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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (244016)	10/5/2007 9:35:05 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Nadine, practice focusing on the facts and stop editorializing. Here are the facts: (1) There are IEDs in Iraq. (2) IEDs are responsible for 70% of US casualties. (3) Only 3% of the IEDs are shaped charges (for the mathematically challenged, that means 97% of the IEDs are NOT shaped charges). So even if you got rid of ALL the shaped charges, it would not make a very big dent in US casualties. (4) IEDs and shaped charges take very very little technology to create. They have been around since WWII. (5) That shaped charges come from Iran is only a SPECULATION based on lack of simple and otherwise widely available metal works machinery that is hard to come by in Iraq. There is no reason to believe they could not have come from Syria, Jordan, Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait, or just some stateless free enterprising smugglers. This argument is even more credible, given that the IEDs are primarily used by Sunni insurgents who are supported by the neighboring Arab countries...but of course you are going to twist the argument and somehow use your omniscient that all those countries are blameless in this. (6) Shaped charges are used in oil and gas drilling. Last I checked, there was a booming oil and gas industry in the Persian Gulf. You cannot prove that the material is not coming from some oil drilling stockpile, which may even be inside Iraq! (7) Even if you manage to show that some (you will never be able to do better than that) some of the shaped charges are made and/or transited via Iran, it is still a very long leap to conclude from that a clandestine government backed operation from Iran is supplying them. There is nothing to prove shaped charges are not smuggled by free enterprising or just sympathetic individuals. Nice try! ST

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (244016)	10/6/2007 10:39:12 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Let's get this straight: Have the Iranians been sending Qods forces and shaped charges into Iraq? Yes or No? Do you distinguish between Iran's government shipping weapons into Iraq (bad), and Iran's arms dealers selling weapons to someone who sells them to someone who sells them to someone who sells them to insurgents in Iraq (business as usual)? From what I can tell about the arms trade, weapons, like money, is fungible, and if someone in Iraq has the money they are going to be able to procure basic weapons from almost any supplier on the planet. In other words, the fact that weapons manufactured in Iran are appearing in Iraq means that the insurgents have money. It doesn't mean that the Iranians are attacking coalition soldiers, nor that the Iranian government is actively arming insurgents. It may be true that the Iranian government is actively arming Iraqi insurgents, but the existence of Iranian made weapons isn't even close to proof.