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the white house blinks at nancy pelosi velocity

By streiff Posted in War — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Last week I wrote approvingly of the Administration’s apparent decision to treat Iranian combatants in Iraq as, well, combatants.

A couple of days ago the NY Sun reported that the military was about to publish a bill of particulars, so to speak, covering Iran’s less than helpful involvement in Iraq:

New evidence of Iran's role in Iraq will be made in Baghdad by the chief spokesman for the multinational forces in Iraq, Major General William Caldwell. The Directorate of National Intelligence worked over the weekend to clear new intelligence and information that sources inside the intelligence community said would implicate Iran in deliberately sending particularly lethal improvised explosives to terrorists to kill coalition soldiers.

This was a welcome change in affairs. Of the bad actors on the planet, Iran is one that has led pretty much a charmed life. Other than the spanking they received by the US during the Tanker War, the Iranians have committed an egregious series of thinly disguised attacks on US interests and skated.

Iran has been linked directly to the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, the 1990 murder of Colonel Rich Higgins, and the 1998 bombing of the Khobar Towers.

But it seems my hopes were in vain. Kerryesque nuance is emanating like a foul, stinking miasma from Foggy Bottom and enveloping a fearful White House.

Read on.

Today FoxNews reports:

A plan by the Bush administration to release detailed and possibly damning specific evidence linking the Iranian government to efforts to destabilize Iraq have been put on hold, U.S. officials told FOX News.

Officials had said a "dossier" against Iran compiled by the U.S. likely would be made public at a press conference this week in Baghdad, and that the evidence would contain specifics including shipping documents, serial numbers, maps and other evidence which officials say would irrefutably link Iran to weapons shipments to Iraq.

Now, U.S. military officials say the decision to go public with the findings has been put on hold for several reasons, including concerns over the reaction from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as well as inevitable follow-up questions that would be raised over what the U.S. should do about it.

You know, since Iranian troops are actively involved in killing US troops in Iraq I am tempted to ask what more Ahmadinejad is going to do in way of reaction? Bend their dogtags? Send them to Iraq? And it further seems that if we were devoting one hell of a lot more time creating US actions for Ahmadinejad to be concerned about, he would have a lot less time to make trouble.

Not so, says the Sun, fear and nuance trump mission accomplishment and force protection.

The protection of sources and methods is only one concern, however, for the directorate of national intelligence. Another issue is political. Some of the intelligence collected in the last six weeks from raids of Iranian outposts implicates the Islamic Republic in funding Sunni jihadists. Making this information public could jeopardize the political standing of some of America's allies that have also forged alliances with Iran out of political necessity.

Another factor in the debate is deep disagreements about whether Iran's state apparatus is behind the Quds force, or whether it and the revolutionary guard in general do not reflect the policy of Iran's supreme leader and the rest of the regime. Many Iran analysts argue that there are multiple nodes of power in Tehran, often working at cross-purposes. This view dominated the Clinton administration, which sought to engage the former Iranian president, Mohammed Khatami and his fellow reformers, but not the state's more hard-line leadership represented in the intelligence and security services.

During the Cold War we did a lot of things under the guise of “plausible deniability.” Without going very much into details there were things that happened that were deniable. TF160, now known as the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, had a curious spike in fatalaties in the late 1980s, attributed to the hazards of flying with night vision goggles… and the air full of green tracers.

Last summer I wrote that I thought the same thing was underway in Iran and I have some indications that more is going on than the New York Times has seen fit to report.

But I think we’ve passed the point where we need to be acting in Iraq under Marquis of Queensbury rules. Sociopaths usually mistake kindness for weakness and the Iranian regime and its tools in Iraq are no exception. Sometime ago, when John McCain and Lindsay Graham were sponsoring the Terrorist Protection Act, I commented on the utter imbecility of expecting reciprocity in the treatment of captives on the part of any foe we are likely to face on the field of battle.

The incident in Karbala which Rick Moran summarizes on this page was a direct strike at US prestige that culminated in the senseless murder of four captured US soldiers underscores my point. In the past, we’ve observed a “catch and release” with captured Iranian operatives.

We’ve reached a point where it is imperative that the Iranian regime be publicly called to task for its actions and for the American people and Congress, not a handful of foreign service officers in Washington, to decide if it is okay for Iran to kill American troops and if not what to do about it.