Another sign of progress in Iraq

I'm hesitant to distribute anything from the Washington Post as they tend to focus on negativity and portray anything and everything going on in Iraq as a sign of doom and failure. I believe this snippet was intended to be another harbinger of the four horsemen riding against our brave folks in Iraq but to that end, they failed. I think a deeper look into this graphic and some thought about the actual events described shows real progress on the part of the Iraqi police and on the part of our servicemen in dealing with the guerrilla tactics of the insurgency. When faced with a potent, well-planned and well-coordinated ambush (a sign of interference from professional soldiers from other troublesome "republics" in the area, perhaps) Iraqi police didn't crumble or run away, they worked with US forces to competently suppress the attack and ended up kicking butts and taking names. Milestones like these are important to the confidence of a budding force

The Insurgents' Increasingly Complex Tactics in Ambushes

Iranian Connection: Part V

Top spy: Iran training Iraqis to use explosives

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran is training anti-American Iraqi Shi'ites at sites inside Iran and Lebanon in the use of armor-piercing munitions blamed for the deaths of 170 U.S. troops in Iraq, the top U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday.

The case against Iran becomes stronger everyday. It is merely a matter of time until this reaches a boiling point. Now the big question, I think, is this: Are we going to wait until Iran is a nuclear power or take them out before that happens?

The Iranian Connection IV

President Bush continues to make the case that something must be done about Iran. I predicted war with Iran by 2008. Looks like this are right on track.

Below are the Presiden't comments today, but first read this:

Pace: Iran Complicit in IED Attacks on Coalition
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service


ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam, Feb. 14, 2007 – The Iranian government is complicit in improvised-explosive-device attacks on coalition and Iraqi forces, Marine Gen. Peter Pace said today in Jakarta, Indonesia.
However, he said, officials are unsure what level of Iranian government is part of this complicity.

Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is visiting U.S. Pacific Command areas.

As Pace spoke to leaders at the National Institute of Resilience, the Indonesian senior military college, leaders at the institute asked him about proof that Iran is sponsoring IED attacks in Iraq and supporting Shiite terrorist groups.

Officials in Baghdad this week said coalition and Iraqi forces have discovered bomb-making materials that have come from Tehran. These include “explosively formed projectiles” that can be used against heavily armored vehicles, such as Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams tanks.

Coalition forces also have captured Iranians during attacks against two bomb-making cells in Iraq.

"The Iranian government must know that we have discovered their weapons," Pace said. "And they certainly do know -- because they asked for them back -- that we have found Iranian citizens involved in this. What I do not know is if the number one, number two, number three leaders of their government, whether or not they are directing or not directing these actions."

The general said he wanted to be as precise as possible about Iranian involvement. "What I said was that I do not know the level inside the Iranian government that knows about or is complicit in it," he said.

But officials at some level in Iran do know about this. "That activity against our soldiers and Marines in Iraq is unacceptable," he said. "We will keep being aggressive inside Iraq going after these networks."

Pace said earlier in his trip to Australia and Indonesia that there is "zero chance" of the United States going to war with Iran. He said many times to audiences in both Australia and Indonesia that the United States will use diplomatic pressure to get Iran to stop its actions in Iraq and to get Iran to stop research on developing nuclear weapons.

And now for the President's comments

Q Thank you, sir. General Pace says that these bombs found in Iraq do not, by themselves, implicate Iran. What makes you so certain that the highest levels of Tehran's government is responsible?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes --

Q And how can you retaliate against Iran without risking a war?

THE PRESIDENT: What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did.

But here's my point: Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know? But the point I made in my initial speech in the White House about Iraq was, is that we know they're there and we're going to protect our troops. When we find the networks that are enabling these weapons to end up in Iraq, we will deal with them. If we find agents who are moving these devices into Iraq, we will deal with them. I have put out the command to our troops -- I mean, to the people who are commanders, that we'll protect the soldiers of the United States and innocent people in Iraq and will continue doing so.

Now, let me step back on Iran, itself. We have a comprehensive strategy to deal with Iraq [sic]. There's a variety of issues that we have with Iraq [sic]. One, of course, is influence inside of Iraq. Another is whether or not they end up with a nuclear weapon. And I believe an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be very dangerous for world peace, and have worked with other nations of like mind. And it turns out there's a lot of countries in the world that agree with that assessment. After all, we did get a Chapter 7 Resolution out of the United Nations that included EU3, as well as Russia and China. That's a positive development.

