Michelle Bachmann is still clueless

MPR's Mid-morning show interviewed Rep. Michelle Bachmann (and Rep. Tim Walz) yesterday. You can find the audio of the hour-long show here.

They both have interesting things to say about Iraq, though Bachmann continues to come across as a clueless right-winger. But for my money the best part starts at the 40:29 mark, when Kerri Miller asks Bachmann about the utterly, ignorantly crazy statement she made about Iran last year -- a statement she later claimed meant something entirely different.

In the interview, she spends 4 minutes babbling non sequiturs in response to Miller's question. Then she's handed an economic question, in which she says the best way to avoid a recession is to cut corporate taxes -- something that not even Bush or Ben Bernanke agree with.

Bachmann, politics, midtopia

Bye bye, Ahmadinejad

Some good (and somewhat counterintuitive) news out of Iran: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be losing the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The reasons are twofold:

1. His populist economic policies aren't working. Inflation has jumped from 12 percent to 19 percent, with the cost of many basic necessities jumping sharply.

2. His confrontational rhetoric appears to have hurt him, too. The article says that the release of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate -- which said Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb and essentially deep-sixed any plans to attack Iran -- relieved a lot of pressure on Iran and is allowing internal divisions to show, divisions that were kept under wraps by the unifying force of a possible war with us. But if Khamenei thought the rhetoric had been helpful, he would have rewarded Ahmadinejad for standing up to the Great Satan. His decision to weaken the president suggests that Khamenei thinks Ahmadinejad was part of the problem.

The article is also a reminder that, for all the attention neocons, Muslim bashers and others pay to Ahmadinejad, he has very little actual power. Iran is only a quasi-democracy, and it's a parliamentary form to boot. The presidency is mostly a ceremonial post; the real power lies with the Guardian Council, a group of clerics headed by Khamenei. They have their own huge faults -- notably being repressively conservative and antidemocratic -- but they're not anywhere near as fiery or confrontational as the president.

Of course, the Revolutionary Guards are a whole other kettle of fish, trying to provoke U.S. warships and implicated in supplying weaponry to militia groups in Iraq. They're a reminder that the Iranian government is not nearly as monolithic as we like to think. Iran saying the Gulf encounter was "routine" is portrayed as Iran putting forth a bald-faced lie. It might be; but it might also be a case of the central government either not knowing what really happened, or not wanting to admit that it doesn't have full control over the Guard.

Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency is seeing progress in its efforts to monitor and disclose the full extent of Iran's nuclear program, specifically the weapons program it hid from inspectors and then mothballed once it was discovered.

We'll see how things go, but it seems possible that we're on the verge of a broadly satisifying resolution in Iran: the sidelining of Ahmadinejad, effective oversight of their nuclear program and the marginalization of those here in the United States who were banging the drum for war. It's a win, win, win.

If it happens. This is the Middle East, after all. Stay tuned.

Iran, politics, midtopia

Catching up

Some quick thoughts on current events:

IRAQ
The surge is working from a military perspective. With all due credit to our troops and Gen. Petraeus' solid planning and execution of a competent strategy, however, the turnaround is mostly due to thousands of Sunni tribesmen switching sides, joining the U.S. to fight Al-Qaeda militants.

The switch is partly due to AQ's self-destructive tendency to attack other Sunnis. When AQ stepped up attacks against fellow Sunnis, it marked the beginning of the end of their fall. Particularly because Iraqis are not, by and large, extremist material.

But because the improvement is largely based on a change of allegiance, the improvement is fragile: if the Sunni tribes switch back, the improvement could disappear as quickly as it appeared.

Which underscores the main challenge remaining in Iraq: achieving the political changes that will make the security improvements permanent. And progress there has been slow.

Whether the invasion, even in hindsight, was justified or worth the cost is not the question here; we're concerned only with achieving the best end we can now that we're in Iraq. In that context, Petraeus and Bush have achieved enough to stave off demands for withdrawal; they've earned a chance to demonstrate that they can make the changes stick. I hope they can, but it's way too early to declare victory.


IRAN
The CIA has thrown the administration's Iran rhetoric into disarray with a new intelligence estimate that indicates Iran's nuclear weapons program has been frozen since 2003.

Some blindsided neocons, like Norman Podhoretz, were reduced to floating conspiracy theories -- that the new NIE is an attempt by the CIA to undercut the administration for political purposes, as if the CIA is so politicized that they're willing to let Iran get nukes if it lets them make Bush look bad in the short run.

