Al-Qaeda has Taken Over Iraq!

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I guess I can't laugh at Oerdin for regurgitating that McClatchy piece that's already been fisked in the blogosphere, then...

McClatchy's the only MSM that's not simply parroting the official line. Actual reporting and investigation. Wow, hooda thunk that such things still existed in America.

[Drake Tungsten]

We're fighting al-Qaeda and Iranian back militants.

That would make sense, given that the al-Qaeda types and Iranian-controlled Shia groups are the ones causing most of the trouble at the moment. The other Shia groups are sitting tight and waiting until the Americans leave so they can ethnically cleanse the Sunnis, while the Sunnis are cooperating with the Americans so they can get weapons and training that might help them avoid being ethnically cleansed by the Shia when the Americans leave. The American commanders are willing to look the other way while the mainline Sunni/Shia prepare for a civil war because they know there's no way in hell they're going to have the time and support needed to actually prevent one. The only thing they can hope to achieve is ****ing up al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Iranian-backed groups before Reid & Pelosi force a withdrawal.

[Dinner]

Ok, you want more proof of pushing the propaganda?

Recycling Iraq Lies: The Washington Post and the Mysterious Miss Shelton
A. Alexander, July 1st, 2007

Out of the blue, so it seemed, the Washington Post recently published an op-ed piece titled, "Iraq, al-Qaeda and Tenet's Equivocation." It was written by someone named Christina Shelton. As the author appeared to go out of her way to, in the most amateurish and laborious manner imaginable, rehash tired and thoroughly disproved tales of ties between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda; knowing who this Christina Shelton was, seemed central to understanding the true motivation behind the publication.

It should be noted that the contemporary recycling of the Iraq-al Qaeda yarn, is not happening by accident. A recent poll found that 41 percent of the American people continue to believe that, falsely of course, Saddam was somehow tied to the attacks on September 11, 2001. They didn't sanction the poll obviously, but the Bush administration does read and watch the news. They know there remains a healthy portion of the population that the government had intentionally misled and misinformed, who still believes the pre-war lies. That is why this past week, shortly after the poll was released, Mister Bush scurried off to a friendly public gathering among members of the Navy. He wanted to further the administration's latest narrative, a fictionalized theme asserting that al Qaeda is currently overrunning Iraq. It is a claim that not even Mister Bush's own senior intelligence analysts support.

But, as all things with this administration and America's corporate-owned media, what is factual is not vital. The only thing that matters is what can be exploited for political gain. And, if telling blatant lies is the only way to achieve support for Mister Bush's agenda, then telling lies it must be.

Shelton's piece seemed out of place because the title, "Iraq, al-Qaeda and Tenet's Equivocation," hinted at an attempt to discredit the former CIA commander and certain allegations, perhaps, found in his book. That was odd because Tenet's book has been out for months and nobody has claimed it to have been of any great consequence to the administration's political fortunes. What was even more out of sorts, was the person doing the vilification - an assumed low-level lackey for whom Google held no particular favor.

However, it wasn't long into the article before Christina Shelton's hidden agenda came roaring through loud and clear. Her intent had nothing to do with Tenet's book or any assertions he had made in it. Tenet's book was just the excuse used by Shelton and the Washington Post's Opinion Page Editor, to assist the administration's latest effort at rekindling the Saddam-Iraq-al Qaeda passions still nurtured by that vitally important 41 percent of the American public.

Highlighting hollow examples extracted from Tenet's book, Shelton didn't miss an opportunity to transparently reprocess nearly every discredited pre-war Iraq-al Qaeda falsehood.

"... I summarized a body of mostly CIA reporting (dating from 1990 to 2002), from a variety of sources," Shelton writes, "that reflected a pattern of Iraqi support for al-Qaeda, including high-level contacts between Iraqi senior officials and al-Qaeda, training in bomb making, Iraqi offers of safe haven, and a nonaggression agreement to cooperate on unspecified areas."