The message to the Iranian people is that your leaders are making decisions that are isolating you in the world, thereby denying you a brighter future. And I believe Iran is an unbelievably vital nation. It's got a great history, it's got wonderful traditions, it's got very capable, smart people. There is -- I believe there's also a desire to not be isolated from the world. And our policies are all aimed at convincing the Iranian people there's a better way forward, and I hope their government hears that message.

Anyway, that's a long answer to a short question, and now you're trying to get to me to -- Gregory. Excuse me, David. David.

Q Thank you, sir. I'd like to follow on Iran. Critics say that you are using the same quality of intelligence about Iran that you used to make the case for war in Iraq, specifically about WMD that turned out to be wrong, and that you are doing that to make a case for war against Iran. Is that the case?

THE PRESIDENT: I can say with certainty that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops. And I'd like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds force was ordered from the top echelons of government. But my point is what's worse -- them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening? And so we will continue to protect our troops.

David, our strategy is comprehensive in order to resolve problems that will affect our own peace and the peace in the world. And the biggest problem I see is the Iranians' desire to have a nuclear weapon. As you know, we've been dealing with this issue ever since you've been covering me, and pretty much ever since I've been the President. And we've made it very clear to the Iranians that if they would like to have a dialogue with the United States, there needs to be a verifiable suspension of their program. I would hope that they would do that. I would like to be at the -- have been given a chance for us to explain that we have no desire to harm the Iranian people.

But my focus is on making sure that this weapon is dealt with, the program is dealt with in a constructive, peaceful way. And we'll continue to work toward achieving our common objective with other nations in the world in a peaceful way.

Sheryl.

Q -- using faulty intelligence to provoke Iran?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I heard your question, and I told you, I was confident that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, was providing weaponry into Iraq. And to say it is provoking Iran is just a wrong way to characterize the Commander-in-Chief's decision to do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm's way. And I will continue to do so.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I want to follow up on Iran one more time. You saying today that you do not know if senior members of the Iranian government are, in fact, behind these explosives -- that contradicts what U.S. officials said in Baghdad on Sunday. They said the highest levels of the Iranian government were behind this. It also -- it seems to square with what General Pace has been saying, but contradicts with what your own press secretary said yesterday.

THE PRESIDENT: Can I -- let me -- I can't say it more plainly: there are weapons in Iraq that are harming U.S. troops because of the Quds force. And as you know, I hope, that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds force to do this, I don't think we know. But we do know that they're there, and I intend to do something about it. And I've asked our commanders to do something about it. And we're going to protect our troops.

Q But given some of contradictions, Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT: There's no contradiction that the weapons are there and they were provided by the Quds force, Ed.

Q What assurances can you give the American people that the intelligence this time will be accurate?

THE PRESIDENT: Ed, we know they're there, we know they're provided by the Quds force. We know the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. I don't think we know who picked up the phone and said to the Quds force, go do this, but we know it's a vital part of the Iranian government.

What matters is, is that we're responding. The idea that somehow we're manufacturing the idea that the Iranians are providing IEDs is preposterous, Ed. My job is to protect our troops. And when we find devices that are in that country that are hurting our troops, we're going to do something about it, pure and simple.

Now David says, does this mean you're trying to have a pretext for war? No. It means I'm trying to protect our troops. That's what that means. And that's what the family members of our soldiers expect the Commander-in-Chief and those responsible for -- responsible for our troops on the ground. And we'll continue do so.

The Iranian Connection III

Some quick fact-checking. uncovered a few important things:

1. The Iranian terrorists diplomats, I blogged about on the 4th, had already been released in late December.
2. Why? The Iraqi government sided with the Iranians.
3. Not to fear. We captured more Iranians in Iraq. Then the Iraqi government forced us to let them go too.
4. Does this mean the Iraqi government will prevent the US from dealing with Iran? Rice won't rule out military actions.
5. And then there was this: Did we just declare war on Iran?

While you were sleeping, the war with Iran might have begun.

Not everyone is sleeping on this one. I think war with Iran may just be the elephant in the room. Shmuel is spot on in pointing out that the Democrats have not been sleeping on this one, either.