For my money, though, this doesn't really change things much. It's good news if true, and it certainly short-circuits the premature (and hopelessly naive) drumbeat for war that was being beaten in certain quarters. Fact is, thanks to the ongoing mess in Iraq, this country has no appetite for war with Iran unless and until they actually drop a bomb on somebody.

But Iran still has a program, even if it's in mothballs. And we still need an intrusive inspection regime and other concrete assurances that Iran cannot and will not develop a nuclear weapon. So all the NIE does is put the ball firmly in diplomacy's court, where it should have been all along. I support limited military action to avoid a Persian Bomb, but that necessity is still a long way off.

As an aside, I love watching how people accept or don't accept the NIE as credible based on its contents. Up until now, many administration critics have all but accused Bush and Cheney of making up the NIEs to support their policy -- while administration supporters pointed to the NIE as authoritative grounding for our Iran policy. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and the roles are reversed. Not everyone is playing that game, of course -- Hot Air is doing a pretty good job, for example, despite linking to lots of people who aren't. But those who do demonstrate that partisanship has pickled their brains.

THE ELECTION
I'm still not seeing anything to love. My biggest fear is that we'll get a Rudy-Hillary matchup in the general. On the one hand this wouldn't be too bad, because they're both basically centrists. On the other hand, they have the highest negatives of the candidates, and both can be fairly criticized for blowing with the political winds. So if they clinch the nominations, we will see perhaps the most negative presidential campaign in history, and the lowest voter turnout in decades.

Giuliani, Hillary, Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Tomcats go to the shredder

In a crunching coda to January's F-14 spare parts flap, The Pentagon has decided to scrap the planes entirely rather than risk even relatively innocuous parts finding their way to Iran -- the only remaining operator of F-14s.

This gets my vote for quote of the month:

"One of the ways to make sure that no one will ever use an F-14 again is to cut them into little 2-by-2-foot bits."

The decision means paying several million dollars to destroy them rather than earning millions selling the parts. But that seems a cost well-worth paying.

The only real losers, it seems, are F-14 devotees, who are finding it difficult to obtain them for museums and the like.

F-14, politics, midtopia

Iran in Iraq

The U.S. military says it has more evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq:

Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.

Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman, also said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.

There are three main bits of evidence pointing to Iranian involvement:

1. The sophistication of the attack itself, using English-speaking attackers wearing stolen U.S. uniforms and armed with detailed knowledge of the base's operations. It wasn't the sort of thing you'd normally expect the Shiite militias to pull off by themselves.

2. Militant testimony. Much of the additional proof is based on what the military says captured militants revealed under interrogation. According to them, the militans all report receiving aid from Iran or working on behalf of Iran. Damning stuff, but this is the weakest link in the chain, because there's no independent confirmation of the accounts and there's always the suspicion that "interrogation" actually means "torture" and thus the resulting information is suspect.

3. The fact that one of the captured militants, Ali Mussa DaqDuq, is a senior Hezbollah bombmaker. This is direct evidence of Hezbollah's involvement. However, it is only indirect evidence of Iranian involvement. It's always possible to argue that Hezbollah was acting on its own. On the other hand, several observers note that Hezbollah had little to gain from getting involved in Iraq; angering the United States would not help its efforts in Lebanon, and meddling in Iraq would make it seem more like the Iranian puppet it has long denied being.

So this is very close to a "smoking gun" of Iranian involvement -- and certainly enough to justify some blunt measures aimed at limiting Iranian influence, such as restricting the number and movements of Iranian representatives in Iraq, pressuring Iran diplomatically and economically and stationing significant forces on the Iranian border to stop cross-border smuggling.

All three have drawbacks. The first requires cooperation from the Iraqi government, which sees Iran as more ally than enemy; the second assumes we have any meaningful diplomatic or economic leverage; and the last may be unrealistic for several reasons: A lack of troops, the length and porousness of the border, and the fact that any buildup there will be taken as a sign of possible aggression by Iran.

Which points up a maddening fact about the situation: It may be difficult to mount much meaningful pressure on Iran over this. Hezbollah, likewise, is somewhat protected from retaliation, because an aggressive move against them could cause a further deterioration of the situation in Lebanon, something nobody in the region wants. Such a move would also be opposed by those European countries that have troops in the beefed-up U.N. peacekeeping force there -- troops that would become high-value targets if we turned the Hezbollah-Israel confrontation there into a Hezbollah-versus-the-West battle.

