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.