Dick and George
See Mahmoud arm terrorists. See George charge Mahmoud with meddling. See Dick urge strikes:
WASHINGTON — President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.
At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said.
Bush wasn’t specific, and a State Department official refused to elaborate on the warning.
Behind the scenes, however, the president’s top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran’s support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.
Strike, George, strike!
Topics: Bush, Cheney, Iran, Iraq
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:51 am on Friday, August 10, 2007
20 Responses to “Dick and George”
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August 10th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Iran is long overdue for a visit by the US military.
August 10th, 2007 at 10:26 am
“Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq…”
Why is this just a proposal? If there are suspected training camps in Iraq, who cares who’s running them? Blow ‘em up!
August 10th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
That’s what these public meeting with Iran have been all about. Not to appease the “diplomatic fetishists”. To give them 3 chances at bat and 3 strikes.
“we know what you’re doing–stop”
answer–we’re doing nothing wrong, we want peace and tranquility
“you have’n't stopped you’ve increased why?”
answer–we’re doing nothing wrong, we want peace and tranquility
“you were amply warned before the world, you have no one to blame but yourself. This has been 30 years in making.”
answer–we’re doing nothing wrong, we want peace and tranquility
August 10th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
But our “allies” the Kurds are running terrorist training camps, agog.
Friends don’t bomb friends, do they?
August 10th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
PKK is not our allies.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
All the Kurds, al-Phie? The entire Kurdish region? Or just a select few, like Ansar al-Islam, which is a radical Islamist group affiliated with Saddam in his heyday, and al-Qaeda today? Hardly what we’d call “friends”, no?
Do try to keep up, dear.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Quick Alphie–how many countries to Kurds live in?
August 10th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Seeing as the U.S. military controls Iraq, the U.S. military is playing host to terrorist training camps.
It has known about the PKK for over four years now…and has done nothing about them.
Another phony reason for going into Iraq shot down.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
From the linked article
“Maliki is on a three-day visit to Tehran, during which he was photographed Wednesday hand in hand with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Unconfirmed media reports said Maliki had told Iranian officials they’d played a constructive role in the region.
Asked about that, Bush said he hadn’t been briefed on the meeting. “Now if the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart-to-heart with my friend the prime minister, because I don’t believe they are constructive. I don’t think he in his heart of hearts thinks they’re constructive either,” he said.”
Part of the problem with al- Maliki is that he very well may hold the hands of his shi’ite buddies in Tehran.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
“Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.”
This was a leak by the admin for the nth time trying to deter the Iranians by telling them we are serious. The problem is that leaks like this tell Iran that we are not serious. If we really meant to hit them and hurt them in a meaningful way this information would not get out. This leak tells them that we are desparate to avoid a fight - which is not the way we should be perceived. The Iranians need to perceive that we are itching for an excuse to hit and hit ruthlessly. This leak will only give them comfort that they can continue killing our soldiers with impunity.
August 10th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
“Do try to keep up, dear.”
Far too stupid to do so on his own, and having been essentially cut loose by his handlers, not privy to any new scripts. Poor little moron.
August 10th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Why should we give Iran the respect of sitting down with them just to warn them? They are not honest brokers and we know it. And why do we threaten them with … what exactly? A scowl and a few nasty words? Why not stand up and give them their three strikes in front of the whole world? Why not let the whole world see that we are serious? If your concern is the whole world, that is. My concern–first, last and always–are the men we have put in harms way. The nature of the beast puts them in danger, but sitting back and doing nothing when we know they are being targeted and killed from a particular quarter is like demanding that they sacrifice themselves on the altar of … what exactly?
August 10th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
“The Iranians need to perceive that we are itching for an excuse to hit and hit ruthlessly. This leak will only give them comfort that they can continue killing our soldiers with impunity.”
I still recall (ridiculous as it sounds) that one of the pre-conditions for the return of the glittery- eyed Ahmadinejhad’s “Mahdi” is chaos and bloodshed upon the land.
That in the version of his personal religious subtext (less in evidence than it was a couple of years ago) an attack on Iran would be a “good” thing.
And that stalling and diddling around (as the Iranians have been playing cat and mouse for years) would only be for getting the nuclear weapon in place and the delivery system (target Tel Aviv) up to speed.
Ugly.
August 10th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
As for the
Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP)
where the shell pierces the armored vehicle and explodes inside the cab…
It shouldn’t be all that hard to determine Iran’s involvement in production and distribution of said weapon.
But maybe it is.
August 10th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Saltydog–
You have my deepest sympathies. I cannot begin to imagine what you’ve lost.
