Prelude to an Attack on Iran "There will be an attack on Iran." ROBERT BAER

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1654188,00.html


Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.




As with Saddam and his imagined WMD, the Administration's case against the IRGC is circumstantial. The U.S. military suspects but cannot prove that the IRGC is the main supplier of sophisticated improvised explosive devices to insurgents killing our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most sophisticated version, explosive formed projectiles or shape charges, are capable of penetrating the armor of an Abrams tank, disabling the tank and killing the crew.

A former CIA explosives expert who still works in Iraq told me: "The Iranians are making them. End of story." His argument is only a state is capable of manufacturing the EFP's, which involves a complicated annealing process. Incidentally, he also is convinced the IRGC is helping Iraqi Shia militias sight in their mortars on the Green Zone. "The way they're dropping them in, in neat grids, tells me all I need to know that the Shia are getting help. And there's no doubt it's Iranian, the IRGC's," he said.

A second part of the Administration's case against the IRGC is that the IRGC has had a long, established history of killing Americans, starting with the attack on the Marines in Beirut in 1983. And that's not to mention it was the IRGC that backed Hizballah in its thirty-four day war against Israel last year. The feeling in the Administration is that we should have taken care of the IRGC a long, long time ago.

Strengthening the Administration's case for a strike on Iran, there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to democratic and a friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.

more


Iranian helicopter downed in Iraq
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1621191&mesg_id=1621191


Kurds flee homes as Iran shells villages in Iraq
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1621227&mesg_id=1621227

[BlackHawk706867]

1. I find this so bizarre how the US thinks that they will hit Iran without...

drawing Russia, China, and a host of other countries into this! Just blows my mind that anyone would be stupid enough to do this.

ww

[seemslikeadream]

2. EFPs are Made in Iraq by Iraqis

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_shia_fellas

The Shia Fellas

How the Bush Administration and the Neocons got into bed with Iran's agents in Iraq.

Robert Dreyfuss | May 20, 2007

Back in 2004, President Bush went on NBC's Meet the Press to assure Americans that Iraq was not going to turn into an Islamist theocracy under the emerging Shia leadership.
"They're not going to develop that," said Bush, noting that he'd just met Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). "I remember speaking to Mr. al-Hakim. I said, 'You know, I'm a Methodist. What are my chances of success in your country and your vision?' And he said, 'It's going to be a free society where you can worship freely.'"

Added the president: "This is a Shia fellow."

No matter that the president actually said "fella," inadvertently pronouncing the Arab word for "peasant." Even by then it was clear, and by now it is blindingly obvious, that not only is there no room for Methodists in Hakim's Iraq; there isn't much room for Sunni Arabs, either. Indeed, the central irony of the war in Iraq is that a military operation ostensibly designed to install a model democracy in Baghdad has created a regime dominated by benighted Shia Islamist theocrats and run by mullahs and activists allied with Iran.

Bush perhaps can be forgiven his naïveté about Hakim -- though the fact that the name of Hakim's organization includes the words "Islamic Revolution" might have tipped him off. Others, however -- including the hawks promoting the war in 2001–03 -- were fully informed about al-Hakim, SCIRI, and its origins in Iran. They knew that by toppling Saddam Hussein, they would unleash the Shia majority in Iraq. They knew that Al Dawa ("the Call"), the party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, had a long history as a terrorist-inclined Islamist secret society. They'd read the reams of intelligence dossiers -- compiled over decades by the U.S. intelligence community -- on SCIRI, Al Dawa, and their allies. And they had plenty of evidence that Ahmad Chalabi, the smooth-talking Shiite who brought SCIRI and Dawa into the inner circle of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), was a snake-oil salesman who made no secret of his own close ties to Tehran's ruling circles.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2347bd0-46a4-11dc-a3be-0000779fd2ac.html
America’s illusory strategy in Iraq
By David Gardner

Published: August 9 2007 19:27 | Last updated: August 9 2007 19:27

Future historians of how Iraq was lost will, of course, alight on the memoirs and the memos of those who drove the policy, measuring declaration against execution, ambition against outcome. They will savour the solipsism of a Paul Bremer, the US viceroy whose disbandment of the Iraqi army left 400,000 men destitute and bitter, but armed, trained and prey to the insurgency then taking shape – but whose memoir paints him as a MacArthur of Mesopotamia.

They will be awed by the arrogance and fecklessness of a Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary and theorist of known unknowns, who summed up the descent into anarchy and looting in the hours after Baghdad fell (when, very possibly, Iraq was lost) – “Stuff happens”.