So the situation may simply call for hard-nosed forebearance: aggressively pursuing Iranian operatives in Iraq, accumulating evidence of Iranian involvement and using targeted strikes to take out clearly identified targets supporting the effort -- like, say, a Quds staging area just inside Iran or a Hezbollah training camp in Lebanon. As long as the strikes are carefully tailored and limited -- attacking a Hezbollah location implicated in Iraq operations, for example, not launching a broad attack on Hezbollah in general -- we could send some pointed messages while avoiding a broader conflict.

One other thing is crucial: support from the Iraqi government for moves against Iran. If that's not forthcoming -- and it may not be -- then there's no point in taking many of the other steps. Iraq has to decide if it wants Iran meddling in its affairs. If it doesn't, we can take vigorous steps to combat it. If they don't mind, it's just one more reason why we should pull out sooner rather than later.

Hezbollah, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Iranian weapons in Iraq update

Pajamas Media has a 12-minute video from Iraq, interviewing an ordnance disposal officer on the origin of various weapons discovered in Iraq. The point of the video: they're Iranian.

But PM then goes on to misrepresent its own video, calling it proof of Iranian involvement in Iraq.

I like the video, although the reporter asks some (to me) cringingly ignorant questions. The EOD officer is polite, informative and clear. But he doesn't shed any new light on the subject of Iranian involvement.

The mere presence of Iranian-made weaponry in Iraq does not say anything about how it got there. It could have been bought on the black market, for instance. (And if it were, that would, conversely, not be evidence that Iran wasn't involved: countries routinely use the black market to disguise what are essentially arms transfers).

Nor does it get at how much weaponry is Iranian. As the major noted, Iraq is awash in unfathomably huge amounts of leftover ordnance. At a minimum, it's highly unlikely that Shiite Iran is arming Sunni insurgents. So even if Iran stopped sending weapons tomorrow, it wouldn't seriously hamper the ongoing violence.

I will be vastly unsurprised if it turns out Iran is arming Shiite groups in Iraq. But proving Iranian involvement is going to be very tough indeed, unless they're caught in the act of delivering it.
(h/t: Central Sanity)

Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Hezbollah opens South American branch

In yet another example of how Iraq isn't helping stop the spread of terrorism, Hezbollah (who we're not fighting at the moment) now has a cell in South America.

From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier, Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.

An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.

There's a lot of reliance on anonymous sources in this report, and it's a big step from operating in a lawless region of South America to being able to mount attacks on the United States. So the warnings and predictions should be taken with large grains of salt. Plus there simply aren't that many radical Muslims (or Muslims, period) in the region. Hezbollah's presence seems to be more of a smuggling and finance operation than a serious military effort.

But such spin-off operations are exactly what we should be confronting in our war on terror, and demonstrate why Iraq is an expensive drain on resources better used elsewhere. We should go where the terrorists are and confront them there, not invade an unrelated country and then find ourselves battling a smattering of jihadists amid a much larger native insurgency and a brewing civil war. All the latter approach does is waste mind-blowing amounts of money and create unnecessary enemies.

terrorism, South America, Hezbollah, politics, midtopia

Iran supporting the Taliban?

Take this one with a grain of salt at least as large as that used when the U.S. made similar accusations about Iranian involvement in Iraq.

U.S. military officials raised worries of a wider Iranian role in Afghanistan on Tuesday when Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington that U.S. forces had intercepted Iranian-made mortars and plastic explosives intended for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Counterterrorism officials in Washington have said a handful of senior al Qaeda operatives who fled to Iran after the war in Afghanistan in 2001 may have developed a working relationship with a secretive military unit linked to Iran's religious hard-liners.

U.S. officials caution, however, that any Iranian link to fighting in Afghanistan, notably in providing weapons to Taliban fighters, remains cloudy.

As with suspected Iranian involvement in Iraq, it's a reasonable possibility. But as with Iraq, there are certain uncomfortable facts that need explaining, such as whether any such activity is condoned or controlled by the government, and why Shiite Persian Iran would go out of its way to arm Sunni Arab and Pashtun fundamentalists.

Especially considering how some of the earlier allegations turned out. Remember the Austrian sniper rifles? Supposedly 100 .50-caliber weapons sold to Iran were found in Iraq -- 100 literal smoking guns.

Except that turned out not to be true. The rifles' maker, Steyr-Mannlicher, called attention to an article in an Austrian daily, Wiener Zeitung, specifically debunking the story, then followed that up with a press release Tuesday driving the point home.

So while I can readily believe Iran is stirring the pot in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I require some decent proof before we take drastic action. CIA, get cracking. Or heck, just capture some insurgents or Iranians in the act of bringing weaponry across the border.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Why all the handwringing over Britain and Iran?

