Interrogations

Meanwhile, Ezra Klein notes that Michael Gordon doesn't appear to have actually seen the evidence for Iranian complicity in this EFP business. Rather, "American intelligence says that its report of Iranian involvement is based on a technical analysis of exploded and captured devices, interrogations of Shiite militants, the interdiction of trucks near Iran’s border with Iraq and parallels between the use of the weapons in Iran and in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah."

This, of course, raises the perennial question of what kind of intelligence a country that's decided to deploy systematic torture as an interrogation method is actually getting. Were the militants handed over to some sub-agency charged with assembling a dossier on Iranian meddling in Iraq and then tortured until they confessed to getting Iranian help? Presumably if you let me torture them until they admit that the weapons have nothing to do with Iran, my interrogation would produce that result.

Comments

Somebody needs to get the whole choir singing off the same page.

Domestic, Iraqi, EFP production:

Also yesterday [/23/07], Multinational Division Baghdad troops in the western part of the city found a factory in which explosively formed penetrators, the most deadly form of roadside bomb, were being made...

Link

Posted by Davis X. Machina | August 8, 2007 10:40 AM

Presumably if you let me torture them until they admit that the weapons have nothing to do with Iran, my interrogation would produce that result.

I dunno, what would you do, wave a big knife at them? Threaten to shoot them with your nonexistent sidearm? Leave torturing false confessions out of people to the professionals in the US government, and just stick to asking. Since the explosives probably yet again actually have nothing to do with Iran, you could get your desired answer a lot more quickly and easily.

Posted by mds | August 8, 2007 10:55 AM

Remember, the U.S. recently has taken the unprecedented step of talking with Iranian diplomats in Iraq - about Iraq only - at the urging of the Iraq government. Twice so far I think. So this runs contrary to the sabre rattling here, if that's what it is.

Even if it's true, say they get better evidence, it's not a Casus belli in my opinion.

In any event, a war with Iran would be disaster. It would make Iraq look like a tea party.

From what I understand Hezbollah has refrained from rhetorically attacking the U.S. However Iran talks of wiping Israel off the map on a regular basis, and they know the U.S. is the major backer of Israel. Would it be unreasonable to conclude that they're sniping at the U.S.'s soldiers? Also, the U.S. is denying them nuclear technology, while giving it to India. Can't make them happy. (Plus they know we gave nukes to Israel and are still resentful over how the U.K. and America subverted their democracy back in the '50s, even though much of the population likes America).

I still see a war with Iran as highly unlikely. Iraq cost the Republicans in 2006. Also, Saddam had offended and crossed the U.N. in many more ways than Iran has.

Posted by Peter K. | August 8, 2007 10:59 AM

Look, when George Washington was President some 8,000 years ago, he said that the reason we needed nooozpapers was so that journalists could print what government officials said that they knew based on secret information.

And look, all good sensible people backed the Iraq war & occupation based on secret evidence they couldn't share with us citizens but which they promised had been seen by our representatives in government, so what's the problem?

If God had wanted citizens to make informed decisions based on publicly available evidence, then He wouldn't have made so many cool movies about secret agencies and their fascinating underground labs and space technology.

Posted by El Cid | August 8, 2007 11:07 AM

Matt, don't you realize that in some cases, the confessions obtained through our enhanced interrogation techniques is the only evidence we have against these monsters? Without them, we might have no grounds at all to hold them, and have to release them back onto the streets, where they could continue their terroristory activies.

Those confessions help keep Iraq safe. They keep America safe. Why do you hate the Iraqi people, Matt? And why do you hate America?

Posted by Imaginary | August 8, 2007 11:14 AM

Re "Plus they know we gave nukes to Israel "
------------
My understanding is that it was the French. Although the FBI did investigate a company here in Pennsylvania , suspecting that the company had transferred enriched uranium to Israel.

What the US government did do --in the John Kennedy administration -- was accept Israel's development of nuclear weapons without protest and without serious attempt to pressure Israel to stop.

Posted by Don Williams | August 8, 2007 11:28 AM

Obviously this kind of PR offensive is terrible foreign policy.

But it's great domestic policy to deal with a war that not only your administration shouldn't have fought, and then proceeded to botch so it became an utter catastrophe.

Beat this drum hard enough, and a percentage of people who don't buy the dolchtoss argument are gonna blame the Iranians for the catastrophe in Iraq.

Again, terrible foreign policy. But great domestic political PR.

It's rather this administration's hallmark.

Posted by anonymiss | August 8, 2007 11:42 AM

What the news media should ask the White House to explain is

a)WHY does the WHite House think the EFP's had to come from Iran --given that the technology is extremely simple, widely available and has been around for decades?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_formed_penetrators

b) As noted above, hasn't the US military already found EFP factories WITHIN Iraq?

c) WHAT is it with the goddamm news media? Why do they ALWAYS develop a sudden cooperative stupidity at critical moments in the national discourse?

Posted by Don Williams | August 8, 2007 11:48 AM

Since I'm probably talking to those who have the "educated incapacity" of the Ivy League --i.e, who can't change a flat tire -- I will explain a few things that would be obvious to a blue collar worker.

The copper dishes in the EFPs can be formed by collecting some copper cable (from the collapsing Iraq electrical grid), melting it with a blow torch (or charcoal fire -- as they've been doing in Mesopotamia for 5000 years) and casting it into a disk. You then form the disk into a shallow saucer by placing it atop a hollow depression, putting a rounded steel plug on top and then pressure forming the disk into a saucer.