But their research will be greatly assisted by the diligence of the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, which keeps on unearthing the bottomless depths of incompetence behind the Bush administration’s misconceived adventure in Iraq.

This week, the GAO reported that the Pentagon cannot account for 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 80,000 pistols supposedly supplied to Iraqi security forces – adding to well-founded suspicions that insurgents are using US-supplied arms to attack American and British troops.

This discovery might be considered the mother of all known unknowns, were it not that in March this year the GAO published a drily damning report on the coalition’s failure to secure scores upon scores of arms dumps abandoned by the Iraqi army after the 2003 invasion – and that by October last year it had still failed to secure this giant toolbox that keeps the daily slaughter going in Iraq.


http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2006/11/national-salvation-front-or-government.html
Saleh Al-Mutlaq, the head of the Iraq National Dialouge Front which is a secular coalition that won 11 seats in the Iraqi parliament, has been working to establish a "national salvation front" for the last few months. Many observers think this front is trying to split the current Iraqi government and create a new alternative government.

As-Sadr, the Iraqi leader, is taking serious steps towards pulling out from the government. Many other Iraqi groups, Sunni and Shia and Secular, are planning to follow.

There is a big possibility that some major political announcments will take place tomorrow. Bush is going to Amman to meet with Al-Maliki and other puppets, Al-Sadr might announce his plans to pullout from the government (both parliament and ministries) and others may follow him and suspend their participation in the current government.

Mishaan Al-Juburi, the head of the reconciliation and liberation front, pulled out from the govermnet yesterday and announced that he's waiting for the "national salvation government" to be announced. Many contacts informed me that the National Salvation Front (or government) will be announced maybe tomorrow.

The NSF (NSG) will include most of the Arab parties in the current government. More or less, it'll include everyone except SCIRI and Al-Dawa parties. In addition, it'll include a number of other leaders from outside the current government. They have a plan for ending the occupation and bringing some UN peacekeeping forces for 6 months to deal with the transitional period. The plan is called "the Iraqi-international roadmap". I think 20 international figures, including Mandela, and 30 Iraqi figures, including Shia, Sunni, secular, and kurdish leaders, worked together to put this "road map".

All of this is not confirmed, but there is a real possibility that the next few days/weeks will bring some radical changes.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/world/middleeast/10weapons.html?ex=1328763600&en=a969c2a825f5e668&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says
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By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: February 10, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.


A Deadly Weapon The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.

In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.

The focus of American concern is known as an “explosively formed penetrator,” a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.

Because the weapon can be fired from roadsides and is favored by Shiite militias, it has become a serious threat in Baghdad. Only a small fraction of the roadside bombs used in Iraq are explosively formed penetrators. But the device produces more casualties per attack than other types of roadside bombs.

Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile. The officials said they were willing to discuss the issue to respond to what they described as an increasingly worrisome threat to American forces in Iraq, and were not trying to lay the basis for an American attack on Iran.



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/world/middleeast/08military.html?ex=1344225600&en=e3974bad086516f0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
U.S. Says Iran-Supplied Bomb Kills More Troops
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By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: August 8, 2007
BAGHDAD, Aug. 7 — Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military.


Petr David Josek/Associated Press
Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 American commander in Iraq, says attacks by Shiite militias remain a long-term concern.

The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage » The devices, known as explosively formed penetrators, were used to carry out 99 attacks last month and accounted for a third of the combat deaths suffered by the American-led forces, according to American military officials.

“July was an all-time high,” Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, said in an interview, referring to strikes with such devices.

Such bombs, which fire a semi-molten copper slug that can penetrate the armor on a Humvee and are among the deadliest weapons used against American forces, are used almost exclusively by Shiite militants. American intelligence officials have presented evidence that the weapons come from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, although Tehran has repeatedly denied providing lethal assistance to Iraqi groups



http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_iran_attack_that_wasnt

The Iran Attack That Wasn't

How reporters trumped up a story about Iranians killing Americans in Iraq.

Gareth Porter | August 2, 2007



On July 2 and 3, The New York Times and the Associated Press, among other media outlets, came out with sensational stories saying that either Iranians or Iranian agents had played an important role in planning the operation in Karbala, Iraq last January that resulted in the deaths of five American soldiers. Michael R. Gordon and John F. Burns of The New York Times wrote that "agents of Iran" had been identified by the military spokesman as having "helped plan a January raid in the Shiite holy city of Karbala in Iraq in which five American soldiers were killed by Islamic militants …"
Lee Keath of the Associated Press wrote an even more lurid lead, asserting that U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner had accused "Iran's elite Quds force" of having "helped militants carry out a January attack in Karbala that killed five Americans."

