The Lost Iranian Revolutionary Guard Patrol
CAPTAIN ED
The US military command in Baghdad says it's tracking a band of Iranian Revolutionary Guard far away from home. Fifty members of the IRG have made their way to the area of the Iraqi capital, and the assumption is that they're not there as ambassadors of peace and love:
"Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, whose command includes the volatile southern rim of Baghdad and districts to the south, said his troops are tracking about 50 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps in their area -- the first detailed allegation that Iranians have been training fighters within Iraq's borders. "We know they're here and we target them as well," he said, citing intelligence reports as evidence of their presence.
He declined to be more specific and said no Iranian forces have been arrested in his territory. "We've got about 50 of those," he said, referring to the Iranian forces. "They go back and forth. There's a porous border." ...
Gen. Lynch, whose mission is to block the flow of weapons and fighters into the Baghdad area, said Sunni and Shiite extremists have become increasingly aggressive this month, trying to influence the debate in Washington before a pivotal progress report on Iraq. He singled out the Shiite extremists as being behind rising attacks using armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which he said were largely assembled in Iraq from parts smuggled in from Iran. He also noted a marked increase in Iranian-rockets that have been increasingly effective against U.S. bases.
There has been an overall decrease in attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians, south of Baghdad, but 46% of those were being carried out by Shiite extremists, Gen. Lynch said. "The real difference now is we've got to spend as much time fighting the Shia extremists as Sunni extremists," he said."
This comes after the Bush administration's intent to have the IRG classified as a terrorist group. Their appearance in Baghdad is not coincidental to the rise in attacks from Shi'ite extremists. The adminstration will explicitly accuse the IRG of fomenting those attacks through logistics and and command, and the visit from Teheran's finest will certainly help make that case.
The Wall Street Journal also notes another, more positive development. The French have paid a high-level visit to Iraq for the first time since Saddam Hussein's regime fell to the American invasion. Bernard Kouchner's visit is part of a thawing process pushed by Nicolas Sarkozy between Washington and Paris. The Chirac administration had not wanted to give George Bush any vindication at all on the decision to invade Iraq, but Sarkozy sees the need to acknowledge reality.
captainsquartersblog.com
Message 23808814 |
