Armed Liberal posted his take on a Guardian article that noted that the British recently seized a shipment of weapons from Iran into Iraq from either Hezbollah or the IRGC. You can read my earlier take here with pretty much the same information, only in the latter story it was US rather than British soldiers that seized a shipment of IEDs destined for the insurgency.
These stories haven't received nearly the attention they deserve, so I'm going to spend some time discussing them. Need I mention that MESA President-elect Juan Cole is involved?
We'll begin with the basic stories themselves. At least one liberal blogger I respect making the comparison between these claims and pre-war claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. While that's certainly one line of criticism, I would submit that if you're going to adopt basically the same standard for the statements made by Bush, Rumsfeld, and other cabinet officials that you do for say, the information ministries of dictatorships (which, I am aware, a number of people consider the current administration to be more or less equivalent to) in which information is generally dismissed off-hand in the absence of some corroborating evidence - then you're basically removing yourself from the pool of substantive analysis and commentary for the next couple of years.
In an effort to provide a more substantive rebuttal, we have Juan Cole's unfounded speculation that this story is Doug Feith's parting gift prior to his departure from the Pentagon in order to lay the framework for a US war against Iran. As always with the good professor, Iran or any other Middle Eastern regime deserves far more respect and legitimacy than anything that might possibly be linked to those damned Jews neocons.
Juan's argument is rather shaky even before he (predictably) starts becoming unhinged, but let's indulge him a bit:
Earlier in the article it was alleged that the supposedly captured shipment came from northeastern Iran. Yet by this later paragraph, the US military intelligence guys can't tell whether it came from the west or the east, or whether it came from Iran or Hizbullah. But if you don't know whether something comes from Lebanon or Iran, then you really don't know where it came from at all, do you? Lebanon and Iran are not like each other. One speaks Persian, the other Arabic. Why, they aren't even close to one another.
This is more or less a classic example of the Chewbacca defense for a number of reasons. Hezbollah may be based in southern Lebanon, but their relationship with Iran is so close that if you flip open any textbook on state-sponsored terrorism there will be at least some discussion of the Iran-Hezbollah relationship. According to FAS:
The foreign operations by the Guardians, which also encompass the activities of Hizballah and Islamic Jihad are usually carried out through the Committee on Foreign Intelligence Abroad and the Committee on Implementation of Actions Abroad ...
The Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is responsible for extraterritorial operations, including terrorist operations. A primary focus for the Qods Force is training Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups. Currently, the Qods Force conducts training activities in Iran and in Sudan ...
The largest branch of Pasdaran foreign operations consists of approximately 12,000 Arabic speaking Iranians, Afghans, Iraqis, Lebanese Shi'ites and North Africans who trained in Iran or received training in Afghanistan during the Afghan war years. Presently these foreign operatives receive training in Iran, Sudan and Lebanon, and include the Hizballah ...
... Members of these and other organizations receive military training at a Guardians of the Revolution facility some 100 kilometers south of Tehran. A variety of of training courses are conducted at the facility for fundamentalists from the Gulf states, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Lebanon, including naval operations, mines, and diving operations in a special camp near the Orontes River.
So it appears that there is a sizeable Hezbollah presence inside Iran at any given time for training and logistical purposes. The anti-regime website Ahwaz Intifada, which supports the ethnic Arab uprising in Iranian Khuzestan, goes as far as to support the claims made elsewhere that the IRGC enlisted Hezbollah to serve as its stormtroopers back in April in order to suppress the rebellion. Given that Khuzestan borders Iraq, it would seem that it would be of little difficulty for them to use it as a base from which to ship explosives into Iraq.
That said, allow me to address the other aspects of Juan's argument:
Do you notice how there are 250,000 tons of missing munitions in Iraq, such that it is not necessary for the Baath military intelligence to import very many from elsewhere?
First of all, nobody said the explosives were headed to the Baathists, that's Juan's inference because he either still doesn't believe that Zarqawi exists or that his organization (which he terms a "social movement") can carry out all the attacks attributed to them. In any event, this is a mute point since the area where the US-intercepted explosives were headed (northeastern Iraq) is the main area where Ansar al-Islam/Ansar al-Sunnah rather than the Baathists are known to operate. Also, if one is willing to suspend Juan's dogma with regard to Shi'ite/Sunni cooperation, we might also recognize that Iran backed Ansar al-Islam prior to the war and has chosen to harbor its leadership in its aftermath (a view supported by the much-touted International Crisis Group report on Iranian involvement inside Iraq, which Juan has cited favorably in the past), these explosives shipments can be seen within this context.
