Challenged on the accuracy of U.S. intelligence, President Bush said Wednesday there is no doubt the Iranian government is providing armor-piercing weapons to kill American soldiers in
Iraq.
Wait... where have I heard that kind of statement before? Oh yeah... a long time ago then-Secretary of State Colin Powell presented similar assertions to the United Nations... citing all sorts of evidence from powerpoint slides to photos... that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. His presentation was compelling... and almost entirely wrong.
Now, unnamed Pentagon officials called a similar "put all the evidence out there" briefing showing reporters weapons confiscated from insurgents that supposedly point to the fact that Iran's government is supplying weapons to insurgents... and therefore killing American soldiers. The evidence they laid out, like Powell's presentation, was impressive at first glance: mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and armor-piercing explosive devices called explosively formed penetrators, bearing serial numbers that the officials claimed link them to the Iranian regime. Such weapons, the officials said, have killed more than 170 Americans in Iraq in the past three years.
But because the officials, who insisted on anonymity, could offer no direct evidence of Iranian regime involvement, their claims were met, properly, with widespread skepticism.
On Monday, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted as much. All that could be proved from the seized evidence and arrests of some Iranians in Iraq, he acknowledged, was that "things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers." Pace's assessment was in line with a decision by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley earlier this month to cancel a planned briefing on Iran because the evidence was not yet solid enough.
Yet today Dubya is out there again... stating that intelligence has 'no-doubt' that Iran is behind this.
Does anyone NOT think this is obviously a pre-text for invading Iran and plunging us FURTHER into harms way?
