According to The NYTimes:
"A raid on a Shiite weapons cache in the southern city of Hilla one week ago is providing what American officials call the best evidence yet that the deadliest roadside bombs in Iraq are manufactured in Iran."However:
"critics assert that nearly all the bomb components could have been produced in Iraq or somewhere else in the region. Even if the evidence were to establish that Iran is the source, they add, that does not necessarily mean that the Iranian leadership is responsible."Critics, as well as many others have come to believe the historical re-write that somehow the "intelligence" used for the invasion was somehow written and massaged by the administration. "Intelligence," prior to "go" was commonly accepted among the media AND international community. Since that time that reality has been allowed to morph into what critics want it to be. Why this is preferred to reality is anyone's guess, but it smacks of a lack of integrity to me.
"The evidence is unlikely to satisfy skeptics who have been suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to lay the groundwork for isolating or even attacking Iran. They point to the flawed intelligence used by the administration to accuse Saddam Hussein of harboring unconventional weapons before invading Iraq nearly four years ago."
From the on-line version page two of the article (bold mine):
"Skeptics say the new details do not support a conclusion that only Iran could be providing the components. “Iran may well be involved in the supply of these weapons, but so far they haven’t proved it,” said Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for National Security at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research and advocacy organization."Kudos to the paper for actually identifying CAP as "liberal." At the same time however the paper chooses to refute this earlier statement in the final paragraph of the article at page 3 of the on-line article.
'“Before we act on the assumption that these are Iranian we’ve got to rule out all these other possibilities,” he said. “The military hasn’t done that.”'
"Critics said that all of them could be replicated by skilled Iraqis or others in the Middle East with a solid knowledge of electronics and basic manufacturing techniques."
(Click on this link for the account of the Hilla raid given by American officials)Overall, not a horrifyingly "biased" story from The New York Times. That "critics," have nothing much more than a paranoid view of President Bush and his actions based upon the complete and utter denial of facts surrounding Saddam Hussein and "cooked" intelligence in the run-up to the invasion to me is the more questionable angle in this debate.
To require "conclusive" evidence of "Iranian leaderships," involvement in Iranian interference in Iraq is to ignore everything we do know and just about every word out of Mamhoud Ahmadienjad's mouth. Momo giving a one on one order to take it to the infidels is not necessary when so much the man speaks is instructional to our enemies, though unfortunately not instructional enough for many out there. Those are the people that need to start listening, as he's saying it almost every day.
With regard to the claim copper linings could be manufactured anywhere:
"Major Weber pointed out that there were often slightly visible cracks forming circles around the tops of the liners when they were set on a table with their concave sides pointing down. Those imperfections were signs that the liners had been made in Iraq, Major Weber said. And because of the imperfections, he said, an E.F.P. made with them would be much less deadly. Such an E.F.P. would fragment rather than curl into a ball, he said, and the fragments would be much less likely to pierce armor."Leaning more toward fact in reporting in this article, without actually doing so makes me wonder at what point the paper will "apologize" for misleading the American public with accepted fact rather than their usual pooh poohing from anything America.
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