "Such charges are unacceptable."

US military officials in Baghdad yesterday accused the Iranian leadership of arming Shia militants in Iraq with the sophisticated bombs that have killed more than 170 American soldiers.

Mr Hosseini said the US was "designing artificial events" to justify its accusations.

War With Iran.

It's a done deal.  It's just a matter of when.

Krugman tells us how it will play out.  Read his column, print it out and save it.  Or better yet, put it up on your cubicle wall for all the Republicans in your office to read.  It will read like a prophecy when the time comes.

So the administration has always had it in for the Iranian regime. Now, let's do an O. J. Simpson: if you were determined to start a war with Iran, how would you do it?

First, you'd set up a special intelligence unit to cook up rationales for war. . . . Next, you'd go for a repeat of the highly successful strategy by which scare stories about the Iraqi threat were disseminated to the public.
This time, however, the assertions wouldn't be about W.M.D.; they'd be that Iranian actions are endangering U.S. forces in Iraq. Why? Because there's no way Congress will approve another war resolution. But if you can claim that Iran is doing evil in Iraq, you can assert that you don't need authorization to attack -- that Congress has already empowered the administration to do whatever is necessary to stabilize Iraq. And by the time the lawyers are finished arguing -- well, the war would be in full swing.

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity"

A short history of the EDF's?  From 2005,

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001881.html

I started chuckling as soon as I saw the lousy power point graphics. Even the propaganda of this administration is incompetent.  Buffoonery.

Stop taking my pills.

.

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."