Posted on 12/27/2006 7:06:03 PM PST by jmc1969
The US military said on Tuesday that it had credible evidence linking Iranians and Iraqi militiamen, detained here in raids last week, to criminal activities, including attacks against US forces. Evidence also emerged that some of the detainees were involved in shipments of weapons to illegal armed groups in Iraq.
Major General William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for the US command, said that the military, in the raid, had "gathered specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities against Iraqi civilians, security forces and coalition force personnel."
Caldwell made his remarks by e-mail in response to a query about the raids, first reported on Monday in the New York Times.
"Some of that specific intelligence dealt explicitly with force-protection issues, including attacks on MNF-I [Multinational Force-Iraq] forces," he said via e-mail.
US officials have long said that the Iranian government interferes in Iraq, but the arrests, in the compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite political leaders, were the first in which officials were offering evidence of the link.
The raids threaten to upset the delicate balance of the three-way relationship between the US, Iran and Iraq. The Iraqi government has made extensive efforts to engage Iran in security matters in recent months and the arrests of the Iranians could scuttle those efforts.
The Iraqi government has kept silent on the arrests, but on Tuesday night officials spoke of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations by Iraq's government and its fractured political elite over how to handle the situation.
(Excerpt) Read more at taipeitimes.com ...
"The raids threaten to upset the delicate balance of the three-way relationship between the US, Iran and Iraq."
Um, Pinch, doesn't the Iraqi militia link to Iran already threaten to upset the delicate balance?
The US will NEVER use a nuke against Iran. If you expect any such response you do not understand this nation or its people.
"If you think people are inpatient when it comes to Iran then you apparently haven't been paying attention throughout the years. Iran has been killing and trying to kill Americans for over 20 years." Mosquito bites in the grand scale of things which will not provoke a Super Power.
"They have done everything they can to harm this nation and nothing but the fall of their current regime will stop that."
We have also done much to bring this about over the years. Twenty seven years of unremitting US hostility has not done it. Eight years of war with Iraq didn't do it. Any change will require the cooperation of its neighbors in many areas.
"A lot of people are tired of being patient with a nation like this." Don't delude yourself. If people do not support a war with EXTREMELY low casualities how do you think they would react to a war four or five times as difficult? Perhaps you are not aware of what happened Nov. 7 when the American people clearly told the leadership that it would not support any great efforts no matter how important to National Security they are.
WOW!!!
No kidding!!
What a surprise!!!
All along I thought they were getting aid from the Norweigans!!
Ah, but we needn't OCCUPY Iran, just blow most of it up.
If we pull out and the Baathists in Syria and the Ayatollahs in Iran are still functioning, every lost American life in Iraq and every spent American dollar will have been wasted.
you do not understand this nation or its people.
Hiroshima
Nagasaki
Oh, it does come with a little spin. Later in the article:
The raids threaten to upset the delicate balance of the three-way relationship between the US, Iran and Iraq. The Iraqi government has made extensive efforts to engage Iran in security matters in recent months and the arrests of the Iranians could scuttle those efforts.
Note the emphasis here - it is the raids that endanger the negotiations, not the campaign of bloody violence managed by Iran that is evidenced by the raids. It is the negotiations that are the objective and not the ending of that violence.
It is difficult not to suspect that the reporter here is proceeding under the assumption that the mission these men were on was perfectly legitimate and that it's too bad that they were found out. That is probably overstating the case but it does strike me as a rather odd attitude to be seen in a journalist.
Laying waste to a country through air power has not been particularly effective a means of winning a conflict.
I agree with your last sentence.
I understand both far better than you. TODAY's American whine and moan like schoolgirls over losses which wouldn't even represent a couple of hours in prior wars.
To the American voter 3,000 deaths today are worse than 300,000 in the Civil War. There is NO patience or willingness to take on great tasks among the electorate.
Your Blast Them All Back to the Stone Age approach is so off the charts as to be of no relevance whatsoever.
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