In reality, however, in February 2002, Shelton had been combing through old Iraq-related intelligence when, "she stumbled upon a small paragraph in a CIA report from the mid-1990s that stopped her." That small paragraph, the source having been discredited and/or the allegation never corroborated through independent sources, was never intended to be considered as evidence of anything. That original discovery of disgraced intelligence, however, led Shelton to dig even deeper into the CIA's tombs of discarded reporting.

Eventually Shelton was able to piecemeal together still more skeletal scraps of unconfirmed and unsubstantiated reports. Shelton had used selective snippets to prove a theory that she and the administration had conjured out of thin air. Shelton and her boss, to be revealed shortly, knew full well that the small fragments of intelligence that they had taped, glued, and stapled together had previously been vetted and discounted by the regional intelligence analysts. But it didn't matter. What mattered was that someone, somewhere and at sometime had made just enough wild accusations that, put into the right pair of unscrupulous hands and twisted just so in the shadowy light, could be used to justify the administration's pre-war narrative.

Uncovering the identity of Christina Shelton, wasn't easy. The Post's recent piece said only that she was an "intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1984 to 2006." Which, perhaps, may be the understatement of the century.

In 2004 this is how the Post's own reporter, Dana Priest, in a story that investigated the administration's possible nefarious use of "intelligence," explained Christina Shelton's discovery of the debunked intelligence and, too, revealed her identity:

"Her boss, Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and the point man on Iraq, was so impressed that he set up a briefing for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was so impressed he asked her to brief CIA Director George J. Tenet in August 2002. By summer's end, Shelton had also briefed deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby."

It seems rather odd that the Washington Post omitted the fact that this Christina Shelton was not only a member of the infamous Bush administration's pre-war Office of Special Plans (a small cadre of Bush-Cheney loyalists whose work has been entirely discredited as false, if not criminal), but, too, the paper failed to identify her as having played a key role in building the false case for going to war with Iraq.

Shelton's piece attributes a letter as having been sent by Tenet, to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Shelton claims Tenet wrote, "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade." Of the letter's content, she was correct. But, Tenet never sent it. CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin sent the letter. Why? Obviously, as we've seen time and again in this administration (when the principals don't want to be associated with the administration's lies) Tenet didn't believe there was a link between Iraq and al Qaeda as Shelton's discarded intelligence asserted, and he refused to write the letter. Instead, a lackey with ambitions within the administration, in this case McLaughlin, gleefully misled the Senate Select Committee.

Few news agencies outside of FOX News played a larger role in misleading the American public into the war on Iraq, than had the Washington Post. Time and again, the paper played the administration's willing Pravda-like war-supporting megaphone. It appears now, with the administration seizing upon the knowledge that 41 percent of the American people remain ignorant to basic Iraq-al Qaeda facts, Mister Bush and his people are deeply involved in trying to exploit that ignorance to their political advantage. What's more, the Washington Post, beginning with Shelton's out-of-place piece, is once again leading the misinformation charge for the White House.

For more on Dana Priest's 2004 report regarding Christina Shelton, click THIS LINK

To read Shelton's latest Iraq-al Qaeda bunk click THIS LINK

http://www.progressivedailybeacon.com/more.php?page=opinion&id=1592

[Dinner]

The WaPo Article on her background:

Pentagon Shadow Loses Some Mystique
Feith's Shops Did Not Usurp Intelligence Agencies on Iraq, Hill Probers Find

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A11

In February 2002, Christina Shelton, a career Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was combing through old intelligence on Iraq when she stumbled upon a small paragraph in a CIA report from the mid-1990s that stopped her.

It recounted a contact between some Iraqis and al Qaeda that she had not seen mentioned in current CIA analysis, according to three defense officials who work with her. She spent the next couple of months digging through 12 years of intelligence reports on Iraq and produced a briefing on alleged contacts Shelton felt had been overlooked or underplayed by the CIA.