The 15 captured British sailors and Royal Marines are home from Iran, and while many people are simply glad to have them back, already the blame and handwringing has begun.

I haven't written about this previously because I had limited time to post, and if there was one thing I was sure of it was that the Brits would be returned home unharmed sooner or later. Iran may be crazy, but they're not stupid. Or is that stupid, but not crazy? Anyway, there was no way they were going to hurt the prisoners, and the whole situation was just one more black eye for Iran, internationally speaking.

However, the reaction in some quarters now that the situation is over just ticks me off.

First, the blame.

Some commentators said the captured personnel must explain the apparently easygoing demeanor with which they admitted entering Iranian waters and made public, televised apologies after their March 23 detention by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

It's perfectly fine to ask questions about how the sailors came to be captured -- that's classic after-action review procedure. But it takes a lot of ignorance -- not to mention a complete lack of empathy -- to question what the prisoners did while in captivity.

During Vietnam, we had a hardline "name, rank and serial number" expectation of our POWs. What we discovered in the course of that conflict is that such an approach merely increased the psychological pressure on our captured soldiers, leading them to endure extremely harsh treatment for no good reason -- they had no sensitive information to protect -- and heaping guilt on them if and when they finally "broke." The result for many returning POWs: a lifetime of physical and psychological problems incurred for zero benefit to our war effort.

Based on those experiences, the U.S. military changed its mindset. When I was in the Army, the guidance was simple: If you find yourself in enemy hands, your sole duty is to survive and return home. Yes, if you have truly sensitive information then you have a duty not to divulge it if at all possible. Other than that, you simply do what you can to get through. If that means cooperating with your captors in transparently coerced dog-and-pony show, so be it. If that means signing "confessions" and telling them anything they want to hear, so be it. You do what you have to do.

There's an additional twist when you consider that the chain of command remains intact during imprisonment. The ranking officers or noncoms in a group are responsible for the well-being of everyone within that group. They set the standard for behavior, and as far as possible make decisions about when and how the group members will cooperate with their captors. That also, of course, makes them susceptible to psychological pressure that takes advantage of that responsibility. I may be quite willing to endure torture without cooperating. But am I willing to let them torture the 18-year-old gunner's mate who was captured along with me? And even if I am willing -- should I be?

As a general rule, no. My only responsibility in that situation is to get me and my troops back home in one piece, both mentally and physically.

So to those criticizing the British captives: knock it off. No harm was done, and be glad you didn't have to walk in their shoes.

Now, on to the handwringing, courtesy of Charles Krauthammer:

Iran has pulled off a tidy little success with its seizure and release of those 15 British sailors and marines: a pointed humiliation of Britain, with a bonus demonstration of Iran's intention to push back against coalition challenges to its assets in Iraq. All with total impunity. Further, it exposed the impotence of all those transnational institutions -- most prominently the European Union and the United Nations -- that pretend to maintain international order.

Okay, so he's not really wringing his hands -- though his main alternative would have been to immediately freeze European trade with Iran, a move that would have hurt Europe as well. But he's expressing the general sentiment of the handwringers. To which I have one response:

Give me a break.

This was not a "humiliation" of Britain. Iran seized sailors; Britain and the world denounced it; a few weeks later, Iran released them. Krauthammer sees a quid pro quo, but even if there is one -- and the evidence for that is so thin as to be ghostly -- it's incredibly tiny compared to the harm Iran caused to its own position with the seizure. So Iran proves it can defy the West -- whoop-de-do. Did anyone doubt that? Every time they do that they violate some norm of international behavior, which further isolates them and adds another ring to the target they're methodically painting on themselves.

Honestly, how is Iran stronger -- or Britain weaker -- for this event having happened? Self-serving neocons like Krauthammer claiming it is so does not make it true. With the dust settled, Iran is more isolated, not less. I fail to see how they benefited in any but the shortest of short terms.

So knock off the handwringing and the blame. This was a minor, if dramatic, event in a much larger dance, and it did nothing to change that dance in Iran's favor. It was a move that carried with it a whiff of desperation on Iran's part. The important thing now is to demonstrate how justified that desperation is, by keeping the screws on them to give up their enrichment program.

Iran, politics, midtopia

Iran feels the pinch

Diplomacy is starting to have an effect on Iran.

First, Russia suspended assistance for Iran's civilian nuclear program -- not out of principle, but because of a dispute over getting paid -- although today Russia said Iran had resumed payments.

