Also see below:     
Pentagon Caught Red Handed in an Attempt to Frame Iran    [

    Pace Demurs on Accusation of Iran
    By Karen DeYoung
    The Washington Post

    Tuesday 13 February 2007

General says he knows nothing tying leaders to arms in Iraq.

    Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that he has no information indicating Iran's government is directing the supply of lethal weapons to Shiite insurgent groups in Iraq.

    "We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran," Pace told Voice of America during a visit to Australia. "What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this."

    "It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved," he continued, "but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

    Pace's comments came a day after U.S. military officials in Baghdad alleged that the "highest levels" of the Iranian government have directed use of weapons that are killing U.S. troops in Iraq. No information was provided to substantiate the charge. Administration officials yesterday deflected requests for more details, even as they repeatedly implied Tehran's involvement.

    In an interview yesterday with ABC's "Good Morning America," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the administration is "pointing fingers at others" when its troop presence in Iraq is the source of most of the country's problems.

    While not denying that Iranian weapons may have been found in Iraq, Ahmadinejad implied that if they were, it was not his government's doing. "Can Americans close their long borders?" he asked, noting that "millions" of Iranians cross the border into neighboring Iraq each year. "The position of our government ... and the position of the Revolutionary Guard is also the same: We are opposed to any kind of conflict in Iraq."

    On Sunday, in a briefing for reporters, U.S. military officials in Baghdad offered a slide show and examples of armor-piercing explosives that they said bore writing and serial numbers from Iran. Briefers, speaking anonymously for what they said were security reasons, said the weapons had caused the deaths of 170 U.S. soldiers in the past two years. No cameras were allowed in the briefing room, and a transcript of the session was not provided.

    The officials also showed what they said were false identity cards of Iranians whom U.S. forces had recently detained in Iraq. The men were described as members of the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that U.S. officials believe is under the control of Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    "We have been able to determine that this material," especially sophisticated roadside explosives called explosively formed penetrators, "is coming from the IRGC-Quds Force," said a briefer, identified only as a senior defense analyst. Direction for operations using the weaponry, he said, came from the "highest levels" of Iran's government.

    Asked by reporters yesterday to provide more information on the charge, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "The Iranians are up to their eyeballs in this activity." He called the Baghdad presentation a "very strong circumstantial case," saying he was "not going to try to embellish that briefing" and "any reasonable person ... would draw the same conclusions."

    White House spokesman Tony Snow offered similar responses. "Let me put it this way," he said. "There's not a whole lot of freelancing in the Iranian government, especially when it comes to something like that."

    Pressed repeatedly, Snow answered, "Look, the Department of Defense is doing this. What I'm telling you is, you guys want to get those questions answered, you need to go to the Pentagon."

    A call to the Defense Intelligence Agency brought a referral to the main Pentagon press office. That office referred a caller to the Washington office of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, which responded with an e-mailed copy of Sunday's briefing slides - containing no mention of the "highest levels" allegation and a request for questions in writing. Written questions brought no response. An official from the Pentagon Joint Staff said last night that Pace had seen the briefing slides but had "no personal knowledge of any senior involvement by senior Iranian officials."

    Members of Congress have repeatedly asked whether the administration is planning a repeat in Iran of its 2003 invasion of Iraq. Intelligence findings that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and had close ties to al-Qaeda turned out to be almost entirely false.

    Sunday's briefing on Iran, originally scheduled for last month, had been delayed as officials said they were trying to avoid "overstating" what they could prove.

    "There are certainly those who are in favor" of war with Iran, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said Sunday of the Bush administration on CBS's "Face the Nation." "We've seen that in the past that they would like nothing more than to build a case for that."

    In recent weeks, the administration has denied any war plans, saying it is committed to a strategy of pressure and diplomacy against Iran's nuclear activities, operations in Iraq and other aggression.

    In an interview yesterday with C-SPAN, President Bush described his policy as "comprehensive" and complained that charges he is planning to attack Iran are politically motivated and "typical Washington."

 

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    Go to Original

    Pentagon Caught Red Handed in an Attempt to Frame Iran:
    Iran Does Not Manufacture 81MM Mortar Shells
    By Kurt Nimmo
    Global Research

    Tuesday 13 February 2007

    Pentagon carelessness fabricating bogus "evidence" against Iran is really quite stupendous. As I wrote here yesterday, the 81mm mortar shell offered up to the complaisant corporate media as "evidence" Iran is supplying weaponry to the Shi'a of Iraq is an obvious ruse, as the date on the proffered shell does not follow the Muslim calendar and other markings are in English when it only makes sense they would appear in Persian script.

    But it gets worse.

    As a recent email points out, Iran does not manufacture 81mm mortar shells. According to a report offered by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, connected to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the neocon Brookings Institute, the smallest mortar produced by Iran is the 107mm M-30. This information is included in the JCSS's "Middle East Military Balance," updated last February. It can be read in this PDF file on page 15. According to JCSS, "The Middle East Military Balance has been the most authoritative source on Middle Eastern Armies since 1983." It is quite fortunate for us the hubris-filled neocons care not to double check their engineered lies - erroneously described as a "machining process" - before unleashing them on an unwitting public.

    As Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told the Associated Press, the "United States has a long history in fabricating evidence," an undisputed fact more than underscored by the lead-up to the Iraq invasion when the neocons claimed Iraqi weather balloon trailers doubled as biological weapon labs and clumsily recycled a student's homework as evidence Saddam was dabbling in weapons of mass destruction.

    Considering the shoddiness of the mortar ruse, it makes perfect sense so-called "experts" involved in the scam told "a large gathering of reporters" (more accurately described as script readers and errand boys) "they not be further identified," lest blame be delivered to their doorstep.

    "Why are US officials hiding behind the cloak of anonymity when presenting the most detailed evidence yet that Iran is supplying anti-US forces in Iraq with weaponry?" muses Eason Jordan. "After weeks, if not months, of US official planning to present a damning 'dossier' of incriminating evidence against Iran, and after this same US administration presented us with lopsided, erroneous information about the capability and evil intentions of the Saddam Hussein regime, the best the US government can give us today is incendiary evidence presented at a Baghdad news conference by three US officials who refuse to be quoted by name?.... The American people deserve straight talk from identified US officials."

    Of course, such "straight talk" will not be forthcoming - not now or after Iran is destroyed, as Iraq was destroyed before it.

    Maybe, if we are lucky, at some point in the future, the names of these "experts" will emerge in the course of a new Nuremberg trial.

    Addendum

    Iran does not manufacture 81mm mortars - but Pakistan does. Compare the photo on this death merchant catalog page with the one offered up as "evidence" against the Iranians. Minus the nosecone and fins at the bottom, it is almost a dead ringer, excuse the metaphor (see enlargement here).

    Is it possible the Pentagon neocons, in their zeal to finger the Iranians and thus kick start World War Four, as they fondly call it, are using a Pakistani mortar and attributing it to Iran? Considering the long and sordid history of collaboration between the CIA, Pentagon, and Pakistan's nefarious ISI, this is likely the case.