Her boss, Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and the point man on Iraq, was so impressed that he set up a briefing for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was so impressed he asked her to brief CIA Director George J. Tenet in August 2002. By summer's end, Shelton had also briefed deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Shelton's analysis, and the White House briefings that resulted, are new details about a small group of Pentagon analysts whose work has cast a large shadow of suspicion and controversy as Congress investigates how the administration used intelligence before the Iraq war.

Congressional Democrats contend that two Pentagon shops -- the Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group -- were established by Rumsfeld, Feith and other defense hawks expressly to bypass the CIA and other intelligence agencies. They argue that the offices supplied the administration with information, most of it discredited by the regular intelligence community, that President Bush, Cheney and others used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

But interviews with senior defense officials, White House and CIA officials, congressional sources and others yield a different portrait of the work done by the two Pentagon offices.

Neither the House nor Senate intelligence committees, for example, which have been investigating prewar intelligence for eight months, have found support for allegations that Pentagon analysts went out and collected their own intelligence, congressional officials from both parties say. Nor have investigators found that the Pentagon analysis about Iraq significantly shaped the case the administration made for going to war.

At the same time, the Pentagon operation was created, at least in part, to provide a more hard-line alternative to the official intelligence, according to interviews with current and former defense and intelligence officials. The two offices, overseen by Feith, concluded that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda were much more closely and conclusively linked than the intelligence community believed.

In this sense, the offices functioned as a pale version of the secret "Team B" analysis done by administration conservatives in the mid-1970s, who concluded the intelligence community was underplaying the Soviet military threat. Rumsfeld, in particular, has a history of skepticism about the intelligence community's analysis, including assessments of the former Soviet Union's military ability and of threats posed by ballistic missiles from North Korea and other countries.

Rumsfeld's known views -- and his insistence before the war that overthrowing Hussein was part of the war on terrorism -- only enhanced suspicion about the aims and role played by Feith's offices.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), a member of the intelligence panel, charged that Feith's work "reportedly involved the review, analysis and promulgation of intelligence outside of the U.S. intelligence community."

Levin pressed Tenet on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Is it standard operating procedure for an intelligence analysis such as that to be presented at the NSC [National Security Council] and the office of the vice president without you being part of the presentation? Is that typical?"

"My experience is that people come in and may present those kinds of briefings on their views of intelligence," responded Tenet, who said he had not known about the briefings at the time. "But I have to tell you, senator, I'm the president's chief intelligence officer; I have the definitive view about these subjects. From my perspective, it is my view that prevails."
Hussein's Role

Feith, who worked on the NSC staff in the Reagan administration, is a well-known conservative voice on Israel policy who once urged the Israeli prime minister to repudiate the Oslo peace accords. His views are a source of tension between him and foreign policy officials at the State Department and elsewhere who advocate concessions be made by Palestinians and Israel to achieve a peace settlement.

No sooner had Bush announced that the United States was at war on terrorism than it became Feith's job to come up with a strategy for executing such a war.

"We said to ourselves, 'We are at war with an international terrorist network that includes organizations, state supporters and nonstate supporters. What does that mean to be at war with a network?' " Feith said in an interview.

But Feith felt he needed to bring on help in the Pentagon for another reason, too, said four other senior current and former Pentagon civilians: the belief that the CIA and other intelligence agencies dangerously undervalued threats to U.S. interests.

"The strategic thinking was the Middle East is going down the tubes. It's getting worse, not better," said one former senior Pentagon official who worked closely with Feith's offices. "I don't think we thought there was objective evidence that could be got from CIA, DIA, INR," he added, referring to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's main intelligence office, and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Feith's office worked not only on "how to fight Saddam Hussein but also how to fight the NSC, the State Department and the intelligence community," which were not convinced of Hussein's involvement in terrorism, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Feith set up the first of his two shops, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, to "study al Qaeda worldwide suppliers, chokepoints, vulnerabilities and recommend strategies for rendering terrorist networks ineffective," according to a January 2002 document sent to DIA.

