(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Have you seen the new ad narrated by Christopher Miller, Iraq veteran, on why we need clean energy?
The ads feature an Iraq war veteran who was injured six years ago by a roadside bomb. Christopher Miller says that using less oil will take money away from enemies like Iran, which has supplied increasingly destructive roadside bombs to militants in Iraq.
I just saw the ad run during Keith Olbermann’s Countdown and my jaw hit the floor. We need clean energy because buying Iran’s oil funds their supplying IED’s to Iraq? Really?
We all know that we need clean energy and that major energy conglomerates are only willing to support it if they control the new energy, just as they controlled the old energy. This is not debatable.
It is the argument used that is wrong.
For years, the Pentagon has tried to link the use of Improvised Explosive Device’s in Iraq to Iran.
“I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there,” says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. “I think it’s very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops.”
See, the Iranian’s are MANUFACTURING bombs!
BAGHDAD, Feb. 11 — Senior U.S. military officials in Iraq sought Sunday to link Iran to deadly armor-piercing explosives and other weapons that they said are being used to kill U.S. and Iraqi troops with increasing regularity.
During a long-awaited presentation, held in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, the officials displayed mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades and a powerful cylindrical bomb, capable of blasting through an armored Humvee, that they said were manufactured in Iran and supplied to Shiite militias in Iraq for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops.
“Iran is a significant contributor to attacks on coalition forces, and also supports violence against the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi people,” said a senior defense official, who was joined by a defense analyst and an explosives expert, both also from the military.
Farther down in the article, however, this claim is torn apart:
With so much official U.S. buildup about the purported evidence of Iranian influence in Iraq, the briefing was also notable for what was not said or shown. The officials offered no evidence to substantiate allegations that the “highest levels” of the Iranian government had sanctioned support for attacks against U.S. troops. Also, the military briefers were not joined by U.S. diplomats or representatives of the CIA or the office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Although the administration has made many assertions about Iran’s nuclear program, its role in Iraq and its ties to groups on the State Department’s terrorism list, the U.S. government has never publicly offered evidence proving the allegations. The briefing was the first time during the Bush administration that officials had sought to make a public intelligence case against Iran.
The problem, however, is the manufacturing components used for these devices.
The one such device shown at the briefing was a cylinder of PVC pipe about eight inches long and about six inches in diameter. The officials said the devices are deadly because the explosion sends a slug of malleable metal, often copper, at velocities high enough to penetrate the armor of tanks and Humvees. Their components require precision machining that Iraq has shown no evidence of being able to perform, the officials said.
Right. PVC pipe. Copper cone. Crude materials found in every country on Earth. But, Iran is MANUFACTURING these devices? Give me a break. The “shape-charge”, an explosive device that forms a “slug” to penetrate armor, which is what these crude devices are, is a technology that has been around for decades. A PVC pipe with a copper cone packed with explosives is something built in a garage, not an Iranian weapons manufacturing plant.
In addition, the U.S. “sources” claim that Iraqi militants crossing into Iran to get arms PROVES that Iran is supporting the militants. Sorry. The CIA was buying U.S. manufactured arms like the Stinger missile on the black market in Afghanistan. In the Middle East, you can buy arms made from almost any country on the black market.
They’ve tried to claim the same with the Taliban in Afghanistan, that Iran is supplying arms against the United States. But, the Asia Times debunks this, as well.
The rapid rise in casualties over the past two years is attributed in part to the increased lethality of the Taliban mines.
But according to the Pentagon agency responsible for combating roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, the increased Taliban threat to US and NATO vehicles comes not from any new technology from Iran but from Italian-made mines left over from the US Central Intelligence Agency’s military assistance to the anti-Soviet jihadists in the 1980s.
In response to an inquiry from Inter Press Service (IPS), the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), a unit of the US Department of Defense, said in an e-mail that Italian-manufactured TC-6 anti-tank mines are “very common” in the Taliban-dominated areas of the country and that they had been modified to increase their lethality in improvised explosive device attacks.
We can get clean energy, but, we don’t need to continue to use false information, or at best, unsubstantiated claims, to do it.
8 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
maybe I shouldn’t admit on a public blog that my Mom taught me how to make a copper pot with a fire, some tongs, and a hammer.
This is a 5000 year old ‘sophisticated’ technology.
It is a fact that there is no credible evidence to suggest that Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi resistance. None. Miller is lying when he says that Iranians are making the roadside bombs.