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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Gen Pace says again, "No proof of an Iran link."

Pace said yesterday that there was nothing linking the Iranian government to the weapons, and I was willing to write it off to him being "out of the loop" in Australia, but he repeated the position today in Jakarta, making moot any explanation but intention.
A top U.S. general said Tuesday there was no evidence the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi insurgents with highly lethal roadside bombs, apparently contradicting claims by other U.S. military and administration officials.

So, is this preemptive CYA by Pace or an effort to short circuit the administration's politics against Iran?

Tony Snow got hammered earlier over yesterday's comments, I would guess Pace's reiteration today won't calm the furor.

posted by mikevotes at 2:22 PM

10 Comments:

  • It was certainly thoughtful of the Iranians to leave the serial numbers on those weapons.

    By Blogger Dick Headley, at 2:48 PM  

  • Is the White House cabal (Cheney, et al.) trying to cut the legs out of the professional military leadership (Pace)?

    Are we seeing another example of the perversion of governance where some bastard policy group (e.g. Fife) -- an internal 'think tank' -- is trying to wrest control from official and legal mechanisms?

    By Blogger -epm, at 2:50 PM  

  • DH, Yeah, I wrote a post on that last night.

    http://bornatthecrestoftheempire.blogspot.com/2007/02/would-iranians-leave-trail.html

    Why would they "not scratch off the serial numbers" or do what everybody else is doing (the Saudis, Egyptians, etc) and by ex soviet bloc arms?

    Why would they leave an easy trail?

    .....

    EPM, I think is Pace trying to cut back at such a group. The story appears to be that Cheney and cabal are the ones pushing the hard line, but there are a fair amount of career folks at CIA, State, etc who are pushing back.

    In two years, Cheney and his crew leave, but the career folks, and the military folks will have to deal with this for the rest of their careers if it goes down.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 2:56 PM  

  • This is very, very interesting. You have some military officers (Rank unknown, names unknown) strongly implicating Iran, but it was only through general intelligence and inference. It was a hunch. The general is far more clear in the evidence. Very interesting.

    At least the media is looking at this with caution and intelligent doubt.

    By Blogger Bravo 2-1, at 8:11 PM  

  • Well, they're looking at it with caution only after their first reporting got absolutely blasted for not looking with caution.

    And, I don't know if you saw it, but E&P passed on the rumor that one of the three anonymous defense officials was Caldwell.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 9:12 PM  

  • You have some military officers...

    Do we know this to be a fact? I'm not sure the briefers were military officers, but rather "senior intelligence officials," or some other ambiguous monikered individuals that sound military, but aren't.

    By Blogger -epm, at 9:43 PM  

  • The rumor is that one of them was Baghdad military spokesman Caldwell, and I think at least one of the others was DIA. (The agency where Feith, Cambone, and Wolfowitz ruled.)

    The third, I don't know.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 10:07 PM  

  • But these are civilians, n'est pas? Not commissioned military officers. I'm just asking. Because my cabal theory is that all this bluster is coming from politico's who BushCo has spliced into the Pentagon in an effort to give the false impression that this is all coming from the the professional career military, when in fact it's just more of the same political operative pollution that brought us the Iraq War in the first place.

    By Blogger -epm, at 11:03 PM  

  • I see your point and I don't know.

    The impression I got is that at least one of them was career, however, "Senior Defense Officials" would tend to support your theory.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 7:22 AM  

  • I obviously don't know for sure, but these are people who have manipulated the public with inference and innuendo, so it's important to strictly and literally parse their words. To that end, whatever the inference is, the opposite is most likely the case.

    Just something to think about.

    By Blogger -epm, at 9:22 AM  

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