The group never grew larger than two people, said Feith and William J. Luti, who was director of the Office of Special Plans and deputy undersecretary of defense for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.

The evaluation group's largest project was what one participant called a "sociometric diagram" of links between terrorist organizations and their supporters around the world, mostly focused on al Qaeda, the Islamic Resistance Movement (or Hamas), Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. It was meant to challenge the "conventional wisdom," said one senior defense official, that terrorist groups did not work together.

It looked "like a college term paper," said one senior Pentagon official who saw the analysis. It was hundreds of connecting lines and dots footnoted with binders filled with signals intelligence, human source reporting and even thirdhand intelligence accounts of personal meetings between terrorists.

One of its key and most controversial findings was that there was a connection between secular states and fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.

If anything, the analysis reinforced the view of top Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul N. Wolfowitz and Feith, that Hussein's Iraq had worrisome contacts with al Qaeda over the last decade that could only be expected to grow.

The evaluation group's other job was to read through the huge, daily stream of intelligence reporting on terrorism and "highlight things of interest to Feith," said one official involved in the process. "We were looking for connections" between terrorist groups.

From time to time, senior defense officials called bits of intelligence to the attention of the White House, they said.

Feith said the worldwide threat study itself never left the Pentagon. It helped inform the military strategy on the war on terrorism, but it was only one small input into that process, he said.

Mainly, the work of the evaluation group, Luti said, "went into the corporate memory."
'Very Helpful'

In the summer of 2002, Shelton, who had been working virtually on her own, was joined by Christopher Carney, a naval reservist and associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Together they completed their study on the links between al Qaeda and Iraq.

"It was interesting enough that I brought it to Secretary Rumsfeld because Secretary Rumsfeld is well known for being a particularly intelligent reader of intelligence," Feith said.

Rumsfeld told Feith, " 'Call George and tell him we have something for him to see,' " Feith said. On Aug. 15, 2002, a delegation from Pentagon was buzzed through the guard station at CIA headquarters for the Tenet meeting. Shelton and Carney were the briefers; Feith and DIA Director Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby accompanied them.

"The feedback that I got from George right after the briefing was, 'That was very helpful, thank you,' " Feith said.

CIA officials who sat in the briefing were nonplussed. The briefing was all "inductive analysis," according to one participant's notes from the meeting. The data pointed to "complicity and support," nothing more. "Much of it, we had discounted already," said another participant.

Tenet, according to agency officials, never incorporated any of the particulars from the briefing into his subsequent briefings to Congress. He asked some CIA analysts to get together with Shelton for further discussions.

Feith also arranged for Shelton to brief deputy national security adviser Hadley and Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

"Her work did not change [Hadley's] thinking because his source for intelligence information are the products produced by the CIA," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Nor did the briefing's content reach national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Cheney or Bush, according to McCormack and Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems. (In November 2003, a written version of her PowerPoint briefing, a version submitted to the intelligence committees investigating prewar intelligence, was published in the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.) The briefing openly challenged the prevailing CIA view that a religion-based terrorist, Osama bin Laden, would not seek to work with a secular state such as Iraq. "They were the ones who were intellectually unwilling to rethink this issue," one defense official said. "But they were not willing to shoot it down, either."

Whatever the agency really thought of Shelton's analysis, on Oct. 7, 2002, CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin sent a letter to the Senate intelligence committee which, in a general sense, supported her conclusion: "We have solid evidence of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade," it said. ". . . Growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's link to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action."
A Nondescript Name

In August 2002, as the possibility of war with Iraq grew more likely, Luti's Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (NESA) was reorganized into the Office of Special Plans and NESA. Its job, according to Feith and Luti, was to propose strategies for the war on terrorism and Iraq.