More concretely, both Russia and China are urging Iran to accept United Nations demands, although they have both insisted that the problem be resolved peacefully and have tended to water down sanctions that would harm their lucrative commercial relationships with Iran.

Still, those sanctions got tougher over the weekend, with the U.N. Security Council unanimously voting to ban arms sales to or from Iran, ban access to international funding and impose travel restrictions on prominent Iranian officials.

Finally, Iran is starting to discover that it just doesn't have the pull in world markets that we do.

More than 40 major international banks and financial institutions have either cut off or cut back business with the Iranian government or private sector as a result of a quiet campaign launched by the Treasury and State departments last September, according to Treasury and State officials.

The financial squeeze has seriously crimped Tehran's ability to finance petroleum industry projects and to pay for imports. It has also limited Iran's use of the international financial system to help fund allies and extremist militias in the Middle East, say U.S. officials and economists who track Iran.

A paragraph worth noting:

The campaign differs from formal international sanctions -- and has proved able to win wider backing -- because it targets Iran's behavior rather than seeking to change its government. "This is not an exercise of power," Levey said in the interview. "People go along with you if it's conduct-based rather than a political gesture."

In other words, saber-rattling doesn't always help much. A credible threat of force often is necessary to force movement on difficult issues; but too much of it actually harms our cause by reducing support from people who might otherwise help. Thus the "speak softly" part of Theodore Roosevelt's "big stick" phrase.

The initiative was helped by Iran's repeated insistence on painting a target on itself, first by defying the United Nations and then with the rhetorical excesses of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This is how diplomacy works: gradually ratcheting up the pain level for noncompliance, while dangling carrots for compliance. At some point Iran will have to decide if its nuclear program is worth it -- especially because completing the program becomes increasingly difficult with each turn of the screw, there is the threat of military action if they get close to succeeding and they can expect to be an international and economic pariah as long as they keep trying. If the pain level is high enough, and we also provide a face-saving way out (such as the plan to have Russia take back Iran's spent fuel so it can't be reprocessed), we might yet curb their nuclear ambitions without firing a shot.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Rumors to the left of me, speculation to the right...

On the right, we have rumors that a retired Iranian general has gone missing and may have defected to the United States, an event that is reportedly sparking "panic" in Tehran.

The newspaper, al-Shark al-Awsat, cited "high-profile" sources saying former Iranian deputy defence minister and Revolutionary Guard commander Ali Reza Asghari had gone over to the West.

Reports from Istanbul that General Asghari's family had also disappeared in Turkey support the likelihood that he defected rather than was kidnapped by either the CIA or by Israel's Mossad, as has been speculated. The general went missing from his Istanbul hotel a month ago.

Iranian authorities, who have been silent on the disappearance until this week, claim he has been abducted.

Defections are good. As long as it's one of theirs. Why is this particularly important? Because of this:

General Asghari's crossing of the line, whether voluntary or not, is a resounding blow for the Iranian Government since he is privy to its most intimate secrets, particularly those concerning its nuclear capabilities and plans.

He served until two years ago as deputy defence minister, a post he held for eight years and which presumably offered an uninhibited view of virtually every aspect of Iran's security apparatus.

He was reportedly closely associated with Iran's activities in support of the Shi'ites in Iraq.

If true, this is a great big birthday present wrapped in ribbons and bows. But take it with a grain of salt for now. At the moment, it's just rumors and reports from unreliable sources.

On the left, Raw Story is claiming to have seen a memo confirming that one of the secret CIA prisons was at an intelligence training school in Poland. As an aside, it says its sources all say the CIA is no longer operating secret prisons -- and probably never had anything permanent, relying instead on a series of temporary, short-term facilities that it used as needed.

Take this one with a big grain of salt. It's plausible, but there is no independent confirmation of anything within it.

terrorism, Iran, politics, midtopia

Michele Bachmann in her own words

Michele Bachmann has now completed her retreat from her statement on Iraq.

In an op-ed piece in the Star Tribune, she wrote:

I said that an agreement had already been made to divide Iraq and create a safe haven for terrorists. Rather, I meant that America's adversaries are in agreement that a divided Iraq benefits their objective to expel America from the region, resulting in Iraq being a safe haven for terrorists.

Notice how the meaning of the second sentence does not in any way resemble that of the first.

The rest of the piece boils down to the revelation that "Iran and Al-Qaeda both wish us ill in Iraq." Wow. Really?

Bachmann's alternate reality has inspired satire from Wonkette and Unconfirmed Sources, as well as a real-life political challenger:

A lawyer for FBI whistleblower Jane Turner said Friday that he will run for Congress in 2008 in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District, currently represented by freshman GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Bob Hill, of Stillwater, said he will run as a Democrat but described his politics as independent. Hill said he will form a congressional committee on April 1.