I just read your final post on “More Like This”.
August 10th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
SD–
It is ridiculous to give them the courtesy of a diplomatic forum to lie to us again and again.
If it were up to me, we would have hit back in January, or as soon as evidence was available, I’ve heard we knew as early as 2004. Syria and Iran should have been smacked hard at first evidence of interference.
This has been an international disgrace: the world community letting Iran get away with murder, sedition, and tyranny for 30 years. Now we having irrefutable evidence presented by our military and it is dismissed as “suspect” by BDS whack jobs in the MSM.
Here are some picket signs I’d like to see carried around the Whitehouse. I”ve never carried a picket sign in my life but I’d carry one of these.
“The Iranian Revolution Kills US Troops and innocent Iraqis”
“Bomb Khamenei’s Qods force”
“The Qods killed my Son”
“The Iranian Revolution sows death, sedition, and destruction throughout the Mideast”
“The Iranian Revolution has Failed”
“Khamenei orders the death of US troops”
“Qods = Khamenei, Khamenei = Qods”
“The Iranian Revolution: 30 years of Chaos, Death, and Destruction”
August 10th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
tanstaafl–Here was the story when it broke in the NYT
February 12, 2007
U.S. Says Arms Link Iranians to Iraqi Shiites
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/world/middleeast/12weapons.html?_r=2&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
BAGHDAD, Feb. 11 — After weeks of internal debate, senior United States military officials on Sunday literally put on the table their first public evidence of the contentious assertion that Iran supplies Shiite extremist groups in Iraq with some of the most lethal weapons in the war. They said those weapons had been used to kill more than 170 Americans in the past three years.
Never before displayed in public, the weapons included squat canisters designed to explode and spit out molten balls of copper that cut through armor. The canisters, called explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s, are perhaps the most feared weapon faced by American and Iraqi troops here.
In a news briefing held under strict security, the officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories. The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments.
August 10th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
The officials also were defensive about the timing of disclosing such incriminating evidence, since they had known about it as early as 2004. They said E.F.P. attacks had nearly doubled in 2006 compared with the previous year and a half…
The officials said the E.F.P. weapons arrived in Iraq in the form of what they described as a “kit” containing high-grade metals and highly machined parts — like a shaped, concave lid that folds into a molten ball while hurtling toward its target…
At least one shipment of E.F.P.s was captured as it was smuggled from Iran into southern Iraq in 2005, the officials said. Caches and arrays of E.F.P.s, as well as mortars and other weapons traceable to Iran, have been repeatedly found inside Iraq in areas dominated by militias known to have ties to Iran, the officials said. One cache of antitank rocket-propelled grenades and other items was seized as recently as Jan. 23, the officials said…
Some of the five Iranians still being detained after they were picked up in Erbil on Jan. 11 had been flushing documents down a toilet when they were found, the defense analyst said, and they had recently been engaged in “changing their appearance” — apparently shaving their heads, though for what reason the analyst did not know.
An earlier raid in Baghdad was carried out, the officials said, after American forces received word that the No. 2 Quds Force official, whom they identified as Mohsin Chizari, was unexpectedly in Iraq. When Mr. Chizari was picked up in a raid in December, he was carrying false identification, the officials said.
The senior defense analyst said there was no direct link between the detained Iranians and the physical evidence presented on Sunday. But the analyst said, “the overall tenor” of the evidence was that Mr. Chizari was implicated in bringing E.F.P.s into Iraq.
The briefing also presented new information on what the Americans call the smuggling routes. There are three main routes, officials said: the Mandelli border crossing, east of Baghdad; the Mehran crossing, in the marshes to the south; and in the southern city of Basra.
Paid Iraqis, rather than Iranians themselves, carry the materials across the border, the officials said.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said “there’s a clear line of evidence that points out the Iranians want to punish the United States, hurt the United States in Iraq, tie down the United States in Iraq, so that our other options in the region, against other activities the Iranians might have, would be limited.”
August 10th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
THIS IS THE CRITICAL SECTION THAT LINKS IT TO IRAN and IRANIAN HIGH TECH MANUFACTURING. THESE SAME EFPs SHOW UP IN LEBANON AND ARE USED AGAINST ISRAEL.
“The officials said the E.F.P. weapons arrived in Iraq in the form of what they described as a “kit” containing high-grade metals and highly machined parts — like a shaped, concave lid that folds into a molten ball while hurtling toward its target…”
August 10th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Thanks 4iraq for this info (I think) :-)
I can believe that there are (still) many Iraqis who would transport Iranian weapons inside Iraq. For money.
Good weekend to all.