Posted on 04/12/2007 8:39:27 PM PDT by neverdem
BAGHDAD, April 11 — Arms that American military officials say appear to have been manufactured in Iran as recently as last year have turned up in the past week in a Sunni-majority area, the chief spokesman for the American military command in Iraq said Wednesday in a news conference.
The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that detainees in American custody had indicated that Iranian intelligence operatives had given support to Sunni insurgents and that surrogates for the Iranian intelligence service were training Shiite extremists in Iran. He gave no further description of the detainees and did not say why they would have that information.
“We have in fact found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence sources have provided to Sunni insurgent groups some support,” said General Caldwell, who sat near a table crowded with weapons that he said the military contended were largely of Iranian manufacture.
The weapons were found in a mostly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, he said, a rare instance of the American military suggesting any link between Iran and the Sunni insurgency. It has recently suggested a link with Shiite militants in Iraq.
The accusation of a link between the Iranian intelligence service and Sunni Arab insurgents is new. The American military has contended in the past that elements in Iran have given Shiite militants powerful Iranian-made roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, and training in their use.
Critics have cast doubt on the American military statements about those bombs, saying the evidence linking them to Iran was circumstantial and inferential.
The weapons displayed on Wednesday were more conventional, and officials pointed to markings on them that they said indicated Iranian manufacture...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Collectively, the West will continue to do nothing.
The West is a nutless enterprise begging to get nuked.
now if the Iraqis would wake up to the fact that Iran is arming both sides to kill each other and preparing to walk right in and take over once the dust settles we might just have something.
“We have in fact found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence sources have provided to Sunni insurgent groups some support,” said General Caldwell, who sat near a table crowded with weapons that he said the military contended were largely of Iranian manufacture.”
You are right. Why even have these press conferences, and no one is going to do anything about it? What is it to prove? The “So what?” is slowly moving to “Who cares?” If our leaders continually harp on the axis of evil, build nuclear facilities, and kill our soldiers with iranian supplied weapons, then they need to shut their traps, and we need to get new leaders that will actually DO something about it. This is getting soooooooooooooooooooooo old. I don’t blame the messenger. Those poor bastards are gutting it out in the field and are caught between a rock and a, well...Iraq.
It’s really past time that we sent them a strongly worded letter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.