Surely that's some sort of record for announcing a challenge to an incumbent. Bachmann's hasn't even been in office two months.

Bachmann, politics, midtopia

Hey! Iran! Maybe we should, like, talk

Rather surprising, the administration has reversed itself and agreed to talk to Syria and Iran about the situation in Iraq.

The move was announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in testimony on Capitol Hill, after Iraq said it had invited neighboring states, the United States and other nations to a pair of regional conferences.

Okay, it was grudgingly. And they were boxed in by the Iraqi government, which doesn't share Washington's aversion to actual diplomacy and is scrapping for survival. But better late than never.

Rice says the U.S. doesn't want to be subjected to extortion. But it's silly to think Syria or Iran will lift a finger to help if we don't actually talk to them. Yeah, they're going to want something. But it sure doesn't hurt to listen to what it is -- and make a few demands of our own.

As in the past, the administration's knee-jerk reaction to ideas it doesn't like is to stonewall. But unlike in the past, the administration is showing new willingness to reconsider that reaction in the cold light of morning. A willingness to talk brought a deal in North Korea; an acknowledgement that more troops are needed appears to be bringing some success with the surge. We shouldn't get our hopes up too high over the decision to talk to Iran, but it sure can't hurt.

terrorism, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

U.S. says it found more Iranian weapons

An arms trove buried in a palm grove in Iraq contains items linked to Iran, the U.S. military says.

The cache included what Maj. Marty Weber, a master explosives ordnance technician, said was C-4 explosive, a white substance, in clear plastic bags with red labels that he said contained serial numbers and other information that clearly marked it as Iranian.

It also contained large numbers of formed copper liners, of the sort needed to make explosively formed projectiles (EFPs), although the origin of those items appeared unknown.

The article makes a big deal about also finding a large amount of clearly non-Iranian material, like PVC pipe made in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. But that's hardly surprising; innocuous stuff like that would be bought on the open market, then married up with the speciality components needed to make an EFP. In this case, the copper liners appear to have been made specifically to match the size of the PVC. So what you have is an anti-vehicle pipe bomb: Fill a length of PVC with C-4, attach a liner to the top, and you've got an antitank mine.

If the C-4 is clearly linked to Iran, that's another piece of evidence showing Iranian involvement. But it still isn't conclusive -- C-4 is a very common explosive, just like the area is awash in AK-47s and RPGs -- and it still doesn't address the fact that our main opponents in Iraq, the Sunni insurgents, are probably not being supplied by Shiite Iran. Unless the point is that it's the Shiite militias, and not Sunni insurgents, who are now our real enemy.

Meanwhile, still no further word on the Steyr sniper rifles. That story is beginning to look bogus, considering that the provenance of the captured weapons should be easy to check.


politics, midtopia

Homegrown lunacy

I've said it before, and not to pile on, but Michelle Bachmann -- what a nutbar.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann claims to know of a plan, already worked out with a line drawn on the map, for the partition of Iraq in which Iran will control half of the country and set it up as a “a terrorist safe haven zone” and a staging area for attacks around the Middle East and on the United States.

The best part, of course, is that the area of Iraq she identified as part of the zone is on the other side of the country from Iran.

She later said her words were misconstrued, which actually means "boy, was I stupid."

Minnesota's own Cynthia McKinney. Or maybe Katherine Harris. Anyone wanna bet that Mark Kennedy reclaims his old seat in 2008?

And further: Patty Wetterling couldn't beat this fruitcake. Okay, conservative district and all, but maybe it's time for Patty to hang it up. Call it Minnesota's version of Kerry vs. Bush.

Iraq, Iran, Bachmann, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Iran roundup

As expected, an IAEA report has declared that Iran is in violation of U.N. resolutions regarding its nuclear program, opening the way for more severe sanctions.

Despite uncertainty over Iran's actual capabilities, the report nonetheless said that Iran has or soon will have 1,000 centrifuges for purifying uranium -- short of the 3,000 it expected to have by now (enough to produce one bomb's worth of uranium a year), but more than most outside observers expected.

Update: Here's the report (pdf).

Most everybody, including U.S. officials, say military action isn't imminent. Israel's being a bit mum, but Tony Blair said yesterday that an attack would be a bad idea, finally saying publicly what British officials had been saying privately for some time.

