Bomb cache found in Iraq believed to be from Iranian Revolutionary Guard: official

AFP via Iran Focus ^ | 2005 Aug 9

[Wiz]

WASHINGTON - US intelligence believes that a cache of manufactured bombs seized in Iraq about two weeks ago was smuggled into the country from Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an intelligence official said Tuesday.

"We believe they came from Iran's Revolutionary Guards," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The find is significant not only because of the Iranian connection but also because it indicates manufactured bombs are now being introduced in a conflict that has seen the use of mainly improvised explosive devices.

[Steve Van Doorn]

"Time to expand our AO.

what is "AO"?

thanks

[bill1952]

White rock. Hehe. Good old Spencer Tracy.

Would you believe that I used to work for a steel company?
Allen Wood steel in Swedeland/Conshocken.
The coke plant and blast furnaces were on the Swedeland side of the river.
When we pushed coke out of one of the batteries, it lit up the sky at night.
They called it "the Swedeland Sunset."

The tree huggers think that because such things are NIMBY that mother earth is now safe from us evil destructive greedy types.

They, and those other liberals of that ilk, are digging our graves just as fast as they can.

But, we can still kick Iranian butt as fast as we can find it. Strategy isn't just WWII 20 style million men armies anymore, and even FDR came to see it.

That airpower beat Japan into the stone age is a given, but civies sometimes forget what "all out war" means.
Therein lies the overarching strategy for victory, but stopping in the middle to minimize civilian deaths gets you nothing at all, except millions of pissed off, defeated civilians.

And you are right. - We need to bring some heavy industry back to America.
Strategic assets should not be outsourced.

[bill1952]

Allan will contract those rates as fast as he can if a whiff of what you are worried about is smelled.

And rates are still at historic lows.

[reagan_fanatic]

We do have special ops!

That would be the route I'd take if I were CIA. Iran has already declared war on the United States (actually that happened back in 1979) so world opinion be damned. Drop some teams into Iran and start popping the top mullahs one by one. Bombing the hell out of Iran won't affect the mullah's actions as much as the threat of imminent assassination will.

[daddyOwe]

Yeah, What happened to "you are either with us or against us"

[bill1952]

We should support an internal revolution, nothing else.
Ha! I heard the same thing before the Iraqi invasion.

And here we are. Save your money.

Supporting an internal overthrow of the fanatical mullahs ruling Iran without using force is pissing into the wind.

And it will have the exact same results as Iran starts parading those captured souls before the world stage claiming that they are the victims of American Imperialist designs to destroy Islam.

No blow-back there, huh?

[whitecastle1968]

It would have been nice if...

we had taken out Iran, not Iraq
we had taken out Syria, not Iraq

Since we've known for DECADES that they are the ones providing direct aid to the majority of terrorist organizations on the planet.

Why didn't we?? That's the question people should be asking but they are not. And the answer is not "because Iraq was do-able" as Cheney has been reported to have stated.

Something is going on that the general public doesn't know about . . . I'm suprised more people on freerepublic aren't curious.

[varon]

If the Iranians want to fight a fight they will get

Not from us they won't, unless you're thinking of a UN coalition. We're having trouble enough holding our own in Iraq.

[geezerwheezer]

When the term "AO" is used in the military, it generally means "area of operation". As you assign units to certain tasks, they will do that work in their "AO", and help maintain order.

[Marine_Uncle]

" Allen Wood steel in Swedeland/Conshocken."

I remember that company name. I'm from Frankford close to the Bridesburg border (what was the Frankford Creek leading into the river). Smack dab in the area where Allied Chemical/Rohm & Hass, Copper Coke etc., where. Everytime the Coke used to drench the burnt coke, it looked like an atom bomb going off from a distance, a huge mushroom cloud of steam and gases would rise. People watch on the boob tube attacks in Iraq, and shudder. Well in the fifties and early sixties I used to wake up to the house shaking, windows rattling after something in Allied chemical would blow up. Every year on good Friday most often, sometimes other times of the year, Allied Chemical (it was called the Barret Division....was responsible for creating end product from toluene, benzene etc., into vitamins, moth balls, various type of insecticides, fumicides, some addittives for rolling mill lubricants, backlite, etc.) would have a huge fire in some area of the sprawling plant. Often it would start with earth shaken explosions. I can remember sitting on a shed roof, I gained access to from my bedroom on the second floor, where me an my brother would climb out to gaze at the industrial complex during summer nights, and one year, the most terrifying explosion I ever witnessed happened. It looked like pictures of Nagasaki or Horashima.
A huge orange fire ball going upward some half mile away, pieces of tanks and other debrie mixed in the ball, then the violent shock wave/sound hitting us, in the black night, the ball turned into a many colored (grey/whites) column going upward and forming a mushroom cloud heaven knows how far up.
Another time I saw a similar blast first person, while standing at my school's public payment area. Needless to say all the windows out of the school building an most others in the neighborhood shattered. Real fine memories of Philly growing up. But we lived through it. Hundreds of millions of Americans had American made plastics, and other goods produced. With improved plant engineering,process control techniques etc., those fires and explosions diminished to zero. Of course that is when I move away from Philly to make my way in the world.
But Bill, your ending comment, I do not think will be realized. It is to expensive to design and install these type industries at this point. It is like whatever is left, simply continues if the company can continue making a profit, or they close. And no one wants heavy industry in their areas any more. Imagine Philly allowing a steel or chemical company to build on those long stretches of property along the river above say the Ben Franklin Bridge.
About the only thing the city will permit in these areas are clean warehousing facilities, to store stuff brought in from overseas, or lets say more night clubs so the whores, queers, and drugies can have places to go during the night hours. Haven't been out to your neck in the woods for years. A friend used to live in Conshocken on main street, in the eighties. So on occasions I got down your way.
Hail to the most honorable Mayor Street......gag gag gag.

