IRANIAN WEAPONS IN IRAQ? IS BUSH PLAYING THIS CRAPPY TUNE AGAIN?

I thought we had debunked this whole Iran-in-Iraq thing. Maybe the Bushies thought that the Iranian detention of the 15 Brits set the stage for people to buy this bullshit story about Iran "destabilizing" Iraq.

The best post I've read so far about it is here at Americablog. The title of the post gets it just right:

" Iran reportedly training Sunni insurgents. In related news, government is full of it."

Here's a great quote from the CNN story linked above:

"The death and violence in Iraq are bad enough without this outside interference," Caldwell said. "Iran and all of Iraq's neighbors really need to respect Iraq's sovereignty and allow the people of this country the time and the space to choose their own future."

The sheer fucking arrogance of this is unbelievable--the U.S. is the "outside interference" that did not/does not "respect Iraq's sovereignty!" Who is fooled by this utterly transparent fakery? I guess the piddly one-third of the populace who still clings to Bush and his stupid, horrible war, that's who. Oh, and of course, the media.

From the same story, here's another way you know this shit is fake:

"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," Caldwell said. "We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees' debriefs."

Iraq and Iran established diplomatic relations in 1990 but still have a lot disputes. Caldwell doesn't given any specifics about the detainees he mentions, but one can imagine that if they're Iraqis and/or being tortured, why the hell wouldn't the Iraqis try to pin something on Iran? After all, these detainees may figure that the U.S. will leave Iraq to go after Iran, which is what people fighting againt the U.S. would like to see. So it's perfectly logical for an Iraqi detainee to blame "EFPs" on Iran.

Also, since it's probably very obvious what the U.S. forces want to hear during "interrogations," detainees--particularly if they're Sunni--are more than happy to blame something on Iran so that we'll go over to Iran and leave the detainees' domestic operations alone.

One more thing

One more quote from the CNN story:

"Munitions from Iran were found in a black Mercedes sedan in Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood on Tuesday after a tip from a civilian, he said. An Iranian-made rocket was found in the back seat and Iranian weapons were found in the trunk and around a nearby house, Caldwell said."

Let's suppose that it's actually true that Iranian weapons were found in Iraq. That does not necessarily mean that it is the stated policy of the current ruling government of Iran to provide Iraqi insurgents with weapons. For all we know, insurgents go into Iran and steal weapons.

Plus, so what if Iran trains Iraqi insurgents? The U.S. doesn't own the world--Iran is a sovereign country and has a right to conduct foreign policy according to international law. Is it anymore illegal under international law for Iran to sell weapons to Iraq than it is for us to rush cluster bombs to Israel in the midst of a conflict (which I guess would mean pretty much at any time)?

DON'T FALL FOR IRAN PROPAGANDA

That was the headline they came up with for my letter to the editor that was printed today in the Hattiesburg American. I'll post it as published with the parts they edited out in italics...

Don't fall for Iran propaganda

The Bush administration is gearing up for an attack on Iran on the grounds that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and that Iran is "meddling" with our meddling in Iraq.

However, our own intelligence agencies have stated that Iran will not be able to produce nuclear weapons before 2015 if at all. Iran says its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes, and they are entitled to pursue this course under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which they are a signatory.


In the past two weeks, the U.S. has produced supposed evidence that Iran is providing insurgents in Iraq with weapons that only Iranians can produce. However, this supposed "evidence" falls apart under the slightest scrutiny [as the weapons use devices readily available at Radio Shack or similar electronics stores and copper discs that can be produced by anyone with the proper machine tools].

Various administration officials have stated that the United States has no plans for war with Iran and no plans to attack Iran. However, so far we have moved at least two aircraft carrier groups into the Persian Gulf which would provide us easy access to Iran.

There is no reason for us to have a military confrontation with Iran - they pose no threat to us. Iran even tried to enter into negotiations with the Bush administration in 2003 but their overtures were ignored. A war with Iran would be a disaster for our country and the Middle East, indeed, for the whole world.

We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts. Then it will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not "embolden terrorists." [This was originally one sentence which read: We must act to stop the war with Iran before it starts, because if and when it starts, the fact that it has started will be used as an excuse to keep it going so as to save face and not “embolden terrorists” and so forth.] I hope that everyone will urge their friends and family not to fall for administration propaganda designed to take us into another war to divert attention away from the current illegal and immoral war in Iraq.

Clinton Kirby

Hattiesburg

Nice editing job--can't complain too much. I wish the copper disc and Radio Shack parts had been left in, but that's okay...

EFPs FROM BAGHDAD, NOT TEHRAN?

I did not see this earlier today, but apparently it is possible to make EFPs somewhere besides Iran (how stupid must they think we are?):

US troops reportedly raided a Baghdad machine shop back in November, uncovering a cache of 5-inch diameter copper disks--EFPs--obviously being produced as part of an ongoing operation. If true, this makes another pretty big hit against Sunday's presentation of evidence that Iran's Qods Force is providing "EFP kits" to insurgents.

Well, well. The plot doth thicken.

Preface to a twenty volume suicide note

I loved this poem when I was in high school, and I was thinking about it today for some reason--I always wanted to name a band "The Holes They Leave," a line from the Baraka poem below. I just did a search and discovered some of his poems online, so here it is:

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

"A LONG HISTORY IN FABRICATING EVIDENCE"

The above is unfortunately a very accurate quote from Ahmadinejad. He could be referring to, I don't know, the Maine incident. Or maybe the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He might very well be referring to Operation Ajax, which replaced the democratically-elected (for Iran, anyway) Mossadegh with the repressive Shah. He could be referring to 9/11. Or he could be referring to Iraq's non-existent WMD. Or any number of other such incidents.

And now, we've proven him right again, with the release of this Iran-in-Iraq dossier, with its fake evidence that provides the basis for fake claims intended to get us into a very real war. The dossier falls right in line with all of the above-mentioned ploys.

The good news is that neither the public nor the media seem to be falling for it--at least not as much as they fell for the claptrap about Iraq. Many are speculating that this newfound skepticism will force the hand of the neocons to manufacture some sort of "terrorist incident" along the lines of 9/11 or the Bush plan of painting a US plane in UN colors and tempting Iraq with it. This seems plausible to me--maybe even probable.

Prosecute the dossier fabricators?

But I'm curious about something else--does this fake dossier evidence violate any laws? Is there any way to prosecute anyone (from the president on down) involved in this scheme to deceive the public? If not, how can we keep this kind of thing from happening over and over again?

I'm afraid it isn't possible to prosecute anyone for such acts, simply because of the difficulty of proving evidence fabrication beyond a reasonable doubt when "national security is at stake." I would imagine that every time a prosecutor would request some piece of evidence from the government, they'd claim that providing it would be a breach of national security and stonewall, stonewall, stonewall.

Bullshit infrared sensors

So maybe the best offense is a good defense. All of us need to keep our bullshit detectors--or, active bullshit infrared sensors, if you like-- on high alert 24 hours a day and expose junk like this as soon as possible, and as accurately as possible, forever--or until the fabricators catch on that pulling a fast one on the public is gonna be more work than just telling the truth.

IRAN: PASSIVE INFRARED SENSORS, ETC.

Nemo over at Entropic Memes has yet another brilliant post on the fake dossier put out a couple days ago by the U.S. government.

Nemo left a comment on my last post about the ubiquity of passive infrared sensors, which were fingered by the unnamed U.S. briefers as being one of the devices that supposedly proves that these EFPs are being manufactured by Iran (and only by Iran). A Newsweek story on the briefing puts it thusly:

The Iranian fingerprint, these officials claimed, was in the pieces used to manufacture the EFPs, as well as the usage of the infrared triggers. "Some components are solely found in Iran," the senior defense official said.

Now I originally read this as the senior defense official saying that the infrared sensors were the component of EFPs that are "solely found in Iran." That's not what exactly what he said, obviously, but in the dossier, the claim is made that "Passive Infrared Trigger (PIR) tied to Iran" (on page 9).

Nemo correctly points out that PIRs are widely available, and don't just come from Iran (see comment in last post below). Now perhaps the senior defense official meant to convey that the use of PIRs in roadside bombs is what is uniquely Iranian. But he didn't say that either, that I'm aware of.

Here, for example is a website of an American company that is marketing PIRs for use in Automatic Pedestrian Doors. Here is some of the text on their website:

Passive Infrared Sensors

Passive Infrared Sensors are used for the activation of Automatic Pedestrian Doors. This technology has been successful where other types of sensors have been troublesome. These sensors are not vulnerable to wind blown debris, extraneous radio signals or adverse weather conditions.

Passive Infrared Sensors detect persons or objects, which have a surface temperature difference of at least +/- 2°C compared to that of the scanned zone and which are moving at a rate of at least 10cm per second. Both movement and temperature difference are required for detection.

Bircher-Reglomat remains on the cutting edge of IR Technology providing the Automatic Door Industry with safe, reliable sensors that come in the most compact housings available in today's market, making Bircher-Reglomat products the best solution for automatic door applications.

Kudos to Nemo, who is doing yeoman's work on this fake evidence that's being used to try to railroad us into a war with Iran.

IRANIAN WEAPON UPDATE

Looks like the media are being less credulous this time when the government is trying to drag us into a war. That's great!

I think the blogosphere has determined that where the Iran-in-Iraq briefing is concerned, these are the most relevant points:

1. The weapons probably were made in Iran.
2. That doesn't mean that Ahmadinejad or the Supreme Leader authorized giving them to Iraqi insurgents--this is what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said.
3. The weapons very likely were sold or given to Hezbollah to fight Israel in Lebanon. Israel may have recovered some and shared them with us--just in case we wanted to start a war with Iran or something like that.
4. The weapons could have other origins.

These conclusions deal mostly with the mortar rounds picture in the dossier. I haven't read much about the infrared triggering devices--I would guess that it's highly unlikely that those are made only in Iran. But again, I don't know that for a fact.

EVERYONE IS POINTING OUT...

...how this whole Iran dossier reeks to high heaven. Like Newshog and his merry band o'commenters.

And now General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is not toeing the line on this supposed evidence:

"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se [specifically], knows about this," he said. "It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

That's basically what Bill Scher said today on the Sam Seder show and at Liberal Oasis:

1. Just because a weapon is made in Iran, doesn't mean the Iranian leadership sent the weapons in.

On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Jack Reed, who sits on the Armed Services Cmte, was asked "how solid is the evidence":

"I think the evidence is confused ... The question is: is this a deliberate policy of the Iranian government at the highest levels. Is it rogue elements within the government?
And then the other question is: to what extent are there countervailing signals that the Iranians actually are trying to ... not ... further raise the stakes in Iraq.

So it's a very complicated situation."

Reporters at yesterday's briefing backed up Reed's skepticism.

NYT's James Glanz was at the briefing. And he noted that hard evidence was lacking:

The officials also gave fresh details on recent American raids ... in which they said members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, or the Qods Force, were picked up and accused of working with extremist groups to plan attacks on American and Iraqi forces.
Because the elite Qods Force is involved, a senior military analyst said, the American intelligence community believes that the weapons shipments have been approved at "the highest levels of the Iranian government."

Still, no direct evidence was presented of how the intelligence community has made that link.

MORE IRAN WEAPON MARKINGS INFO

From the blog "Entropic Memes," which I was thankfully alerted to in the comments. The writer makes a very good observation--on page 11 of the Iran dossier, there is a picture of a mortar casing that was supposedly made in September 2006 and seized in Iraq on September 9, 2006.

While that scenario is not out of the realm of possibility, it certainly seems unlikely.

The writer also links to a site that shows artillery cartridges from various countries. Some Iranian cartridges do in fact have Farsi rather than English markings (on p. 57, for example).

From "Entropic Memes":

"I’m extremely skeptical about the printing on the mortar tubes; if the date codes follow the widely-used standard of mm-yyyy, then the rounds on the left on this page, which were supposedly seized in central Iraq on September 9th, 2006, are a week old or less. Come on, do those look brand new to you?"

Another excellent point the writer makes:

"That brings me to a second point: If you discount the “9-2006″ mortar tubes, the other weapons with date codes in the report, even if “found” in January 2007, were made between March and May, 2006. In other words, they were made before the July-August 2006 conflict in Lebanon. If you were intent on waging war with Iran, the Iranian-made weapons seized by Israel from Hezbollah could be used (and abused) as “evidence” of Iranian involvement in the insurgency. If not, there’s nothing to prove they didn’t come from Hezbollah themselves, who certainly have an interest in furthering the civil war in Iraq."

Very nice work--you should check out the post. Thanks to the commenter who pointed this out!

IRANIAN WEAPONS MARKINGS--MORE RECENT

Here is a picture of a Zelzal missile:



This is what the missile says, according to Wikipedia:

"The Farsi text on the missile literally says "Zelzal", which means "Earthquake" in English."

And there's Ahmadinejad in the picture, so this is very recent. Are we to believe that weapons manufactured in Iran use English markings and American dating systems as the U.S. dossier on Iranian arms would have us believe?

I don't know--I'm asking...

IRANIAN WEAPON MARKINGS FROM THE PAST

Can be found here. A little over more than halfway down the page, there is this picture:




The caption reads "Persian markings of a Brno made rifle." It goes on to say that:

One typical such inscription read "tofang-e nemoone 1309 karkhane-ye aslahe sazi berno" ("Rifle model 1309 Made at Brno Arms factory." The number 1309 refers to the Persian year 1309 which is the year 1930 in the Western calendar).

So in 1930 at least, "Persian" was used as well as the Persian calendar. Do they not do that anymore? I don't know--I'm asking. Also, Farsi has its own characters for the familiar Arabic numbers that we use.

Wait, here's another picture from the same website:



More Farsi markings.

My point is, if the weapons in the pictures the U.S. is disseminating were in fact made in Iran, why are their markings in English?