It was given a nondescript name to purposefully hide the fact that, although the administration was publicly emphasizing diplomacy at the United Nations, the Pentagon was actively engaged in war planning and postwar planning.

The office staff never numbered more than 18, including reservists and people temporarily assigned. "There are stories that we had hundreds of people beavering away at this stuff," Feith said. ". . . They're just not true."

The office's job was to devise Pentagon policy recommendations for the larger interagency decision-making on every conceivable issue: troop deployment planning, coalition building, oil sector maintenance, war crimes prosecution, ministry organization, training an Iraqi police force, media strategy and "rewards, incentives and immunity" for former Baath Party supporters, according to a chart hanging in the special plans office, Room 1A939, several months ago.

The insular nature of Luti's office, and his outspoken personal conviction that the United States should remove Hussein, sparked rumors at the Pentagon that the office was collecting intelligence on its own, that it had hired its own intelligence agents. Even diehard Bush supporters, some of whom were critical of Feith's and Luti's management style, were repeating the rumors.

Yesterday, Rumsfeld addressed the controversy, saying critics of the Office of Special Plans had a "conspiratorial view of the world." Shelton's analysis, he emphasized, was shared with the CIA, and White House briefings were not unusual.

"We brief the president. We brief the vice president. We brief the [CIA director]. We brief the secretary of state. . . . That is not only not a bad thing, it's a good thing."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54569-2004Mar12?language=printer

[Dinner]

And the recent Opinion piece

Iraq, al-Qaeda and Tenet's Equivocation

By Christina Shelton
Saturday, June 30, 2007; A21

On Aug. 15, 2002, I presented my part of a composite Pentagon briefing on al-Qaeda and Iraq to George Tenet, then CIA director. In his recent book, "At the Center of the Storm," Tenet wrote that I said in opening remarks that "there is no more debate," "no further analysis is required" and "it is an open-and-shut case."

I never said those things. In fact, I said the covert nature of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda made it difficult to know its full extent; al-Qaeda's security precautions and Iraq's need to cloak its activities with terrorist networks precluded a full appreciation of their relationship. Tenet also got the title of the briefing wrong. It was "Assessing the Relationship Between Iraq and al-Qa'ida," not "Iraq and al-Qa'ida -- Making the Case."

That day I summarized a body of mostly CIA reporting (dating from 1990 to 2002), from a variety of sources, that reflected a pattern of Iraqi support for al-Qaeda, including high-level contacts between Iraqi senior officials and al-Qaeda, training in bomb making, Iraqi offers of safe haven, and a nonaggression agreement to cooperate on unspecified areas. My position was that analysts were not addressing these reports since much of the material did not surface in finished, disseminated publications.

Tenet revealed in his book that the CIA's terrorism analysts "believed to be credible the reporting that suggested a deeper relationship" between al-Qaeda and Iraq but that the agency's regional analysts "significantly limited the cooperation that was suggested by the reporting." Therefore, according to Tenet, an alternative view existed within the ranks of his analysts.

Tenet's response to my presentation was to attempt to denigrate my credentials. I was not a "naval reservist," as he wrote in his book, assigned to the Pentagon for temporary duty. In fact, I was a career intelligence analyst for two decades, and I spent half of that time in counterintelligence. I did not draw conclusions beyond the reporting, as he suggested. I addressed the substantive material in the reports.

Tenet claimed that the body of reporting did not prove an "operational" relationship existed. I never said it did. The use of the caveat "operational" became a convenient -- albeit transparent -- way to discount the credibility of the 1990s reporting and the relationship as I had described it. In his book Tenet maintained that there was no evidence of Iraq's having "authority, direction, and control of al-Qa'ida operations." I don't recall anyone inside or outside the intelligence community ever making that claim.

It's notable that on Oct. 7, 2002, Tenet sent a letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence stating that "our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida is evolving." He wrote:

· "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade" and of "the presence in Iraq of al-Qa'ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad."