You do this by placing a common hydraulic bottle jack ( carried by trucks, used in garages, etc.) atop the steel plug and just underneath a steel beam, stone ceiling,etc. Anything that is immovable and will direct the hydraulic jack's roughly 8 tons of pressure against the copper disk.

See http://www.pplmotorhomes.com/parts/rv-jacks/hydraulic-jacks.htm

It's too bad that we don't have a real news service. They would challenge Bush's bullshit by creating an EFP on national TV to show how simple it is -- how the Iraqis could continue to make them if Iran was nuked out of existence.

Posted by Don Williams | August 8, 2007 12:04 PM

Note that if you were a Sunni supporter --Saudi Arabia, etc -- or if you just wanted to provoke a US war with Iran for other reasons (Israeli Likud,etc) -- then it would be awfully easy to frame Iran for this.

I don't necessarily think Iran is NOT involved in this -- chemical analysis of captured EFPs may show trace elements indicating they came from Iran. In which case we slap Iran on the nuts in a way that sends a message without provoking a war.

But I do think our policy should be driven by the facts -- and by objective judgement of US national interests -- NOT by deceitful propaganda in the service of private agendas.

Posted by Don Williams | August 8, 2007 12:15 PM

What's curious about the reports of EFPs being smuggled from Iran is that they're relatively heavy and bulky -- whereas almost all the raw materials needed to make them (high explosive, steel pipe, copper ) are available in Iraq.

The only thing that makes sense to smuggle is perhaps the detonators. Although improvised detonators are not that hard to make. The US Army explained how -- in its "Improvised Munitions Handbook" -- on sale at your local gun show.

Posted by Don Williams | August 8, 2007 12:28 PM

PS On sale only to NRA "freedom fighters" of course. Not to terrorists.

Posted by Don Williams | August 8, 2007 12:30 PM

Ignoring for a moment the specific EFP issue (and I can tell you that this is far from being a story that the White House is manufacturing and then pushing from the top down), is there anyone who really doubts that Iran is providing significant assistance to various Shia groups within Iraq? Of course they are. And some of these Shia groups then turn around and kill US soldiers.

The question isn't whether this is happening, it's what to do about it. A war with Iran would be a collosal disaster even by W's standards, for all sorts of reasons. For many of the same reasons that Russia didn't invade Pakistan in 1984 even though Pakistan and the US were providing material assistance to the mujahadeen, the US should not react to Iranian actions by invading Iran.

Posted by Doug T | August 8, 2007 12:41 PM

So um, didn't they discover an EFP manufacturing operation in Iraq (yes, the one with the 'q' at the end) just a couple of months ago? As in, maybe they're coming from Iran and maybe not, but the last time they were flogging this story it came up "not."

As far as people supplying arms that get into the hands of the insurgents and are then used against our guys, I think I just read something about 20,000 AK-47 that went a-wandering. From us. Not to mention stuff like all those tons of explosives in the unsecured weapons depots after the invasion. I honestly don't think Iran needs to do all that much to keep these guys supplied. Especially since Iran is Shi'a and the insurgents are predominantly Sunni. Not but what we're also facing Shi'a resistance from the al Sadr side. All part of the fun of getting involved in someone else's religious-based factional warfare for no particularly compelling reason.

At any rate, none of it adds up to a reason to expand the war to include Iran, as Doug T says.

And not to mention that anytime you see the byline Michael Gordon on one of these stories (which is a heck of a lot of the time), you can pretty much read it as Green Zone-approved propaganda straight from the source with no "filtering." He's a hackuvajob stenographer.

Posted by DrBB | August 8, 2007 1:00 PM

It appears Don Williams is on a hysterical crusade to "prove" Iran blamless.

Only Bush is the enemy of America. And all enemies of America that also hate Bush are Don's new best buddies.

Good thing he loves and supports the troops soooooo much!

Which is ridiculous because Iraqi Shiite factions have publicly thanked the Iranians for helping arm them.

DougT has it right. We know the Iranians are helping kill US soldiers, but the consequences of war with Iran join anti-American Lefties and conservative realists that the danger of an expanded ME war makes those Americans killed with Iranian weaponry and combat training expendible for now. But while we are tied down in Iraq now, we can work hard to pay back the Iranians in other ways, mainly economic and by increasing their pariah nation standing with Europe and Sunni Muslims. And for the future, America's efforts against the ideology of radical Islam will be far more effective if focused on Iran and KSA than in Obama's "strategic counsel" that we invade Pakistan and radicalize that nation further so we can go on what could be a wild goose chase for 4-5 terrorists that would just be replaced by other radical Islamists and celebrated as martyrs or all their speeches and books avidly read during the 10-year long civilian trial process Obama and most other Lefty Democrats say terrorists deserve over the "wrong and evil" military version until we join the ICC and turn it over to French, Russian, and Gaboonian judges to decide.

Posted by Chris Ford | August 8, 2007 7:33 PM

Presumably if you let me torture them until they admit that the weapons have nothing to do with Iran, my interrogation would produce that result.

Ah, the Reality-Based Inquisition.

-- Cardinal Ezra! Bring out... the comfy chair!

Posted by ajay | August 9, 2007 5:32 AM