Stretching the facts to show Iranian involvement in Iraq

The NYTimes has another skeptical article looking at the latest "Iranian" weapons find in Iraq.

The biggest unanswered question to me is left open more explicitly in this AP piece on the same presentation. This find was made in definitively Sunni territory in Diyala, but the miltary officers doing the briefing are unable to identify whether Sunni or Shia were using the Iranian (and UAE, and Iraqi manufactured) weapon parts.

Officials declined to link the find in Diyala to the Iranian government but said it was further proof that weapons were coming from the neighboring country, which is locked in a standoff with Washington over allegations it is fueling the violence in Iraq and seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

"It's proof beyond a doubt that there's Iranian manufactured weapons being used by insurgents in Iraq," military spokesman Lt. Col. Josslyn Aberle said in Baghdad. "But we can't say based on what we had and what we found who's involved in it."

(Again, there is little reasonable doubt that there are Iranian weapons in Iraq, but there are also weapons from just about everywhere in Iraq. Right now, the nongovernmental combatants in Iraq are the prime destination for "legitimate" and "black market" weapons suppliers around the world.

I'm sure if you wanted, you could probably build a similar "serial number" case against Russia, China, and a half dozen other countries.

With the underlying bias in this administration towards villifying Iran, we're going to need some hard evidence of intention by the Iranian government.)