Here we go again
It is amazing how fast the wardrums against Iran are beating. Just
this morning CNN was breathlessly reporting that Iranian special forces
were behind the snatch and grab operation in Karbala that killed 5 US
soldiers. Quietly and quickly they noted that this was just a theory
with minimal evidence beyond the fact that the raid was well planned
and conducted. And then they went straight back towards how
sophisticated the Iranian operation may have been. The news is heating
up and more examples are popping up.
Via the Spork in the Drawer, is this article in the LA Times on Iran:
The efforts could include more forceful patrols by Air Force and Navy
fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border to counter the smuggling of
bomb supplies from Iran, a senior Pentagon official said……Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who
advocates military strikes in Iran, said U.S. planes along the border
could be better used to keep bomb-making materials out of Iraq."We know they are doing this. Why do we accept it?" McInerney said. "For every [improvised explosive device] that goes off in Iraq, a bomb should go off in Iran." [Emphasis added.]
My buddy Cernig repeatedly notes that there is minimal evidence of significant evidence of Iranian smuggling of weapons into Iraq. Instead most weapons are either manufactured locally, being bought on the black market, stolen from Iraqi government armories, creatively lost by militia members and found by fellow militia members, or recovered from the vast number of unguarded ammunition dumps.
British forces that have been operating on the Iraq-Iran border in an anti-smuggling/border security mission are seeing next to no evidence of significant smuggling activities in their sectors. And these units are light infantry units that can actually patrol and cover ground. The United States knows that occassional aerial reconnascance flights are unlikely to detect or deter any small scale smuggling activities, so unless there are multiple dozen truck convoys going across the Iraq-Iran border carrying visible rocket launchers, these flights will do nothing to stop the small scale smuggling that exists. Instead, they are most likely another provocation and potentiallity of ‘going off course’ will be a constant potential ratcheting of tensions between the United States and Iran.
I’m back
Sorry for my long absence from Comments from Left Field. I had been registered to blog via my blogger account for Fester’s Place before Mike invited me to blog here. Fester’s Place on Blogger just was transferred over to Blogger 2.0. Until this morning I was unable to log into Comments to post.
Souled Us Down The River
Deep Double Chin Secret Background
Stop The Escalation of The War In Iraq
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Stop Escalation
Putting Things in Perspective
David Bell has a very interesting op-ed in yesterday’s LA Times that is worth a read.
IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.
Beerfly
I’ve been dragged down lately by the day job, but I’m gearing back up. I missed the State of the Union, Martin Luther King Day, Blog for Choice, and the Anti-War rally in DC, among other things. Anyways, throw some traffic to the folks linked below…
Folk Songs Of The Far Right Wing (hat tip Foiled Goil)
Kerblog in Beirut ( hat tip to Minstrel Boy
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The Opportunity Costs of the Iraq War
David Leonhardt writes an excellent piece in the New York Times which compares the costs of the Iraq War with other items we might have purchased. He writes:
Whatever number you use for the war’s total cost, it will tower over costs that normally seem prohibitive. Right now, including everything, the war is costing about $200 billion a year.
Treating heart disease and diabetes, by contrast, would probably cost about $50 billion a year. The remaining 9/11 Commission recommendations — held up in Congress partly because of their cost — might cost somewhat less. Universal preschool would be $35 billion. In Afghanistan, $10 billion could make a real difference. At the National Cancer Institute, annual budget is about $6 billion.
Hell, we could have universal health care for $100 billion a year. Think of how many lives could be saved as opposed to all the death and carnage that has been wrought by the horrible decision to engage in this war.
At least someone has the stomach for it
Glenn Greenwald has done what most mere mortals could not, sat through the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” with special guest Alberto Gonzales. The big revelation…bloggers bad.
Vetting Bad Apples
The AP has this post informing us that Private Steven Green was found to have “homicidal ideations” some three months before he with the assistance of four other soldiers killed a family of four that include a father, mother, a 14 year old daughter and 7 year old daughter. The 14 year old - Abeer Qassim al-Janabi - was raped and her body set afire.
Certainly this vicious behavior is highly exceptional. Nonetheless, the damage caused by acts like this is immense and raises the threat of retributive violence to the good soldiers in Iraq.
Clearly the system failed to vet Private Green. This leads me to a concern. With recruiting standards being dropped significantly to meet recruiting goals in 2006, aren’t we running an increased risk of more bad apples instead of learning the lessons of the deletrious effects of an Abu Graib, the murder of Hashim Ibrahim Awad in Hamdania, the Haditha killings, and the Green rape and murders.
And to come up with another 20,000 troops, isn’t it likely that few more bad apples are likely to get through the vetting process?
UPDATE: John Cole at Balloon Juice posts an anecdote about a friend who was vetted from the front lines in Iraq because of a past DWI conviction. From these two anecdotes, my guess is that the vetting process is a mixed bag — sometimes overly restrictive, other times unduly permissive. But I still wonder whether, with the reduced standards used to meet recruiting goals in 2006 and the need to now come up with another slate of 22,000 troops, there is an increasing likelihood that a few more bad apples will slip through.
Bush: I’ll Take the Surge & Purge
Where are the troops for the Bush Surge/Escalation in Iraq to come from?
Well, FDL catches a couple of nuggets in a piece from the Boston Globe that suggests some of the troops will come from Afghanistan.
Here are the key portions from the Globe:
A US Army battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks to deploy to Iraq.* * * * *
Conway said US commanders understand that the Afghan war is an “economy of force” operation, a military term for a mission that is given minimal resources because it is a secondary priority, in this case behind Iraq.
This is backwards! Afghanistan - the plausible nation building project - will get worse so that Bush can take a flyer on his vanity project.
Boise State Wins Fiesta Bowl with Trickery
Since my Wolverines were trounced in the Rose Bowl by USC I thoroughly expected that nothing could brighten my college football spirits. Well I was wrong. Boise State’s OT victory with the use of a derivation of the fabled statue-of-liberty play could bring a smile to even the most distraught college football fan.
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