· "Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa'ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression" and that "al-Qa'ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

· "Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent US military action."

His first two points reflected the material I used in my presentation. However, when addressing the issue of al-Qaeda and Iraq in his book, Tenet made no reference to this letter. Yet in his book Tenet provided details on activities between al-Qaeda and Iraq in addition to those described in his letter.

Since 2002, information from interviews of people being held in custody regarding contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda has not always been reliable. Detainees may say what they think captors want to hear, or they may contradict themselves. For example, one al-Qaeda operative (Abu Zubaida) claimed that there were no ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, then said any relationship would be highly compartmentalized. Another (Ibn al-Shayk al-Libi) said that Iraq provided al-Qaeda operatives with training in chemical and biological weapons; then he recanted. Such testimony should not be taken at face value.

More reliable information probably will come from seized Iraqi documents -- especially those of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS), which was the conduit for al-Qaeda contacts. One IIS document dated March 28, 1992, cited Osama bin Laden as having a good relationship with the IIS bureau in Syria. Another says that the IIS director met with bin Laden in Sudan in 1995. James Woolsey, a former director of central intelligence, has written that captured documents indicated a participant in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (Abdul Rahman Yasin) was living in Iraq and receiving a monthly stipend.

A more complete understanding of Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda will emerge when historians can exploit the numerous seized documents free from the politics of the Iraq war. For his part, Tenet, who was at the center of the political thicket, placed himself on both sides of the issue: providing intelligence on al-Qaeda and Iraq's relationship while at the same time inferring that no ties existed, only "concerns."

The writer was an intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1984 to 2006.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/29/AR2007062901947.html

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

We're fighting al-Qaeda and Iranian back militants.

That would make sense, given that the al-Qaeda types and Iranian-controlled Shia groups are the ones causing most of the trouble at the moment.

No, it's just the new propaganda line from an Administration floundering for anything they hope might get them a little bit more support. It's just more doublespeak from Big Brother. I thought I made that rather clear.

I believe Pace said only a couple months back that there is absolutely no evidence that Iran is aiding the Iraqi insurgents or al-Qaeda or any of the groups the U.S. is fighting. The foreign minister of Afghanistan also said a couple weeks ago that the claims by the U.S. that Iran is aiding the Taliban are complete fabrications.

The incredulousness of some people.

[Drake Tungsten]

No, it's just the new propaganda line from an Administration floundering for anything they hope might get them a little bit more support.

The current situation (vague truce with Sunnis/Shias, stepped-up attacks against al Qaeda/Iranian agents) has been developing for months now. Only a person ignorant of developments in Iraq would believe that the recent offensive against AQI and the resultant media coverage is really just "propaganda." It's the new strategy Petraeus has put in place...

[Dinner]

Not at all. In fact it's so far off base that it is hardly worth responding too. It's the same crap in the same can with a different label on it. This is just marketing to try to spin things and nothing more.

[Drake Tungsten]

Why are you talking to me? You know I'm not allowed to talk back...

[chequita guevara]

The fact, Drake, that some Sunnis have temporarily accepted our aid does not mean that we have a truce with "the Sunnis," vague or otherwise. AQI is a tiny organization. Since the invasion, the number of estimated insurgents has grown from 5,000 to 70,000. AQI, on the other hand, has never been estimated to be more than a few hundred foreign fighters.

As for the "Iranian" backed militants, the Shia's we're fighting are Sadr's people. The Iranian back militia is the Badr Brigade, whom we are not fighting.

Every Sunni we kill is automatically drafted into AQI by the U.S. Every Sadrist we kill is automatically funded by Iran, by U.S. government definition.

The fact that military in Iraq denies that Iran is supplying the insurgency against the U.S. is more telling than the lapdogs of the Administration wailing that they are.

[Drake Tungsten]

As for the "Iranian" backed militants, the Shia's we're fighting are Sadr's people. The Iranian back militia is the Badr Brigade, whom we are not fighting.

Incorrect. JAM splintered months ago, with the factions still loyal to Sadr avoiding confrontation with the US while the factions affiliated with Iran (the Quds Force in particular) stepped up their attacks.

edit: From March 21st...

The violent Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army is breaking into splinter groups, with up to 3,000 gunmen now financed directly by Iran and no longer loyal to the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, adding a potentially even more deadly element to Iraq's violent mix.

Two senior militia commanders told the Associated Press that hundreds of these fighters have crossed into Iran for training by the elite Quds force, a branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard thought to have trained Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

The breakup is an ominous development at a time when U.S. and Iraqi forces are working to defeat religious-based militias and secure Iraq under government control. While al-Sadr's forces have battled the coalition repeatedly, including pitched battles in 2004, they've mostly stayed in the background during the latest offensive.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-03-21-shiite-millitia_N.htm

[Drake Tungsten]

Here's another one for che...

Iran 'baring its teeth' in Afghanistan, officials say

KABUL (AFP) - In public, Afghanistan has played down US and British allegations that Iran is feeding weapons to Taliban insurgents, but in private, officials here say the charges are true -- and worrying.

A serious debate is under way in President Hamid Karzai's administration about Iranian support to both the Taliban and emerging opposition political parties, several officials told AFP.

The government is in a difficult position: it is unwilling to sour relations with another neighbour or become involved in the heated US-Iran dispute, but it is also afraid Afghanistan will again become a battleground for more powerful nations.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said this month that given the large number of weapons coming into Afghanistan from Iran, it was hard to believe "that it's taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government."

The charge is denied by Tehran as "100 percent lies."

"We are seriously following the reports with concern," said Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen. "We want to continue our friendly relations with Iran."

Karzai has said there is no proof the Iranian-marked weapons are provided by Tehran.

"Iran and Afghanistan have never been as friendly as they are today," he said earlier this month.

But a defence ministry general said the government had "evidence", including documents, to prove the weapons were coming into the country for the Taliban, with Tehran's knowledge.

The official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, would not give further details.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070701/wl_mideast_afp/afghanistanunrestiranuspolitics_070701045517

[Drake Tungsten]

And another!

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A top special operations officer from Lebanon's Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has been captured in Iraq, where U.S. officials say he played a key role in a January attack that killed five Americans.

Ali Mussa Daqduq, an explosives expert, was captured in March in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where he was helping train and lead Shiite militias fighting coalition troops, U.S. intelligence officials told CNN.

Daqduq pretended to be deaf and mute when captured, and his identity was not known for weeks, the officials said.

Once uncovered, however, they said he began to talk, and they now believe he played a crucial role in the January 20 attack in Karbala...

Intelligence officials say Daqduq is one of Hezbollah's top special operations commanders, an expert in the use of roadside bombs. The Americans say he, along with the Iraqi militia commanders he worked with, has admitted working with Iran's elite Quds Force special operations unit.

U.S. commanders have said for months that Iraqi militants have been receiving weapons and training from members of the Quds Force, an element of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Washington has demanded the Iranian government stop the flow of arms and militants across its border -- which, along with the diplomatic standoff over Iran's nuclear fuel program, has raised fears of a wider war in the region.

Iran, which has close ties to the Shiite parties that control Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government, has repeatedly denied the allegations. But U.S. intelligence officials said the Quds Force has been backing the creation of Shiite "special groups" modeled on Hezbollah, which holds sway over much of southern Lebanon.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/07/01/iraq.hezbollah/index.html?eref=edition

You picked a bad day to deny Iranian meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Why are you talking to me? You know I'm not allowed to talk back...

You most certainly are. You just can't be your normal irritating self using lies and half truthes to disguise and agenda. In short your perfectly free but you just have to pretend you are a normal person. I'm sure you can manage it.

[Dinner]

Oh DAMN! Chegitz is laying down the truth and others are left picking up the pieces of their propaganda!