Then there's this:

Senior British government sources have told The Times that they fear President Bush will seek to “settle the Iranian question through military means” next year, before the end of his second term if he concludes that diplomacy has failed. “He will not want to leave it unresolved for his successor,” said one.

That's speculation, of course. If true, I'm of two minds on it. It's good not to let the diplomatic dance drag on indefinitely without results. But the end of his term is a fairly arbitrary deadline, and military action might simply hand his successor an ongoing crisis instead of an unresolved dispute. If we have to bomb -- and I'm on record supporting such a move if it proves necessary -- it should be because the talks went nowhere, not because Bush is preparing to leave office.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that our intelligence stinks...

Most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.

"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations said.

"They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities.

"Now [the inspectors] don't go in blindly. Only if it passes a credibility test."

...but Iran has some questions to answer.

One of the "outstanding issues" listed in yesterday's report involves a 15-page document that appears to have been handed to IAEA inspectors by mistake with a batch of unrelated paperwork in October 2005.

That document roughly describes how to make hemispheres of enriched uranium, for which the only known use is in nuclear warheads. Iran has yet to present a satisfactory explanation of how and why it has the document.

Whatever you think ought to be done about Iran's nuclear program, it seems beyond doubt that they are pursuing weaponry.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

World roundup

We'll finish off the evening with a quick roundup of notable events.

IRAQ
The British will cut their troop presence in Iraq in half -- events permitting -- by the end of the year. Though apparently Prince Harry will still be going there if the Daily Mirror is to be believed.

GUANTANAMO
A federal appeals court has ruled (in a decision that will be appealed to the Supreme Court) that Gitmo detainees can't challenge their internment in U.S. courts, thanks to the Republican Congress stripping that power from them last year. They can thus be held indefinitely until they are tried before the flawed military commissions that Bush has set up. Congressional Democrats have said they will revisit the commission law to fix the most glaring problems. If they plan to do that, they should get to it; it's an affront to liberty to hold people for years without charge, or try them in a court that doesn't afford them full rights.

IRAN
Iran, in a mirror image of recent U.S. charges, has accused the United States of supplying Sunni militants who last week car-bombed a bus of Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Their claim comes complete with bullet cartridges bearing U.S. markings. Does this prove U.S. involvement? No. But it's interesting to note that the Iranians have roughly as much evidence backing up their claim as we have of Iranian involvement in Iraq. And just as it's very likely Iran is meddling in Iraq, would anyone be surprised to discover that we're supporting anti-Iran militants? That is not a reason to turn a blind eye to Iranian meddling; but it is a reason to look askance at the moral outrage the White House has tried to generate over the issue. Meanwhile, there are no updates on the sniper rifles allegedly supplied by Iran. The smoking gun remains elusive.

Separately, Iran is making noises about stopping its enrichment program -- if Western countries do the same. The non-offer comes a day before the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to issue a critical report that will trigger even harsher U.N. sanctions against the country. Iran once again demonstrates it is not serious about negotiating, and the IAEA report will show that it has expanded, rather than slowed, its enrichment activities. The question is what sort of measures Russia and China will allow the U.N. to take.

MITT ROMNEY
Mitt Romney is somewhat ironically attacking John McCain for being inconsistent on abortion. For my money, though, the funniest thing is that Mitt's guy in charge of conservative outreach is named Marx.

SOMALIA
Finally, the U.N. approved an 8,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force for Somalia, a measure that allows the AU to deploy troops and relieve the Ethiopians that have been propping up the provisional government there. It remains to be seen if such a force will be enough to stop the spiraling violence in Somalia, but it demonstrates the renewed international attention being paid to that country after years of neglect. Let's hope they pull it off.

Gitmo, Romney, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Backing off, a bit, on Iran

The White House is slowly backing away from some of the more pointed and explosive assertions it has made in recent days about Iran's involvement in Iraq.

On Sunday, U.S. officials in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity alleged that Iranian officials at the "highest levels" of the government, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were behind the smuggling of a deadly type of explosive device used against U.S. forces.

But during news conferences Wednesday in Washington and Baghdad, Bush and Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, appeared to step back from that claim, just as Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did in interviews this week.

Further, the original claims about IEDs appear to be shakier than they looked at first:

Even the issue of where the weapons were manufactured is cloudy. A U.S. military explosives expert at the news conference in Baghdad acknowledged that there was no forensic evidence or labels linking the canister-shaped weapons to munitions plants in Iran.

Rather, Army Maj. Marty Weber said, the weapons were similar to those that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia used against Israeli forces during Israel's late-1990s occupation of southern Lebanon.

