Remember all the ‘WMD programs’ the Bushites told us there were in Iraq, pre-2003?
So more recently, they’ve been telling us about the “Iranian arms” that have been flowing in to non-governmental or anti-governmental forces inside Iraq. Last week, the US commanders in Iraq even planned a big “show and tell” event in Karbala at which thousands of Iranian-supplied arms that had been seized by the US and their Iraqi allies would be shown off to the media before being destroyed.
But guess what. The LA Times’s Tina Sussman tells us that the event
- was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran…
Left unclear for now: What actually was the provenance of the arms collected in Karbala?
But the incident has already had non-trivial political consequences. Susman writes,
- Iran… continues to seethe after an Iraqi delegation went to Tehran last week to confront it with the [arms-supply] accusations. It has denied the accusations, and it says as long as U.S. forces continue to take part in military action in Iraq’s Shiite strongholds, it won’t consider holding further talks with Washington on how to stabilize Iraq.
This administration seems to have a just about unique capacity for both belligerence and incompetence. This is an extremely dangerous combination.
Belligerence and incompetence certainly, but you left out a big one – mendacity. And shameless mendacity at that!
I have every faith that the US military will run a high priority investigation and make available all information about exactly where these weapons did come from to all Americans and lay this story to rest. Later. Some day. Appendix R-2297.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”–NRA (and GOP) bumper sticker
One does need to wonder if this sudden US cancellation of public “proof” of Iranian-sourced weapons in Iraq doesn’t have something to do with Leila Fadel’s report today for McClatchy that the Sadrists have agreed to the Iraqi government forces taking over the whole of Sadr City – in a deal that she reports is approved by the Iranians and a victory for PM Maliki?
Fadel also reports on the the social changes taking place in Basra since its liberation by the Iraqi Government forces, which was also publicly supported by the Iranian ambassador to Iraq.
Makes one ponder what else may be in store over the next few weeks/months? A US/Iran rapprochement? Maybe?
Well, the powers that be have made a preliminary decision to bomb an IRGC barracks near Tehran, according to Philip Giraldi. This plan’s been around for a while and According to John Robb over at Global Guerillas it’s the start of a slippery slope. Meanwhile, Information Dissemination has a post up The Fleet Positions Itself For War. The Bush-Cheney gang has one last throw of the dice, apparently.
Of course, even if the weapons had been from Iran it wouldn’t have proven anything. Iran and Iraq have a very long and porous border, and links between the two countries go back centuries. Add to that the corruption and smuggling known to be rife along this border, and the accusations become meaningless. Just because a weapon is Iranian made and ends up in Iraq, it in no way proves that it’s being there was the result of official Iranian government policy.
I bet the resistance fighters have a good supply of weapons of US and Russian and French and whatnot provenance. Irregular forces get their stuff where they can, including stealing, black market, and so on. No doubt a respectable pile of American weapons can be assembled. Does this prove that Americans are officially supplying weapons to the resistance? (Although in this nutsy war, anything is possble. The Russian soldiers sold weapons to the Chechen fighters, why not some disgruntled American servicemen?)