The Dems have been opposed to a troop build-up since before it was officially announced. Since the 04 elections we have been hearing about the infamous "plan" the Democrats had for Iraq. First it was John Kerry's secret plan. Nobody knew any of the details, except that it was "a better plan." The Dems took this secret plan and ran with it in the 06 elections. With major wins in the House and Senate, the silver lining for Republicans was that it was now put-up or shut-up time for the Dems. Hey Democratic Party: The American people still would like to hear your "better plan" for Iraq. So far, all we have heard is the same old thing: Whatever Bush wants is wrong, and we take the opposite position. If Bush wants more troops, Dems want less. If Bush wanted to bring troops home today, I'd be willing to bet we'd probably hear Murtha screaming that the troops have a job to finish and that the President should just let them do their job.

But I digress... Shmuel points out that the Sen. Biden, in all of his glorious omniscience, recently said

If the president concluded he had to invade Iran … or Syria in pursuit of these networks, I believe the present authorization granted the president to use force in Iraq does not cover that and he does need congressional authority to do that. … I just want to set that marker

Translation: Just who does he think he is? The President? Well guess what! He needs Congressional authority to declare war, and we own Congress, and HE isn't going to get an ok from us. Ha! He can't have his war with Iran unless we say so. SO there. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyaaaaa.

Shmuel then discusses two comparisons being made about Iraq. One comparison is the tired, old, somewhat delusional comparison being made between Iraq and Vietnam, and Bush and Nixon. The other comparison is much more appropriate.

Netanyahu is the most vocal alarmist on Iran, and in the meetings he has with U.S. visitors, he tends to repeat the analogy he uses in public. It's not about Vietnam, and it's not about Cambodia. "This is 1938," he says. "Iran is Germany, and it is about to arm itself with nuclear weapons." The Saudi monarch, I wrote in Ha'aretz, "for whom the Nazi analogy is not his natural domain, expressed exactly the same fear, but in somewhat different words." One of the senators came home with this nagging thought: Is it possible that Iraq is really the secondary issue—and Iran is what policy-makers ought to be worrying about?

How is this for a theory: It may never have been about only about Iraq. Never only about Saddam, never only about WMD's, never only about ending tyranny in Iraq... consider this: War with Iran would NEVER have been possible (or have a chance of succeeding) without first taking out the threat posed by Saddam. A ground invasion would be almost impossible without a very large, permanent base. A base we now have in Iraq.

The Iranian Connection II

I recently discussed in a post entitled The Iranian Connection Michael Ledeen's allegation that Iran is waging war against us. I quoted some snippets from Ledeen's article, which I will provide again, below:

"we had good information that terrorists were in Baghdad, and had gone to the compound. We did not know exactly who they were. We entered the compound and arrested everybody who looked like a usual suspect. One of them told us he was the #3 official of the al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a particularly vicious group. He was carrying documents, one of which was in essence a wiring diagram of Iranian operations in Iraq. That wiring diagram included both Shi’ite and Sunni terrorist groups, and was of such magnitude that American officials were flabbergasted."

"I am told that this information has reached the president,"

I stated on January 4th, "Now that we have evidence that Iran IS involved in Iraq, it should and probably will force our hand. I just hope the American people have the stomach for a war with Iran. ... I look forward to Bush's remarks in the coming days regarding changes in US policy towards Iran."

That very same day the White House began floating the idea of increasing troop levels in Iraq. Increase in troops levels from as little as 1500 to as many as 20,000 troops were being floated in the media.

On January 4th, Tony Snow fielded the following questions:

1. Q Did they talk about the merits of increasing U.S. troops in Iraq?
2. Q And did the President suggest that he was inclined to send more troops to Baghdad?
3. Q On another subject, Iraq plans. Has the President signed any order calling for additional U.S. troops?

On January 5th, Mr. Snow fielded more questions about troop levels, some of which referenced recent criticism by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid about any plan to increase troop levels:\

1. Q The President, in his consultations about his new way forward, is he listening to advice from people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who wrote him today to say, "We do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success"?
2. Q But, Tony, there's been a lot of talk about expectation, what the President has or has not decided, one being the surge in U.S. troops. Are you saying at this time that the President still has not made that decision about sending additional troops, and he has not signed any order instructing that to happen?
3. Q Tony, are there, in fact, differences between the President and the Joint Chiefs over whether to increase troops in Iraq?

As you can imagine, each subsequent press conference had similar questions with regards to troop levels in Iraq.

Then on January 10th, less than a week after the US captured Iranian's working with terrorists in Iraq to destabilize the fledgling Iraqi government, the President, on prime time TV, outlined a plan which includeda plan to:

1. commit "more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq"
2. "continue to pursue al Qaeda and foreign fighters" in Iraq
3. "addressing Iran and Syria" - "interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria."
4. "the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region"
5. "work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border."

Few will deny that the President could not simply come out and say, "We have uncovered evidence that Iran has been working with al Qaeda. Evidence which proves a direct Iranian involvement in the ongoing sectarian conflict in Iraq. This action by the Iran government constitutes an act of war, and opens a new front in the war on terror." The political fallout, domestically and internationally would be unbearable, especially with Bush's poll numbers. Not to mention that troop levels in Iraq could not support an all out war with Iran. We need more troops in order to be able to sustain war with Iran. Besides, telling the world that we are going to war with Iran BEFORE our troops are in place would be insane.

However, a troop build-up backed up with another Aircraft Carrier in the middle east would make war against Iran a real feasibility. The "crisis" in Iraq is the perfect justification for putting the necessary units into place to proceed with the next phase of the War on Terror.

This blog is predicting war with Iran by 2008.

The Iranian Connection

While perusing the blogosphere this morning, I came across Faster, Please! and read a post by Michael LeDeen which included among other things:

"Iran is waging [war] against us"

"we had good information that terrorists were in Baghdad, and had gone to the compound. We did not know exactly who they were. We entered the compound and arrested everybody who looked like a usual suspect. One of them told us he was the #3 official of the al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a particularly vicious group. He was carrying documents, one of which was in essence a wiring diagram of Iranian operations in Iraq. That wiring diagram included both Shi’ite and Sunni terrorist groups, and was of such magnitude that American officials were flabbergasted."

"I am told that this information has reached the president,"

"We are in a big war, and we cannot fight it by playing defense in Iraq. That is a sucker’s game."

Not really knowing who LeDeen was, I decided to do a bit of research on him. Typically, you don't say, "I am told that this information has reached the president" without having friends in high places. Wikipedia has a bio on him. He is a conservative, so predictably his bio keeps getting edited by leftys who want to make him look bad. Maybe he deserves it, I don't know him, but his bio on wiki and elsewhere makes it pretty clear that he can pull off a statement like, "I am told that this information has reached the president."

Powerline and others have discussed this article.

LeDeen references a NY Sun article written by Eli Lake.

The article includes the following:

An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna.

This is scary. I had suspected for some time that the "civil war" and "sectarian violence" was being fueled by a third party with an interest in the continued violence and destabilization of Iraq. I thought it was probably Al Qaeda, which would be really bad for us. If it is indeed Iran fueling the flames of sectarian violence, this is actually a good thing. It gives us a nation state to hold responsible. Better than a rogue organization, anyway.

I take issue with LeDeen's statement, "We are in a big war, and we cannot fight it by playing defense in Iraq. That is a sucker’s game." It is only a sucker's game when other nation states are directly interfering. Prior to Iranian involvement, it was the perfect game. In one fell swoop Bush deposed an evil dictator, freed and democratized millions of Iraqi's, created a massive military base for future middle east operations, and painted a bright red target in the sand where Al Qaeda and its ilk could amass and be slaughtered by our highly capable military machine. The big red target that is Iraq has effectively diverted Al Qaeda money and resources into fighting a war they cannot win militarily. It is no accident that there have been no major terrorist attacks on the US homeland since 9/11. Sad, Bush almost never gets credit for this.

Now that we have evidence that Iran IS involved in Iraq, it should and probably will force our hand. I just hope the American people have the stomach for a war with Iran.

I have long held that the American Death Toll in Iraq was something to be praised, not something to make us war-weary. We have had so few casualties, it is astounding. A war with Iran would likely be a very different thing. Certainly, there are many Iranians who yearn for freedom... but unlike what we saw in Iraq, Iran WILL present a strong military response.

If we are going to confront Iran and liberate their people, we will probably have to do this very soon. They have been working feverishly towards completing their nuclear program and amassing an arsenal. If they produce nuclear weapons, they will not hesitate to use them in a military confrontation.

I look forward to Bush's remarks in the coming days regarding changes in US policy towards Iran.