That directly contradicts the statements made by the Pentagon on Sunday. What was presented as fact turns out to be a guess -- a reasonable and informed guess, but a guess nonetheless.

Keep in mind, the dispute over the data obscures some fundamental truths. Nobody seems to deny that Iranian weaponry is finding its way into Iraq. The core of the matter is precisely what weaponry, which groups they're being given to and whether the Iranian government is involved.

But the administration has overreached to justify a war before; this incident points out how important it is to make sure of what we actually know -- as opposed to merely suspect -- before formulating policy.

Interestingly, there has been no follow-up on what would be the most damning evidence of direct Iranian involvement -- the capture of .50-caliber sniper rifles in Iraq, although the Austrian gunmaker says nobody has contacted it in order to compare serial numbers -- which suggests that the connection is, once again, conjecture rather than established fact.

Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

More Iranian weaponry in Iraq?

Could be. But the evidence is far from conclusive.

Austrian sniper rifles that were exported to Iran have been discovered in the hands of Iraqi terrorists, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

More than 100 of the.50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids.

The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.

Here's the rifle in question, by the way.

Seems pretty clear, huh? Except that the story is extremely light on details. There is no comparison of serial numbers, for instance, to show that the rifles being captured are the same ones that were sent to Iran.

And as with yesterday's "Iranians supplying insurgents" story, there's an inexcusable fuzziness about who is being armed. We're mostly fighting Sunnis, not Shiites. So while I can see this weapon turning up in the armories of Shiite militias, I have a hard time believing it is being distributed to actual insurgents.

Further, the guns cost several thousand dollars apiece (Iran paid about $20,000 apiece) so they're not exactly flooding the market. It seems unlikely that Iran would provide such expensive and easily-traced weaponry to Iraqis.

Frankly, I have a hard time taking the London press as authoritative sources on anything. In my experience they're highly prone to reporting rumors or slanting stories -- whether out of ideology or sheer sloppiness I don't know. But if this story has legs, it will be a very strong indicator of Iranian government involvement.

I will be vastly unsurprised if it turns out Iran is arming various factions in Iraq. But I want solid evidence before we escalate against them.

iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Iran arming Iraqi insurgents?

It's a reasonable thing to suspect, and now the United States says it has evidence: captured Iranian munitions.

Never before displayed in public, the weapons included squat canisters designed to explode and spit out molten balls of copper that cut through armor. The canisters, called explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.’s, are perhaps the most feared weapon faced by American and Iraqi troops here.

In a news briefing held under strict security, the officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories.

For it's part, Iran says "prove it."

The EFPs are pretty good evidence, and fairly alarming given the sophistication of the weaponry. The technology is 30 years old, but it still isn't the sort of thing people might cobble together in their garage. It requires fairly precise machining and design to create a shape that will deform into an aerodynamic projectile, as well as pack the explosives so that they will produce an explosion of the right amount and shape to do the deforming.

The mortar and RPGs are less compelling or surprising -- they're very common weapons, and could well have been introduced into Iraq long ago by Iran-supported groups fighting Saddam. Call them decent supporting evidence.

But merely having Iranian-produced weaponry doesn't prove Iranian complicity. To do that we have to show that the Iranian government is providing the munitions. That link appears to be shaky:

The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments.

An "inference"? That's not the most actionable piece of data, especially when it involves something as momentous as accusing another country of arming your enemies.

Further, there's a logic problem: most of these weapons are being used by Sunni insurgents. Why would Shiite Iran supply sophisticated weaponry to the Sunnis, weapons that could just as easily be turned against Iraq's Shiite majority -- and probably will be if Iran achieves its presumed objective of forcing the United States to leave Iraq?

The article says many of these weapons have turned up in weapons caches in areas dominated by Iran-friendly militias. Okay, that makes sense. But as far as I know, such militias aren't generally setting up IEDs to attack U.S. forces. So what we may have here is two sets of EFPs: Weapons with clear Iranian provenance being supplied to Iranian-backed groups, but others of unknown provenance being supplied to Sunni insurgents.

It's also possible that some of the weapons transfers are being done by Iranian intelligence, Hezbollah or Revolutionary Guard members without the knowledge or approval of the Iranian government.

Either way, more proof is needed. I'm entirely unsurprised that Iran might be arming groups it supports. but trying to blame Iran for Sunni IED attacks is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof.

Update: Gen. Peter Pace, when asked about the briefing, said he could not support the assertions of Iranian involvement from his own experience. "It is clear that Iranians are involved," he said. "And it's clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia