US and UK fail to find smoking gun

[cal04]

Source: Ian Black, Middle East editor

Although British and US military and diplomats often complain of Iranian support for insurgents in Iraq, there is no "smoking gun" to prove it, a senior British officer in Basra admitted yesterday.

Lt Col Justin Maciejewski said he could not prove Iranian interference in the southern Iraqi city, where UK troops come under regular mortar and rocket attack. But community leaders had told him Iranian agents were paying Iraqis $500 a month (£254) to carry out attacks.

"All the information we are getting from the locals ... is that the vast majority of the violence against us is inspired from outside of Iraq and the people here very much believe that that is Iran," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "There is nothing I have seen that would disprove what they are telling me."

He said the "modern and quite sophisticated weaponry" could not be old munitions left over from the Iran-Iraq war. Both the US and Britain have accused Iran of supplying armour-piercing explosive devices detonated by infra-red triggers, but they have been unable to prove it.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2041713,00.html

[Demeter]

1. Better to Tend to the Knitting Already Started

Bush can't handle one war, let alone two. He has no business sniffing around for a pretext for a third.

[jwirr]

4. Three wars if he starts one with Iran.

[Redstone]

2. So, what's supposed to be so sophisticated about an "infra-red trigger?" Almost everyone in America

uses one of them every evening...to remote-control their TV.

Some "sophistication."

Redstone

[Canuckistanian]

7. Exactly. Pretty low tech to me.

Just one step above using batteries and a pressure sensitive switch.

[youngdem]

9. I got one of those illicit triggers on my garage door.

Should I be worried about an IED?

[keopeli]

3. "There is nothing I have seen that would disprove what they are telling me." ?????

This is a very odd way of speaking.

"No evidence supports their claim." That's the typical way of talking about facts and proof.

In the scientific world, where everything is relative, you "disprove" theories. But, in the real world, you "prove" facts are true.

If someone said, "I picked this orange from your neighbors backyard," but offered no proof that it came from there, I would NOT say "nothing I have seen disproves that this comes from my neighbors backyard."

Bizarro world of propoganda ~

Peace

[IllLib]

5. On the other hand, a large number of smoking hookahs were found! n/t

[Toucano]

6. What they can't find, they fabricate.

That's the history of these imperialistic countries.

[xchrom]

8. regardless -- bushco isn't going to give up saying it.

like -- ''they'll follow us over here'' or ''saddam was involved in 9-11'' or ''saddam has weapons of mass destruction'' -- they are going to the bank with these lies.

and no -- no -- major media outlet is going to confront them.