ABC News is reporting that there is clear evidence that the Iranian government is supplying weapons and explosives to the Taliban. The shipments also contain parts for producing roadside EFPs. And the evidence is coming from NATO.
NATO officials say they have caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces, in what the officials say is a dramatic escalation of Iran's proxy war against the United States and Great Britain.
"It is inconceivable that it is anyone other than the Iranian government that's doing it," said former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stopped short earlier this week of blaming Iran, saying the U.S. did not have evidence "of the involvement of the Iranian government in support of the Taliban."
But an analysis by a senior coalition official, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, concludes there is clear evidence of Iran's involvement.
"This is part of a considered policy," says the analysis, "rather than the result of low-level corruption and weapons smuggling."
Iran and the Taliban had been fierce enemies when the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, and their apparent collaboration came as a surprise to some in the intelligence community.
"I think their goal is to make it very clear that Iran has the capability to make life worse for the United States on a variety of fronts," said Seth Jones of the Rand Institute, "even if they have to do some business with a group that has historically been their enemy."
The coalition analysis says munitions recovered in two Iranian convoys, on April 11 and May 3, had "clear indications that they originated in Iran. Some were identical to Iranian supplied goods previously discovered in Iraq."
The entire Middle East will destabilize unless we in the West get our collective act together and face Iran down. I don't know if there is any time left at this point, but if something is not done we are looking at a general war.
Hi Gaius,
Notice that the US is a member of NATO and that the Brits say it is just private smuggling…and that this is days old news being recycled by un-provenanced anonymous sources. Newsweek reported on Sunday how the Cheney camp is eagerly pursuing this thread with little or no support from anyone else, and leaking stories about it whenever they can too.
My guess – this leak came direct from Cheney’s office.
Regards, C
Cernig, seriously, do you check under the bed at night to make sure Cheney isn’t waiting for you under there?
Apparently, the administration is simultaneously a)the most evil, spectacularly competent group to ever hold power in America and b) the most spectacularly incompetent group to ever hold power in America.
Stunning reasoning, really.
They aren’t all that stunningly competent, since the spin here on days old faux-news is so transparent. How do you explain the Brit view? Newsweek on Sunday:
“British officials who asked for anonymity because of the nature of their work emphasize that they lack hard evidence linking the shipments to the Revolutionary Guards, and that the weapons could just as easily have been bought on the black market in Iran.”
Or Karzai yesterday?
“There is no reason for Iran to aid the Taliban,” Karzai said. “It is in the interests of our brothers in Iran” to support the development of a more stable and prosperous Afghanistan.”
Or for that matter, that these anonymous officials “know” that the weapons in Iraq are Iranian because they bear Iranian markings (in English, usually) but “know” the C-4 in Afhganistan is Iranian because it bears fake US markings? So why not put fake markings on the other weapons, if this is all supposed to be some great and covert plot orchestrated by the Iranian leadership (rather than the usual, run of the mill, middle-eastern profiteering from private arms-dealing enterprise)?
Regards, C
Thanks a lot Gaius,
Got some spaghetti up my nose due to the Cheney under the bed!!!!
mental picture.
I can readily envision Cernig under the covers with a flashlight, and that is worth the disgusting regimen of naso-pastal dislodgement.
Cernig, So now Richard Clark is a tool of the Cheneybushaliburtonaxis?
Seriously?
Cernig,
I don’t think that means what you say it means. Sounds more like a diplomatic appeal.
And when did ABC news become a shill for Chimpy McBusHitler, the world’s dumbest dictator?
Hi Gaius,
You’re contructing strawmwn and I suspect you know it.
Richard Clarke, a man the Right has often argued is way wrong on just about everything, disagrees with the Brits that it could well all fall to good old-fashioned black market capitalism. On no actual evidence, just his opinion. So this time you’re sure he’s right?
I’m not a Dem and even if I were I would still be free to say I think he’s wrong. I do. That doesn’t mean I think he’s a Cheney stooge, just that he’s bought the spin.