The story was a big break for the war-with-Iran faction in Washington. Within hours, Sen. Joe Lieberman issued a press release saying that the Iranian government "has declared war on us." That set the stage for the unanimous passage the following week of his amendment stating that "the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States," and demanding the government of Iran "take immediate action" to end all forms of support it is providing to Iraqi militias and insurgents.

No one questioned the authenticity of the story at the time. But the official source -- Brig. Gen. Bergner -- offered no real evidence of Iranian involvement in planning the January attack in his press briefing on July 2. Even more remarkably, Bergner never even explicitly claimed such direct Iranian involvement in the planning. Instead, he used carefully ambiguous language that implied but did not state such an Iranian role.

It was not Bergner, in fact, but New York Times military reporter Michael Gordon who articulated the narrative of an Iranian-inspired attack on Americans. Gordon, readers may recall, played a key role, along with Judith Miller, in legitimizing a major theme of the Bush administration's Iraq propaganda -- the infamous aluminum tubes argument -- as the White House Iraq Group kicked off its campaign to prepare public opinion for war in September 2002. And in February 2007, Gordon enthusiastically embraced the administration's charge of official Iranian arms exports to Iraq in his coverage of that issue, despite a notable lack of evidence for the charge.


(Inter Press Service)

US Demanding Iran Restrain Shi'ite Groups

by Gareth Porter
A little-noticed statement by US Ambassador Ryan Crocker after last week's US-Iran meeting revealed that the main demand of the George W. Bush administration to Iran is not to stop supplying weapons to Shi'ite militias but to use its influence with Shi'ites in Iraq to reduce their attacks on occupation forces.

That demand, which belies official assertions of certainty that the Iranian government is providing arms to the militias, is consistent with other evidence that the administration was primarily concerned with getting Iranian assistance in restraining its Shi'ite allies when its campaign over Iranian arms began early this year.

Crocker told reporters after the Jul. 24 meeting on Iraq that he had held Iran responsible for Shi'ite militia attacks in Iraq, and that that the Bush administration expects Iran to do something to reduce those attacks. He said he had "made very clear" to the Iranian diplomats "that over the roughly two months since our last meeting we've actually seen militia-related activity that could be attributed to Iranian support go up and not down."

Then Crocker added "We made it clear to the Iranians that we know what they're doing it's up to them to decide what they want to do about it."

The US diplomat's deliberate shift of focus away from the flow of arms to the Shi'ite militias to the number of attacks carried out by those groups strongly suggests that the administration was never actually convinced that Iran was providing arms to its fellow Shi'ites in Iraq. If the administration were really concerned primarily with Iran's involvement in providing arms to the Shi'ites, it would certainly have taken advantage of the bilateral talks to focus on the demand for an end to that flow.

By issuing an open-ended invitation to Iran to "decide what they want to do about" the Shi'ite operations, however, the administration was clearly signaling that it really wants Iran to intercede with armed Shi'ite groups in Iraq to get them to exercise restraint.

Crocker's interest in Iran's ability to restrain armed Shi'ite groups is in line with an important speech last October by the Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the department's senior policymaker on Iran, which made it clear that the administration really wanted Iran to use its influence with the Shi'ites to calm the situation in Iraq.

After accusing Iran of providing "very sophisticated arms" to Shi'ite "insurgents" and "terrorists," Burns said, "e expect that Iran, given its obvious interest in Iraq, and given the degree of influence that it has over parts of the Shi'ite community in Iraq, is going to now decide to act differently."

Burns was quite explicit about the primary demand on Iran. He went on to say, "an you really say that Iran is using its political influence over some of the Shi'ite political groups to send a message of unity, of a unitary state and a unity among the three major groups competing for political power in Iraq? I don't see that Iran has used its influence in that way."

The Burns speech at the Council on Foreign Relations on Oct. 11 came only a few days after Bush authorized the capture of members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in order to create what senior officials described to the Washington Post's Karen DeYoung as "a sense of vulnerability among Iranian leaders."

In January 2007, when the new, more aggressive policy against Iran was announced, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates began talking about the need for "leverage" on the Iranians "before we engage with the Iranians."

If negotiations with Iran were to begin "right now," Gates lamented, "we would be the supplicant."

That sequence of events indicates that the publicity campaign around alleged Iranian provision of arms to the militias was only a part of the larger strategy for increasing the pressure on Iran. For Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – but not for Vice President Dick Cheney – the objective was to get Iran's cooperation on its Iraqi Shi'ite allies.

