Monday, February 12, 2007

I doubt, therefore I think.

How many times do we have to get fooled before we really ought to say "shame on us?" I really don't know where the line is, but I'm sure we're over it. Whether or not the Boston Massacre was exaggerated, whether the Maine sank by itself or the second Gulf of Tonkin incident ever happened we do have a history sufficient to have made us suspicious even before the ready-to-launch in 15 minutes WMD's or the non-existent uranium ore. Even before the aluminum tubes and fake al Qaeda connection or the mobile chemical weapons labs that turned out to be English weather balloon stations -- we should have asked more questions before George launched his attack on Iraq four years ago and we certainly have reason to be suspicious of the claims that Iran is supplying advanced weapons to Iraqi Shiites - weapons that CNN claimed this morning, are able to destroy an M-1 Abrams tank, something I had been led to believe that nobody had.

It does not take one of these to blow up a Humvee anyway and as far as I know no tanks have been destroyed in Iraq by a mortar round, but I could be wrong. One thing I am not wrong about is that the international arms market is sufficiently devious and shady and tortuous to make it just possible that these arms, whose presence and prevalence we are to take as true on the word of the Bush junta, weren't purchased over the counter at Ahmed's Arms in Tehran or ordered through a direct connection with the Iranian government. They might have arrived in Iraq, if indeed they actually did, after passing through many private hands on several continents and having left no paper trail and without the manufacturer having a clue or care about where they went. In fact that may be the most usual course when arms are supplied to revolutionaries, insurgents and embargoed governments. Arms dealers don't go to heaven.

I remember in the first, pre-mission-accomplished stages of Bush War II, when we were attempting to shift attention and blame and anger toward the allegedly testicularly challenged and perfidious French, by claiming that night vision optics were showing up in Iraq. Although that was hilarious for several reasons, amongst which was the enormous stock of US weapons and materials the US had supplied Iraq with not long before, but night vision goggles are available from nearly any camping or outdoor supply house by mail order. I have a Russian night vision scope and I assure you that there is no truth in the story that I am being supplied by the Putin government. I bought the thing from a US camping equipment dealer and I can buy Romanian or Chinese or Czech or Israeli or US made surplus equipment without the governments who manufacture them being particularly liable for what I might do with them or who I might pass them on to.

So maybe they are and maybe they aren't supplying Shiite insurgents and militias with sophisticated explosives. Maybe the homemade mines that are killing our troops use explosives we allowed them to have by not guarding the warehouses full of the stuff after the invasion or maybe it's all Iranian, but if some of us aren't motivated by blind faith in a proven liar and demonstrated incompetent to launch another war without further evidence, I think it's a wee bit understandable and I'm damned tired of having my patriotism called into question if I have my doubts.

Update:

The Impolitic offers more serious doubts as to the reality of the Iranian Weapons claim.

Update II

General Peter Pace offers more serious doubts that Iran is supplying weapons.

4 comments:

d.K. said...

Prescient once again.

Pace observes your excellent point that "made in Iran" and "the Iranian government" can be two very different things. Leave it a marine to go and do something off the wall - like telling the truth.

We all know the story of the little boy who cried wolf, and I'm afraid if I saw the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Kamenei himself delivering the arms to Iraqi Shiites, I doubt I'd be convinced, especially if the source was the Bush/Cheney professional provaricating team.

BTW, I though we were on the side of the Shiites vs. the Sunnis in the non-existent civil war in Iraq where our enemy is Al Qaeda, and the foreign born freedom haters??

PS. I've been reading this story all day and this is the first I've heard of General Pace's remarks - Incredible.

Capt. Fogg said...

I find it really strange that VOA would report a story that the mainstream media have ignored, at least so far. I have to admit that Pace has made some points with me for standing up against the rising tide of bullshit. If men like that - if someone like Powell had stood up and said "wait a minute" instead of parroting the crap about WMD's, the world might be a different place right now.

d.K. said...

I am a little more generous (naive?) about Powell. I really think he was deceptively fed a line of bull, and his soul, and, in this case, misguided sense of loyalty, have prevented him from coming clean yet, (though I know it's a bit disingenuous, since he's clearly authorized underlings to 'get out the story.') But he was used, and his hard-fought accomplishments will always bear the stain of his association with this war and administration.
But I do agree with your larger point, if hadn't been a willing apparatchik complicit in this regime, we may well be living in a very different world. I confess I'm conflicted on this.

Anonymous said...

Once again I find myself wondering where the accountability is? Why are these people still in power, still in office, hell..still free!