Ditto the strawman further up. How many of your rightwing colleagues check under the bed at night for Mullahs?
Many of them have written about Iranian generals in Iraq to plan attacks – and those same generals had appointments with Maliki, Talibani, the Iraqi NSA and the head of the Sunni coalition during their visit. Some, like the NY Post, have even gone as far as saying the whole Iraqi govt. is in hock to Iran and part of their covert plans.
Yet the same masterminds who can mount such a covert takeover of another nation, while it is occupied by their enemy, can’t get it together to make sure serial numbers and markings on weapons don’t give them away?
I could rephrase your comment.
“Apparently, the the Iranians are simultaneously a)the most evil, spectacularly competent group to ever hold power in the middle east and b) the most spectacularly incompetent group to ever hold power in the middle east.
Stunning reasoning, really.”
See how that would work?
For myself, I feel that Occam’s razor, applied to the proven evidence, gives a sufficient explanation of some rogue types in the Quods force and elsewhere who are lining their own pockets in the very lucrative Mid-East arms market at the expense of their own nation’s coffers, inventory and safety.
Regards, C
Gauis,
A bit more – I understand that you have to play to the peanut gallery (e.g. Uncle Pinky) lest you lose your rep as a no-hold-barred “Snarker At Liberals” (like a Dances With Wolves, only not). Still, you have my email from your comments management system – anytime you’d like to swap emails about real evidence and actual logic then feel free to drop me a line.
I already conduct a couple of such convos with well-known rightwing bloggers far further right and far more snarky in public than you are. In private, however, they tend to be more amenable to actual discussion rather than scoring points.
Regards, C
Cernig, seriously, do you check under the bed at night to make sure Cheney isn’t waiting for you under there?
Gaius, it seems to me that the charge of looking for monsters under the bed is better laid at your doorstep than Cernig’s. Have you forgotten the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Have you forgotten the satellite photos of mobile biological labs that turned out not to be, and smoking guns in the form of mushroom clouds when Iraq did not have any nuclear capacity at all in March 2003?
It seems to me that it’s you who needs to explain your willingness to suspend disbelief again, having been lied to four years ago, and just accept on faith whatever Dick Cheney tells you.
Well, here are two sides talking past each other. I could argue that Iraq retained it’s ability to manufacture WMD, which was well-documented by the Duelfer report, and also had the will, as Saddam made no attempt to realistically convince anyone he had completely disposed of them. I could also point out that the cost of the mobile labs was far higher than needed for their explicit purpose, and that they were, in fact, dual-use components. I could also point out that we have found many sarin-filled artillery shells, which were supposed to have been destroyed long ago.
Now let’s talk about the Iranians. The British sources have “no hard evidence” of Iranian involvement. This certainly seems to be the old 9/10 policing strategy, where evidence had to be trial quality, i.e. nearly irrefutable. I doubt that we will find invoices in the boxes with the Iranian government’s seal on them. Hey, most people think that O.J. was guilty, but he got acquitted. That doesn’t stop reasonable people from assuming that he did it.
And lastly we have the old canard, they hate each other so they couldn’t possibly work together. Right. The Nazis and Soviets hated each other. The British hated the Soviets, as did we. That didn’t stop the Allies from working together for a short-term mutual advantage. The key is mutual advantage. For all that the Iranians supposedly hated the Taliban, it would certainly be to their advantage to keep them in the field against their real enemy, the United States. And please explain how it is to Hamid Karzai’s advantage to antagonize a much stronger neighbor, who has no interest in the democratic society that we are attempting to nurture in Afghanistan.
Chris,
The U.S. did justify invading Iraq because it had “the willingness” or “the ability” to manufacture WMDs. The U.S. justified invading Iraq because the U.S. said Iraq *had* WMDs at that moment, live and ready to go. Iraq had nuclear weapons that could reach the U.S. within 45 minutes of Saddam’s order, we were told. Iraq had active biological weapons.
The mobile labs found after the invasion had nothing to do with biological weapons. They were not suited for making biological weapons. They were not for that purpose at all.
The sarin-filled artillery shells were rusted and old and completely unusable. They dated back to the Persian Gulf War. They had no relation to any weapons capacity that Iraq had in March 2003.
You “doubt that we will find invoices in the boxes with the Iranian government’s seal on them.” The fact is, there is reliable or credible evidence *at all* that Tehran has been arming the Taliban. If you look carefully at that ABC article, Chris — hell, you don’t even *have* to look that carefully; it jumps out at you — you will see that it is almost entirely based on anonymous sources, and it’s all speculation. No one quoted or paraphrased in that article said anything to indicate they have any real evidence of Iran’s involvement. I’m sorry, but “It must be” Iran and “It’s inconceivable that it’s not Iran” do not constitute evidence that it’s Iran. “Senior administration officials say they have evidence” is also not evidence. It’s senior administration officials *saying* they have evidence. After being lied, misled, manipulated, and deceived into a catastrophic war that has destabilized the entire region, I want to see the evidence, or be told where I can find the evidence.
“NATO officials” (aka, probably, U.S. government officials) have NOT caught Iran “red-handed.” That’s a lie. It’s simply untrue. Being caught red-handed means being caught in the act of doing something. Unless U.S. officials actually *saw* Iranian officials unloading weapons from planes and giving them to the Taliban, they were not “caught red-handed.”
And btw — I think O.J. murdered his wife, too. I think O.J. is vile scum, but guess what? The jury decided there was not enough evidence to convict him of having done so, and he was acquitted. So we cannot put him in prison or execute him. That’s the way it goes. You can’t go around invading and bombing one country after another just because you feel like it and are really, really sure they are bad people.
Sigh. Very first line, typo. The U.S. did NOT justify invading Iraq…
The fact is, there is reliable or credible evidence *at all*…
The fact is, there is NO reliable…
Note to self, repeat 100 times: I will proofread before hitting Submit, I will proofread before hitting Submit, I will proofread before hitting Submit…
Dear Gaius,
As your pal Cernig has relegated me to the peanut gallery and kid’s table, would you please pass along my response:
I laughed at an idle image of you whileI was eating spaghetti. This response was engendered by the parental, almost put-upon nature of Gaius’ question to you. It had nothing to do with the merits or lack thereof of your response to the original post. If I hurt your feelings, sorry.
Looking more closely at your arguments I am forced to conclude that you are attempting to discount an ABC news story because:
1. The U.S. is a member of NATO therefore all news from NATO is suspect.
2. The anonymous British sources say they have no incontravertible proof that this is Iranian government driven.
3. It’s old, and uses anonymous sources that are not the anonymous British sources previously cited.
4. Cheney, Cheney, Cheney.
You then bolster your argument by:
1. Saying that the report is “faux-news” meaning either a) it’s a fake or b) it’s not new because Newsweek already reported on it. It’s not clear from your context.
2. Newsweek, the only known news organ to succesfully flush a holy book down a standard toilet, informs us that it is possible that this is not a concerted governmantal action.
3. Karzai points out that the Iranians wouldn’t be acting very neighborly to do this.
4. Why bother fake labels on some weapons that have to cross more than one border, and not on those that only have to cross one?
5. Weapons trading in the Middle East is a wacky business, engaged in by governments as well as private individuals.
Of these I find only the last point particularly compelling, although perhaps not in the way you wish. It would certainly not be the first time that a governmental source acted through private dealers or vice-versa. Back in the 70′s and early 80′s private organisations in Europe would buy the weapons from Chekloslovakia, take possesion in Marseilles and load onto Libyan ships. A bit of a shell game requiring many greased palms, but necesssary in order to get government stores non-military hands. Oftentimes sub-rosa government agencies would use this route through private contractors to keep their hands clean. While my knowledge of the M.E. arms market is woefully inadequate, I see no reason to disbelieve that a similar situation is occurring now.
I’m adopting a wait and see position. It’s a hell of a lot safer than betting on either Newsweek or ABC or, for that matter, Darth Cheney.
1. The U.S. is a member of NATO therefore all news from NATO is suspect.
Oh my god! Talk about a distortion! Do you do that on purpose, Pinky?
Kathy,
“NATO officials†(aka, probably, U.S. government officials) have NOT caught Iran “red-handed.†That’s a lie. It’s simply untrue. Being caught red-handed means being caught in the act of doing something. Unless U.S. officials actually *saw* Iranian officials unloading weapons from planes and giving them to the Taliban, they were not “caught red-handed.â€
I agree, wholeheartedly, with this part of you comment, and the O.J. bit and the bit about the necessity of proofreading.
I disagree or question most of the rest, but lunch is over in ten minutes and I’ve been reading instead of eating. If you’re going to be around this evening it might be fruitful for us to have converse then on the nature of reasonable doubt in court vs. intelligence.
My point about O.J. was just that; he was duly acquitted by a jury of his peers, therefore, legally, he is innocent. Only nobody really thinks that.
The chances of anyone catching the Iranians red-handed doling out shaped charges to the Taliban is exceedingly small. The chances of being able to identify Iran as the source for certain explosives found in Taliban hands is much higher, and in fact, seems to be what is being reported here. Assuming, of course, that it is confirmed.
Just like the Iranian weaponry being funneled into Iraq to use against Americans has been confirmed.
I disagree or question most of the rest, but lunch is over in ten minutes and I’ve been reading instead of eating.
I can identify. Lunch minutes are shorter than work minutes anyway.
If you’re going to be around this evening it might be fruitful for us to have converse then on the nature of reasonable doubt in court vs. intelligence.
Probably not, but I do know the difference between the legal standard of reasonable doubt, and the inevitable inexactness of intelligence. But inexactness is not the same as dishonesty in the way intelligence is selected and used. With Iraq, the desired policy drove the intelligence-seeking, and that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. And the same thing seems to be happening with Iran. It’s not a secret that Dick Cheney dearly wants the U.S. to attack Iran, and it’s a matter of record that he’s been pushing his staff to find the intelligence that would give the U.S. an excuse to do that.
Chris wrote: My point about O.J. was just that; he was duly acquitted by a jury of his peers, therefore, legally, he is innocent. Only nobody really thinks that.
Yes, and *my* point was that if you are going to analogize O.J. to Iran, then you have to follow the analogy to its logical conclusion. The fact that “nobody really thinks that” O.J. is innocent is utterly irrelevant in the sense that you cannot use that awareness to imprison him or execute him, or drop a bomb on his neighborhood, for that matter. If “everyone knows O.J. did it” is analogous to “everyone knows Iran arms the Taliban,” then you have to draw the same conclusion from the second that you do from the first: It’s irrelevant. You cannot start a war against another country based on what “everybody knows.” You need verifiable, solid evidence. And you need to be able to tangibly demonstrate that you have that evidence.
Now I know that, in hard cold reality, the U.S. does not need to supply evidence to a high standard, or to any standard, because the U.S. is the most powerful country in the world 1,000 times over, and can do what ever it wants. Might makes right. Except that it doesn’t.
What if O.J. moved next door to you? Would you still be so sanguine about his guilt? What if he began to tell others that he was after you next? What if you had children to protect?
Might may not make right, but to not use might to protect your family is dumb.
I smell a red herring, and what if arguments don’t impress me. Guess what? O.J. hasn’t moved in next to me. And he isn’t going to. He hasn’t told me he’s after me next, and I don’t have children to protect.
But if he does move in next to me, and if he does threaten to kill me, and if some children come to my house and ask for protection, then I’ll be happy to answer your questions.
Plus, what does O.J. moving next to me have to do with Iran?
Since you are being obtuse (whether purposefully or not) I will spell it out. This is about reasonable levels of threat. The Bush administration decide to invade Iraq because it felt that the threat of leaving Saddam Hussein in power outweighed the possible (and unknown) threats of removing him. This decision making took place at the time that we were still expecting follow-on attacks against the U.S. homeland, and the threat that those attacks would involve weapons with greater killing power than commandeered aircraft. Reasonable people can disagree with the decision, and the process that lead to it. You cannot, however, remove it from its context in good faith. There was a lot more trepidation at the time. Perhaps the fears of mass casualty attacks were unfounded. In hindsight, there is no real way to know, short of capturing and interrogating every terrorist in the world.
Now the threat comes from Iran. The president of Iran has repeatedly threatened to wipe out Israel. He is currently pressing ahead with a nuclear program that even the U.N. admits cannot possibly be for peaceful energy production. This program was started by his predecessor, a so-called moderate. Iran has, since 1979, been vociferously opposed to the United States, and has created a terrorist organization (Hezbollah) to wage proxy war on Israel and U.S. interests. Iranian munitions have been found in Iraq, funneled there for insurgents and Islamist groups to use against U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies. Now Iran is thought to be supplying weaponry to the Taliban, also one of our enemies.
Iran seems quite intent on stating their purpose to inflict harm on us and our interests, and is widening their reach in order to do so. How long should we wait until they have something else to peddle besides shaped IEDs? Should we wait until they explode a nuclear device over Israel? Until they provide a proxy group with one to smuggle into the U.S.? What level of unease about their intentions and designs should we be prepared to tolerate?
I will not have my children growing up in a world where we have to worry about a real chance of a mass casualty attack on U.S. citizens from regimes that I find to be less appealing than ours. I find even a small chance that my kids could be slaughtered by Islamist nutjobs intolerable. That’s the bottom line.
Chris,
The arguments you advance for attacking Iran are largely the same as those the Bush administration and its supporters advanced for attacking Iraq. And as you yourself imply, Iraq was not the threat that Bush purported it to be before the invasion. The U.S. has attacked two countries since 9/11, and in both instances the problems going in were not resolved. In the instance of Iraq, even worse problems were created. Shouldn’t we be a little more careful this time about getting into a third war?
That is my overall point. I want to address your individual points too, though, because every one of them is either incorrect or misleading.
Reasonable people can disagree with the decision, and the process that lead to it. You cannot, however, remove it from its context in good faith. There was a lot more trepidation at the time.
The problem with this argument is that the context itself is not legitimate, and never was. There indeed was a lot of fear after 9/11, but it wasn’t the fear that got us into Iraq. It was the Bush administration’s manipulation of that fear. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that was known in March 2003 as well as it is known now. The decision to invade Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. By now, it is widely known, and a matter of record, that both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, along with a number of other key players, had wanted to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein for years. Moreover, the invasion of Iraq was being actively planned well before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Prior to 9/11, it would have been politically infeasible, if not impossible to carry out those plans. 9/11 gave Bush the opportunity he needed, and he and Cheney milked that opportunity for all it was worth.
Now the threat comes from Iran.
You are doing here exactly what you warned against above: You are removing the threat from the historical and political context. When the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein, the U.S. removed a *huge* block to Iran’s power in the region. Before the invasion, there was no way Iran could have had the kind of influence and power inside Iraq that it has now. WE handed that influence and power to Iran. In their arrogance and sheer ignorance of the political dynamics in the Middle East, Bush and company allowed Iran to become the major power player in the Middle East. What unintended, unexpected disastrous consequences will now flow from a decision to attack Iran?
The decision to invade and occupy Iraq destabilized the entire region, led to a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions, and handed Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups the most magnificent recruiting tool they could have dreamed of having. And now the U.S. is going to start a war with Iran? This is called insanity, Chris.
Iran has, since 1979, been vociferously opposed to the United States,…
Again, you omit the context. Iran’s vociferous opposition to the United States did not start in 1979 out of nothing. There is an historical context, and that context has meaning. In 1953 the C.I.A. installed one of THE most brutal and savage dictatorships of the 20th century after engineering a coup against the democratically elected and very popular president of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. Before 1953, the U.S. enjoyed great popularity in Iran; they loved us, basically, because they saw us in the glow of the post-WWII liberation of Europe. The U.S. was the country that saved Europeans from a murderous regime; the U.S. stood for freedom and democracy over tyranny. That glow ended when the U.S. overthrew Mossadegh, put the Shah in power, and then proceeded to support the Shah’s bloody reign of terror for the next 25 years. Why wouldn’t Iranians hate us after that? That history is a large factor in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
Ahmadinejad’s predecessor WAS a moderate. And Bush and Cheney (mostly Cheney) rejected Iran’s offer (in 2003) of a package of concessions to the U.S. that contained most of what the U.S. now wants from Iran. If Cheney had not done that, Ahmadinejad wouldn’t even be there now (in a political sense, that is). By refusing to talk to moderates, the Bush administration made the rise to power of the extremists inevitable.
How long should we wait until they have something else to peddle besides shaped IEDs? Should we wait until they explode a nuclear device over Israel?
This is almost exactly what Condoleezza Rice said when the Bush administration was hyping a nonexistent threat from Iraq to gain public support for the invasion: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
We know now how legitimate that statement was. (Some of us knew it all along, of course.) And you are proposing to let that happen again?
I will not have my children growing up in a world where we have to worry about a real chance of a mass casualty attack on U.S. citizens from regimes that I find to be less appealing than ours. I find even a small chance that my kids could be slaughtered by Islamist nutjobs intolerable. That’s the bottom line.
Your children are already growing up in that world. Your children, and my child, are already in far greater danger of a mass casualty attack on U.S. citizens — not just from unappealing regimes, but from terrorist groups that are not affiliated with any nation-state — than they were in March 2003, or for that matter, than they were on September 12, 2001. The likelihood of an attack on U.S. soil that’s even worse than 9/11 is exponentially higher now than it was then. And it will be even higher than that after the U.S. starts bombing Iran. You are terrified about your children’s future if the U.S. does not bomb Iran? I am terrified about my daughter’s future if the U.S. *does* bomb Iran. That fear keeps me awake at night.
There is one more point that I feel I must make. The threat of another attack on U.S. soil that would result in mass casualties is very real. But war and mass casualties are already here for Iraqis, and have been since 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran with U.S. help. Since that time, Iraqis have lived with war continuously. My point here is not to imply that the U.S. is responsible for all of that, although we are responsible for a lot of it. My point is that, while war supporters in the U.S. defend preemptive war against one country after another, using the justification that those countries might attack us sometime in the future and kill massive numbers of Americans, massive numbers of Afghans and Iraqis have died — for real.
We don’t know if attacking Iran will or might save American families somewhere down the road. What we DO know is that attacking Iran will kill Iranian families right now, definitely, for sure. Do we have the right to cause the deaths of thousands of Iranians, not because Iran has attacked us, or is on the verge of doing so, but because Iran might attack us in the future, and we just want to be on the safe side?
Response to Kathy, who has probably long since stopped monitoring this thread,
First, apologies. I kind of thought I would be going home but ended up having one of those week/weekends that, at my age, result in bed-rest, heating pads alternated with ice-packs and B.C. headache powders.
Now:
1. The U.S. is a member of NATO therefore all news from NATO is suspect.
Oh my god! Talk about a distortion! Do you do that on purpose, Pinky?
This was not in any way a comment on your earlier comments. It was, rather, a bitey encapsulation of Cernig’s knee-jerk response to Gaius’ post (which indicated that the information was coming from NATO.) The intent, which I may not have dead-panned enough, was to point out that statements such as
Notice that the US is a member of NATO and that the Brits say it is just private smuggling
are not tremendously useful. The U.S. is also a member of the U.N. and exactly what does that buy it when it comes to reports? You can not seriously believe that either NATO or the U.N. colour their findings in the favour of the U.S.?
Now for the part that I wished to discuss:
>The U.S. did justify invading Iraq because it had “the willingness†or “the ability†to manufacture WMDs. The U.S. justified invading Iraq because the U.S. said Iraq *had* WMDs at that moment, live and ready to go. Iraq had nuclear weapons that could reach the U.S. within 45 minutes of Saddam’s order, we were told. Iraq had active biological weapons.
After being lied, misled, manipulated, and deceived into a catastrophic war that has destabilized the entire region, I want to see the evidence, or be told where I can find the evidence.
This is one of those things that some people seem to really, really want to hold on to. The Big Lie. Unfortunately every single intellgence agency on the planet seems to have bought into it. The arguments against going into Iraq were doom and gloom scenarios of our best and brightest being cut down by Saddam’s chem and bio arsenal. Folks are completely willing to believe that the same administration that they call inept is simultaneously so damnably ept that they can reach back in time to manipulate the intelligence findings of the entire world.
When you have a moment, go back and read the AUMF. WMD’s do show up there, but they are hardly the only reason given. My personal take on it is that they were there, but moved or cached.
When Richard Butler once shared with the United Nations Security Council a series of high-altitude photographs of some 130 heavy Republican Guard trucks gathering at an isolated spot in the desert — they had just fled an inspection site as Butler and his arms inspection team were approaching — French U.N. ambassador Alain Dejammet mocked the evidence. Dejammet speculated that perhaps it was just “a truckers’ picnic.”
That charming little aside comes from a story from the year 1998, pre-Bush administration but circa the stated policy of regime change in Iraq and well before the extent of Iraqi-Froggy involvement in financial shenanigans became blindingly obvious.
Even if there were no WMD’s, ever (‘cept the Kurd killing ones), one can not claim that we were “lied into this war” for that statement requires an act of bad faith which simply was not there.
Every single human, man, woman or child, rewrites history in their own heads and believes the things that are most comfortable for them to believe. You can not watch the news today without being told, nay, instructed that the ’06 elections were a mandate on the war in Iraq even though a bare eight months ago the Democratic Party leaders were proclaiming day and night that the election was not about the war, it was about the Culture of Corruption and Foley. The war was just the parsley on the plate then, but once the election was one it transformed, transubstantially, into the steak.
It’s late, I’m sore and you likely gave up this thread some time ago but if you wish this conversation to continue, just let me know how to reach you. Your link seems to dead end and although I’m sure you are readily findable, like mothers-in-law and vampires, I require an invitation.
Egad. Last “one”= won.
Time to hang it up, old man. Next thing you know I’ll be wearing bunny-slippers and a houserobe while looking for ma tee’f.
Pinky, you miss the point — both Cernig’s and mine. Rightie bloggers like Gaius use the NATO connection to “prove” that the accusations against Iran are legitimate. The unspoken subtext is, “Look, it’s not just the U.S. government accusing Iran of helping the Taliban; it’s NATO.” But the U.S. is *part* of NATO. So declaring, in boldface, “And the evidence is coming from NATO,” which is obviously meant to convey the meaning that this makes the accusations more objective, is misleading. Because the article did not specify and particular person, so it could have been a Bush administration official who gave the NATO quote, and the reporter could attribute the quote to NATO, and still be telling the truth. But it would be misleading, because the assumption on the reader’s part would be “NATO means not a U.S. official.”
I actually can’t believe I have to explain this. Sigh.
Unfortunately every single intellgence agency on the planet seems to have bought into it.
This is just untrue. Flat-out, unquestionably, unarguably untrue. Any number of intelligence experts in this country and the UK disputed, variously, the substance of the intelligence, its provenance, its reliability, and its significance. They were dismissed or ignored. There is abundant documentary evidence that Dick Cheney’s intelligence-funneling operation deliberately sought out and cherry-picked ONLY the evidence that would seem to justify war with Iraq. And even that evidence was not necessarily accurate. Much of it came from unreliable sources, or a single unconfirmed source. Some of it was outright fraudulent. This is just a matter of record.
Every single human, man, woman or child, rewrites history in their own heads and believes the things that are most comfortable for them to believe.
Including you, or except for you?
You can reach me at libertystreetusa@gmail.com. Can you tell me which link you used that “dead-ends”? What happens when you use it?
Hi Pinky,
An AP interview with US Army General Dan McNeill, commander NATO forces, Afghanistan. 11th June 2007
Regards, C