[BykrBayb]

AO = area of operation.

[cherokee1]

Actually you're way over on the pessimist side of US production. You gotta relax a little. The west coast alone has something over 50 specialty steel mills. I personally buy about 30 types of steel and none of them are foreign made. Only the cheap stuff, unfinished black iron, and non-spec utility stuff is imported (that's what's in the news) along with some graded specialty steel like say knife blades that come from Sweden, cutting tool steel from Japan. Don't forget we still have the ore and coal that other countries can only snivel about. Don't let the story about the Army trying to buy Chinese boots fool you. That simply frees our production so we can make the good stuff like, oh, say, stinger missiles. If you want to have some fun punch up Northrup-Grummans website---it'll give you a big hint about how much production capability we have, especially mil-related.

[LtKerst]

We believe they came from Iran's Revolutionary Guards


Kill all the Mullahs. ( Just the Evil ones)

[newfarm4000n]

You're otherwise good picture is factually incorrect. Hitler did not persecute christians who for the overwhelming ( and I mean OVERWHELMING!) super majority merely got on with life as best as they could without getting in his way .Why do you think the Lutheran and Catholic Churches ( Over 90% of Germany's Christians at the time) apologized to the Jewish people after the War. Any person in Germany today who claims christians were persecuted during the war would rightly be put in a Mental Asylum.Please don't try to rewrite history . I agree militant Islam is like Hitler in most aspects though.

[jeffers]

"Did you figure in the rise in the cost of oil and dislocation to the worlds capital markets in your
scenario?"

No, I just look at the military balances. Modeling politics and economics I leave to others, who have considerably more computational horsepower.

FWIW, the price of oil and gasoline dropped at the beginning of both Operation Desert Strom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

[jeffers]

"It would have been nice if...

we had taken out Iran, not Iraq
we had taken out Syria, not Iraq "

So here you are, marching on Tehran, and about the time you get to Qom, 10 or 15 Iranian divisions dug in and staring at you from behind a wall of oh....say 100,000 civilians that they intend to swarm into your lines as shock troops, NSA starts pumping Intel Advisories out that 23 Iraqi divisions under Saddam Hussein are massing at Amarah, threatening either your left flank or your LOCs through Kuwait and Khorramshar.

Your move, General.

It would have been nice if the Mullahs recogized about 1300 years ago that there were a couple of very weak elements in the doctrine they had embraced, but they didn't and we have to deal with what...is...not necessarily what's "nice".

[jeffers]

"This story has already been discredited.

Iraqi: Iran Smuggling Reports Exaggerated

Wed Aug 10, 2:53 PM ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's interior minister said Wednesday that reports of deadly roadside bombs being
smuggled into this country from Iran are exaggerated. "

You'd take the word of this guy:

"Interior Minister Bayan Jabr

Bayan Jabr became a Shiite activist while studying
engineering at Baghdad University in the 1970s.
He fled to Iran amid a Saddam crackdown on
Shiite political groups and joined the Supreme
Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
He later headed SCIRI's office in Syria. After
Saddam's fall, he became minister of housing and
reconstruction in the first U.S.-picked provisional
cabinet. He is a senior member in the Shiite United
Iraqi Alliance."

http://www.cbsnews.com/elements/2005/04/12/iraq/whoswho687537_0_7_person.shtml

...over Rumsfeld?

Interesting...

[TAquinas]

You'd take the word of this guy:

"Interior Minister Bayan Jabr

----

Yes.

Read it again: Interior Minister. He ain't no insurgent; he's a high-level official.

[jeffers]

"He ain't no insurgent; he's a high-level official."

Yes, a high level official with very, very close ties to Iran.

How close?

He's a member of Iran's Supreme Revolutionary Council for starters.

Not at all surprising that he wants to minimize Iran's culpability in blowing up US soldiers.

I'm just not buying it. Neither is Rummy.

Again, I find it interesting that you value Iranian spin over the US Secretary of Defense. Don't be surprised if you find that getting traction with others in supporting these claims proves to be difficult or impossible.

[M. Espinola]

It's time to test the neutron bomb on the biggest threat to global economic security .