The Bloody History of the Irbil Five
Remember when President Bush spoke against appeasement and Obama's liberal supporters treated it as an attack on Obama. They recognized that Obama would be an appeaser it seems and they were right too. Thats exactly what he's doing now. Releasing Iranian government terror leaders and coordinators responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. Leting Iran bully America, showing that it will be calling the shots in the ME in the years to come, strengthening the hands of the hard-liners cracking down on Iranians who want freedom.
John on July 13, 2009
To understand the significance of the Irbil five, you have to understand what led up to their capture and what followed it. Recall that violence was at its height in late 2006 and early 2007. The NY Times reports that from October to December of 2006 EFP roadside bombs produced in Iran account for 30% of all allied deaths in Iraq. (This number excludes Anbar province where the bombs are not found).
On December 20, 2006 Bush sends a second carrier group to the Gulf. The following day, US forces raid the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shia leader, and arrest two senior members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force: Col. Abu Amad Davari and Brig. Gen. Amir Mohsen Shirazi (other reports call him Moshin Chizari or simply Chizari). Chizari is the #3 commander of the Revolutionary Guard. The Washington Post describes what was found on the men:
[D]etailed weapons lists, documents pertaining to shipments of weapons into Iraq, organizational charts, telephone records and maps, among other sensitive intelligence information. Officials were particularly concerned by the fact that the Iranians had information about importing modern, specially shaped explosive charges into Iraq, weapons that have been used in roadside bombs to target U.S. military armored vehicles.
On January 10, 2007, President Bush addresses the nation and says this about the role of Iran in Iraq:
Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.
The following day, January 11, 2007, US forces raided a consular office in Irbil, Iraq. They captured six Iranians:
• Hassan Abbassi, a strategist “close to” President Ahmedinejad and the only individual with any diplomatic credentials.
• Mohammad Jaafari, an aid to National Security advisor Ali Larijani
• Jalal Sharifi, a professional intelligence officer.
• Brig. Gen. Mohammad Djafari Sahraroudi, a Kurdish affairs expert wanted by Interpol
• Mojhadi and…
• Safderi, two Revolutionary Guard officers
•
Hassan was released. The remaining five were held until last week when Barack Obama released them. But there’s more to the story.
On January 20, 2007, just nine days after the Irbil five were captured, a team of twelve men disguised as U.S. soldiers entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, where U.S. soldiers conducted a meeting with local officials. They kidnap five US soldiers. All five are later killed. Within a week, investigators have a suspect “this raid appears to have been directed and executed by the Qods Force branch of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps.”
Incredibly, just 11 days after the Karbala raid, the NY Times runs an editorial insisting that President Bush stop trying to “bully” Iran. Twelve days later the Telegraph reports that 100 50 caliber sniper rifles, originally sold to Iran, have turned up in Iraq. The rifles cost $20K each.
On March 23, the Iranian navy kidnaps 5 British sailors off the coast of Iraq. The following day the Jerusalem Post reports that a decision to kidnap coalition soldiers had been made nearly a week earlier. The mullahs are still very worried about the capture of the Irbil five. The regime fears they may leak damaging information about Iran’s operations in Iraq.
So in essence, both America and Britain had hostages taken by Iran in response to the capture of the Irbil five. The five Americans taken at Karbalah were murdered. The British hostages, after weeks of captivity, were released.This is the price allied forces paid for the Irbil raid.
Despite this, despite the fact that their only reason for being in Iraq was to coordinate attacks on US soldiers, despite the faux election last month, despite the murder and beating of protesters in the streets that followed, despite the fact that as recently as last week General Odierno indicated Iran was still active in Iraq — despite all of this President Obama handed these five men back to Iran. I guess this is what “no preconditions” looks like in practice.
Related: Andrew McCarthy has an excellent piece on the release of the Irbil 5 over at NRO.
verumserum.com
Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters
The release of the Irbil Five is a continuation of a shameful policy.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
There are a few things you need to know about President Obama’s shameful release on Thursday of the “Irbil Five” — Quds Force commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines.
First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone, a weapon that is supplied by Iran for the singular purpose of murdering Americans. As Steve Schippert explains at NRO’s military blog, the Tank, the weapon is “the EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator), designed by Iran’s IRGC specifically to penetrate the armor of the M1 Abrams main battle tank and, consequently, everything else deployed in the field.” Understand: This does not mean Iran has killed only 400 Americans in Iraq. The number killed and wounded at the mullahs’ direction is far higher than that — likely multiples of that — when factoring in the IRGC’s other tactics, such as the mustering of Hezbollah-style Shiite terror cells.
