-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 11, 2007 11:11:43 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: It'd Be "Deja Vu" If It Weren't for the Public's Short
Attention Span, Poor Long Term Memory
U.S. MILITARY SAYS IRAN TRAINING IRAQI BOMB-MAKERS
By Lauren Frayer
Associated Press, April 11, 2007
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070411/
NEWS07/70411006/1009
BAGHDAD — Iran has been training Iraqi fighters in the assembly of
deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs, the U.S. military spokesman
said Wednesday.
EFPs or explosively formed penetrators, hurl a molten, fist-sized
copper slug capable of piercing armored vehicles.
“We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into
this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for
people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them,” Maj.
Gen. William Caldwell said at a weekly briefing. “We know that
training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees’
debriefs.”
In January, U.S. officials said at least 170 U.S. soldiers had been
killed by EFPs.
Caldwell also said the U.S. military had evidence that Iranian
intelligence agents were active in Iraq in funding, training and
arming Shi'ite militia fighters.
“We also know that training still is being conducted in Iran for
insurgent elements from Iraq. We know that as recent as last week
from debriefing personnel,” he said.
“The do receive training on how to assemble and employ EFPs,”
Caldwell said, adding that fighters also were trained in how to
carry out complex attacks that used explosives followed by assaults
with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.
“There has been training on specialized weapons that are used here
in Iraq. And then we do know they receive also training on general
tactics in terms of how to take and employ and work what we call a
more complex kind of attack where we see multiple types of
engagements being used from an explosion to small arms fire to
being done in multiple places,” Caldwell said.
The general would not say specifically which arm of the Iranian
government was doing the training but called the trainers
surrogates of Iran’s intelligence agency.
Caldwell opened the briefing by showing photographs of what he said
were Iranian-made mortar rounds, RPG rounds and rockets that were
found in Iraq.
=========
BUSH DECLARES IRAN’S ARMS ROLE IN IRAQ IS CERTAIN
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg And Marc Santora
New York Times, February 15, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — President Bush said Wednesday that he was
certain that factions within the Iranian government had supplied
Shiite militants in Iraq with deadly roadside bombs that had killed
American troops. But he said he did not know whether Iran’s highest
officials had directed the attacks.
Mr. Bush’s remarks amounted to his most specific accusation to date
that Iran was undermining security in Iraq. They appeared to be
part of a concerted effort by the White House to present a clearer,
more direct case that Iran was supplying the potent weapons — and
to push back against criticism that the intelligence used in
reaching the conclusions was not credible.
Speaking at a news conference in the East Room of the White House,
Mr. Bush dismissed as “preposterous” the contention by some
skeptics that the United States was drawing unwarranted conclusions
about Iran’s role. He publicly endorsed assertions that had until
now been presented only by anonymous military and intelligence
officials, who have said that an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force has provided
Shiite militias in Iraq with the sophisticated weapons that have
been responsible for killing at least 170 American soldiers and
wounding more than 600.
“I can say with certainty that the Quds Force, a part of the
Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated I.E.D.’s that
have harmed our troops,” Mr. Bush said, using the abbreviation for
improvised explosive device. “And I’d like to repeat, I do not know
whether or not the Quds Force was ordered from the top echelons of
the government. But my point is, what’s worse, them ordering it and
it happening, or them not ordering it and its happening?”
The House of Representatives is debating a resolution disapproving
of Mr. Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops to
Iraq. And so Mr. Bush used his appearance to defend that decision
as necessary in the face of deteriorating security in Baghdad.
Asked about a possible American response to Iranian interference,
he said, “We will continue to protect our troops.” With skeptics
asking why the intelligence about Iran’s meddling is coming to
light now, a number of possibilities have been raised, including
the increase in attacks and American casualties in recent months.
American intelligence officials have said they think that top
leaders in Iran must have approved of the attacks on the American
forces, in part because the Quds Force has historically reported to
the country’s top religious leaders. But aides to Mr. Bush, mindful
of the criticism about its use of intelligence before the Iraq war,
said the White House wanted to be careful not to make that kind of
accusation without hard proof.
As Mr. Bush discussed Iran in Washington, the chief American
military spokesman in Baghdad provided a more detailed, on-the-
record account of how the administration believed the weapons,
particularly lethal explosive devices known as explosively formed
penetrators, or E.F.P.’s, got to Iraq. The spokesman, Maj. Gen.
William B. Caldwell IV, was also careful not to link the actions of
the Quds Force directly to Iran’s top leaders. He said American
assertions about a link between the weapons and the force were
based on information obtained from people, including Iranians,
detained in Iraq in the past 60 days.
“They in fact have told us that the Quds Force provides support to
extremist groups here in Iraq in the forms of both money and
weaponry,” General Caldwell said. He added: “They have talked about
how there are extremist elements that are given this material in
Iran and then it is smuggled into Iraq. We have in fact stopped
some at the border and discovered it there, coming from Iran into
Iraq.”
The coordinated messages out of Baghdad and Washington were an
effort by the White House to tamp down reports of divisions within
the American government about who in Iran should be held
responsible for the weapons shipments. A senior Defense analyst
said at a briefing in Baghdad over the weekend that the effort was
being directed “from the highest levels of the Iranian government.”
But Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
offered a contradictory account this week, telling The Associated
Press that while some bomb materials were made in Iran, “that does
not translate that the Iranian government, per se, for sure, is
directly involved in doing this.”
At Wednesday’s news conference, Mr. Bush suggested that it did not
matter whether senior leaders were involved. “What matters is, is
that we’re responding,” Mr. Bush said. He said that if the United
States found either networks or individuals “who are moving these
devices into Iraq, we will deal with them.”
Some experts said the question of Iran’s responsibility remained
important. “There’s a big difference between saying that there is a
rogue element doing things and then asking the Iranian government
to rein it in, as opposed to saying this is a calculated deliberate
strategy of the Iranian government,” said Vali Nasr, a Middle East
scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That has very
different implications in terms of how do you hold Iran culpable.”
The administration’s claims about Iran have been met with intense
skepticism, from Democrats in Congress and from experts like David
Kay, who led the search for illicit weapons in Iraq. Some critics
have said the White House is using Iran as a scapegoat for its
problems in Iraq, and some have suggested that the administration,
which has been trying to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear
program, is laying the foundation for another war.
On Wednesday, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for
president, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, took to the
Senate floor to call on Mr. Bush to seek authorization for any
military action against Iran. “We cannot and we must not allow
recent history to repeat itself,” she said.
Mr. Bush has said that he has no intention of invading Iran and
that any suggestion that he was trying to provoke Iran “is just a
wrong way to characterize the commander in chief’s decision to do
what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm’s way.” But
experts say that the ratcheting up of accusations could provoke a
confrontation. Gary Sick, an expert on Iran at Columbia University,
said there was a “danger of accidental war.” He said, “If anything
goes wrong, if something happens, there’s an unexplained explosion
and we kidnap an Iranian, and the Iranians respond to that somehow,
this could get out of control.”
Mr. Bush has also refused to meet with Iran’s leaders, and he said
Wednesday that he did not believe that it would be an effective way
of persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear goals. “This is
a world in which people say, ‘Meet! Sit down and meet!’ ” he said.
“And my answer is, if it yields results, that’s what I’m interested
in.”
Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington, and Marc Santora from
Baghdad.
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