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Jewish World Review August 8, 2005 / 3 Av, 5765 Is Iran our new target? Intelligence seems to say so By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
On Wednesday, 14 Marine reservists from Ohio were killed when a powerful
roadside bomb was detonated near the amtrac in which they were riding,
hurling the 23 ton vehicle into the air as if it were a toy.
The incident spurred a spate of commentary by journalists about the
suitability of the amtrac — designed to ferry Marines from ship to shore —
as an armored personnel carrier.
The real problem, said retired Marine Col. Mackubin Owens, a professor at
the Naval War College, is the increasing sophistication of terrorist bombs.
The insurgents are using bigger explosives, and have figured out how to
"shape" the charge so the explosive force goes directly toward the vehicle
being attacked, instead of being dissipated in all directions.
"They'll go right through a heavily armored vehicle like an M1 tank from one
side right out the other side," said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey.
From whence might the insurgents have acquired such weapons and expertise?
NBC's Jim Miklaszewski provided a hint in a broadcast Thursday:
"U.S. military and intelligence officials tell NBC News that American
soldiers intercepted a large shipment of high explosives, smuggled into
northeastern Iraq from Iran only last week.
"The officials say the shipment contained dozens of shaped charges
manufactured recently," Miklaszewski said.
This was old news to Iran expert Michael Ledeen, who'd learned about the
seizure a week before Miklaszewski's broadcast. A reporter was baffled by
Ledeen's ho-hum response.
"So what?" Ledeen said. "It happens almost every day."
The reporter was amazed that the Shia Muslims who run Iran would supply
deadly weapons to Sunni extremists in Iraq who use them, often, to kill Shia
Muslims.
The reporter's amazement was a product of the same blindness that declared
there could be no cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida, because
the latter were religious fanatics who disliked Saddam because he was
secular.
They forgot the oldest adage in diplomacy is "the enemy of my enemy is my
friend."
"The Koran, whatever the particular exegesis employed, is no obstacle to
tactical alliances, any more than Mein Kampf prevented...Hitler, Mussolini
and Stalin from making alliances with their presumed mortal enemies when
circumstances warranted," Ledeen wrote.
The journalist's blindness regrettably is shared by many in the CIA, whose
dismal record of forecasting developments in the Middle East suggest more
weight should be given to the facts on the ground, and less to glib
ideological assumptions.
It is within this context that one must assess the leak to the Washington
Post Tuesday of portions of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran.
The portions leaked said analysts didn't think Iran could develop a nuclear
bomb for another ten years.
The analysis is preposterous on its face, because we developed an atom bomb
from scratch in less than four years, and knowledge about how to build one
has spread widely since then. The estimate by Israel's Mossad that Iran
will have the bomb in two to four years almost certainly is closer to the
mark.
This is a reprise of the uranium in Africa kerfuffle. Joseph Wilson was
sent to Niger, at the urging of his wife, Valerie Plame, not to find out
whether Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake, but to find reasons for
claiming he was not. Wilson subsequently lied about what he found in leaks
to two journalists and in an oped in the New York Times. (According to the
London Telegraph, Plame was put on an enforced, unpaid leave of absence last
year, which suggests disciplinary action.)
But Ledeen is right that Iranian support for the insurgency in Iraq is old
news. I've heard dozens of such reports in the last two years. By
highlighting this seizure, is military intelligence trying to prepare public
opinion for action against Iran?
Stay tuned.
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© 2005, Jack Kelly |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
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