Second, President Bush and our armed forces steadfastly refused demands by Iran and Iraq’s Maliki government for the release of the Irbil Five because Iran was continuing to coordinate terrorist operations against American forces in Iraq (and to aid Taliban operations against American forces in Afghanistan). Freeing the Quds operatives obviously would return the most effective, dedicated terrorist trainers to their grisly business.
Third, Obama’s decision to release the five terror-masters comes while the Iranian regime (a) is still conducting operations against Americans in Iraq, even as we are in the process of withdrawing, and (b) is clearly working to replicate its Lebanon model in Iraq: establishing a Shiite terror network, loyal to Iran, as added pressure on the pliant Maliki to understand who is boss once the Americans leave. As the New York Times reports, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, put it this way less than two weeks ago:
Iran is still supporting, funding, training surrogates who operate inside of Iraq — flat out. . . . They have not stopped. And I don’t think they will stop. I think they will continue to do that because they are also concerned, in my opinion, [about] where Iraq is headed. They want to try to gain influence here, and they will continue to do that. I think many of the attacks in Baghdad are from individuals that have been, in fact, funded or trained by the Iranians.
Fourth, President Obama’s release of the Quds terrorists is a natural continuation of his administration’s stunningly irresponsible policy of bartering terrorist prisoners for hostages. As I detailed here on June 24, Obama has already released a leader of the Iran-backed Asaib al-Haq terror network in Iraq, a jihadist who is among those responsible for the 2007 murders of five American troops in Karbala. While the release was ludicrously portrayed as an effort to further “Iraqi reconciliation” (as if that would be a valid reason to spring a terrorist who had killed Americans), it was in actuality a naïve attempt to secure the reciprocal release of five British hostages — and a predictably disastrous one: The terror network released only the corpses of two of the hostages, threatening to kill the remaining three (and who knows whether they still are alive?) unless other terror leaders were released.
Michael Ledeen has reported that the release of the Irbil Five is part of the price Iran has demanded for its release in May of the freelance journalist Roxana Saberi. Again, that’s only part of the price: Iran also has demanded the release of hundreds of its other terror facilitators in our custody. Expect to see Obama accommodate this demand, too, in the weeks ahead.
Finally, when it comes to Iran, it has become increasingly apparent that President Obama wants the mullahs to win. What you need to know is that Barack Obama is a wolf in “pragmatist” clothing: Beneath the easy smile and above-it-all manner — the “neutral” doing his best to weigh competing claims — is a radical leftist wedded to a Manichean vision that depicts American imperialism as the primary evil in the world.
You may not have wanted to addle your brain over his tutelage in Hawaii by the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, nor his tracing of Davis’s career steps to Chicago, where he seamlessly eased into the orbit of Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi, anti-American terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and Maoist “educator” Michael Klonsky — all while imbibing 20 years’ worth of Jeremiah Wright’s Marxist “black liberation theology.” But this neo-Communist well from which Obama drew holds that the world order is a maze of injustice, racism, and repression. Its unified theory for navigating the maze is: “United States = culprit.” Its default position is that tyrants are preferable as long as they are anti-American, and that while terrorist methods may be regrettable, their root cause is always American provocation — that is, the terrorists have a point.
In Iran, it is no longer enough for a rickety regime, whose anti-American vitriol is its only vital sign, to rig the “democratic” process. This time, blatant electoral fraud was also required to mulct victory for the mullahs’ candidate. The chicanery ignited a popular revolt. But the brutal regime guessed right: The new American president would be supportive. So sympathetic is Obama to the mullahs’ grievances — so hostile to what he, like the regime, sees as America’s arrogant militarism — that he could be depended on to go as far as politics allowed to help the regime ride out the storm.
And so he has. Right now, politics will allow quite a lot: With unemployment creeping toward 10 percent, the auto industry nationalized, the stimulus revealed as history’s biggest redistribution racket (so far), and Democrats bent on heaping ruinous carbon taxes and socialized medicine atop an economy already crushed by tens of trillions in unfunded welfare-state liabilities, Iran is barely on anyone’s radar screen.
So Obama is pouring it on whileB his trusty media idles. When they are not looking the other way from the carnage in Iran’s streets, they are dutifully reporting — as the AP did — that the Irbil Five are mere “diplomats.” Obama frees a terrorist with the blood of American troops on his hands, and the press yawns. Senators Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl press for answers about the release of the terrorist and Obama’s abandonment of a decades-old American policy against trading terrorists for hostages, and the silence is deafening.
Except in Tehran, where the mullahs are hearing exactly what they’ve banked on hearing.
article.nationalreview.com |