Iran's support for Shi'ite militias in Iraq is generally believed to reflect its interest in maintaining good relations with all Shi'ite factions in the country.

Despite an administration policy to emphasize the charge of Iranian official complicity in the supply of arms, there were telltale signs from the beginning that the Iranian arms charge was a political operation that reflected the neoconservative penchant for creating evidence to serve the policy objective. Asked on Feb. 3 whether there was evidence that the government in Tehran was behind the weapons obtained by Shi'ite militias in Iraq, Gates replied: "I don't know that we know the answer to that question."

The final presentation of the case for official Iranian involvement in the weapons traffic on Feb. 11 came only after weeks of wrangling within the administration. Gates and Rice let it be known to reporters in early February that they had rejected the first version of the case, and that they were concerned about a repetition of the infamous case for war against Iraq presented by Secretary of State Colin Powell in February 2003, which turned out to be based on a series of falsehoods.

Since the Feb. 11 press conference in Baghdad, in which military briefers admitted that the charge of Iranian official involvement in sending weapons to Shi'ites in Iraq was "an inference," the administration has offered no further claim of evidence supporting the charge.

The chief of the Shi'ite militia group which carried out a spectacular attack on a joint provincial compound in Karbala in January and a Hezbollah operative who was in liaison with the group were both captured Mar. 22. But the US command had apparently learned nothing from interrogating them that would indicate that the group had arrangements with the Quds Force – a component of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps – for obtaining arms.

The news spokesman for the military command, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, suggested to reporters in a Jul. 2 briefing that the two prisoners had implicated the Quds Force in connection with the planning of the January attack. But the carefully chosen wording used by Bergner – that the two prisoners "state that senior leadership within the Quds Force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack…" – raises more questions than it answers about Iran's relationship with the leadership of the Shi'ite militia.

Despite that highly ambiguous language and the absence of any further detailed information, The New York Times and Associated Press, among other media outlets, published sensational stories saying Bergner had accused the Quds Force of direct involvement in planning the January attack. Unnoticed by reporters at the briefing was Bergner's failure to claim that either of the two most important Shi'ite detainees provided evidence of any Iranian arms supply to or training of the Shi'ite group in question.


EFP bombs must be coming from Iran!!!


http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_atrios_archive.html#117595681241609223

Ah, we remember it well. The EFPs which COULD ONLY HAVE BEEN MADE IN IRAN. Much like the anthrax which COULD HAVE ONLY BEEN MADE IN IRAQ

Front page NYT story, 2/20/07:


The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.


Except, you know, not.


Bleichwehl said troops, facing scattered resistance, discovered a factory that produced "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs), a particularly deadly type of explosive that can destroy a main battle tank and several weapons caches.


Burrrp burrp! Does not compute! Does not compute! Washington Post version of the story, as captured by Google News "1 hour ago


http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0410/p01s02-woiq.html

From hiding, Sadr rallies against the US
The radical Shiite cleric shows his strength with large anti-US rallies in the cities of Kufa and Najaf.
By Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the April 10, 2007 edition


BAGHDAD - "Yes to Moqtada, yes to Iraq, yes to liberation," chanted tens of thousands of demonstrators as they poured into the revered Shiite cities of Kufa and Najaf Monday calling for US troops to leave Iraq.

The event – on the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall – was a clear message from Moqtada al-Sadr that the radical Shiite cleric remains a force to be reckoned with despite the fact he has been in hiding for months. His movement is under growing military pressure from US forces, including battles with Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in the city of Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad, that have killed at least 11 Iraqis since Friday.

"It proves that he's the only man capable of amassing such a huge demonstration and shows the weakness of the government and its allies," says Wamidh Nadhmi, a political science professor at the University of Baghdad.

"He's also trying to prove to all that he's the moving spirit among Shiites and that he has not changed his mind about the presence of US forces."

The demonstration, in which only Iraqi flags were allowed, was also an opportunity for Sadr to mend fences with moderate Sunnis given that his militia has been implicated in the wave of sectarian killings that have engulfed the country, according to Mr. Nadhmi.

Monday's marchers included some Kurds in traditional dress as well as Sunni clerics, many of whom were bused by Sadr's movement from the city of Basra in the south. "Let's put out the fire of discord and chop off the snake's head," chanted some in reference to Iraq's ongoing sectarian strife

[roamer65]

3. Couldn't be all the Iraqi military that Bremer unemployed, could it?

:sarcasm: that's making all the IED's...nah...gotta be the Iranians.

[C_U_L8R]

4. The neocons know it's now or never

if they wait... they are done, finished, kaput, history.

must... keep... hold... of... power...