Do you notice how the US military has not captured any Lebanese Hizbullah in the company of Sunni guerrillas in Iraq? Do you notice how only the Baathist ex-Minister of the Interior, Falah al-Naqib, an appointee of CIA asset Iyad Allawi, ever alleged that he had captured Lebanese Hizbullah in Iraq? (Do you notice how Allawi's Minister of Defense, Baathist Hazem Shaalan, charged that Iran was Iraq's number one enemy when he was briefly in power last year?)
Note the qualifier "Sunni" prior to "guerrillas" in this statement, perhaps because Juan is aware that there were claims and press reports that Hezbollah were fighting alongside Sadr's Mahdi Army. To the best of my knowledge, no one has argued to date that Hezbollah and the Sunni insurgents are combining their forces (there's a rather large difference between sending someone weapons and fighting alongside them), so Juan throwing this out as "proof" against this story is a red herring, while his attempt to smear al-Naqib, Allawi, and Shaalan is little more than an exercise in genetic argumentation.
If what they say is true, it doesn't matter whether they're CIA or Baathists or anarcho-syndicalists, but Juan can't refute them so (as with Martin Kramer) he'll stick with a crudely-devised attempt at character assassination.
Do you notice how there are two, count them, two, Iraqi organizations called "Hezbollah" (which just means "party of God") and how Americans frequently are confused and think these are the Lebanese party, which they are not?
This one just puzzles me, since I've never seen an instance of this and I have seen assessments that differentiate between the Iraqi Hezbollahs and the Lebanese group of the same name. There are also Turkish and Saudi Hezbollahs, incidentally.
Do you notice how the US military has not captured any Iranians in the Sunni Arab provinces of Anbar, Salahuddin, etc.? (Occasionally Iranian pilgrims have been captured in Shiite areas, where they threw in with Shiite militants.)
Such as Sadr and the Mahdi Army. Yet Juan, in his attempted rebuttal against Michael Totten (without ever actually mentioning him), fails to note that press reports described a number of these "pilgrims" as being part of the Iranian regime's SS-style Baseej paramilitary unit.
There were no Americans to my knowledge killed alongside anti-communist forces in either Afghanistan or Central America during the 1980s, but I doubt Juan will see that point as absolving the US of any ties or support to anti-communist groups.
Do you notice how the US military has captured lots of Sunni Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Sudanese, etc.?
Yes, we have. In fact, we were noticing it here back when Juan was claiming that foreign fighters were a neocon myth to facilitate the invasion of Syria and Iran. Still, progress is progress and perhaps Juan will come to recognize that Zarqawi's real too ...
Do you notice how the Sunni guerrillas talk nasty about the Shiites and blow them up and slit their throats? Do you notice how some people are depending on you not to know that radical Shiites and extremist Sunnis don't like each other?
Not really, because there are those of us who are intelligent enough to recognize that there are degrees of hatred and that hatred for the Iraqi Shi'ites doesn't keep the foreign Sunni insurgents from getting help from the Iranian Shi'ites. Given that the triumph of Iraqi Shi'ism is likely to threaten the ideological foundations of the Iranian regime or that the mullahs likely believe that they're next on the US hit list because of their nuclear program decision to harbor the al-Qaeda leadership, at least some support of the insurgency makes perfect sense.
Do you notice how the elected (Shiite) Iraqi government that the guerrillas are trying to kill has excellent relations with (Shiite) Iran?
The same one that told Congress that it's willing to back the US even if we move against Iran militarily?
Do you notice how some regional forces wanted US wars against both Iraq and Iran and are probably unhappy that they are only going to get one bonbon, not two?
The "regional forces" that Juan is referring to here is (of course) Israel, except the article he cites to support this claim is a story from Ha'aretz in which Sharon stated that Libya, Syria, and Iran should also be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq and that the successful disarmament of Iraq will make this easier to achieve.
Not a word in there about this disarmament occurring through military means (and somehow we managed to get Qadaffi to do just that without any bombs falling), but for those who see a Zionist plot under every bush such statements are enough.
Do you notice how some regional forces may have intelligence officers in northern Iraq that would be in a good position to pass disinformation to the clueless (or overly eager) Americans?
Again, it is Israel that is being referenced here. Except that unless the Israelis stationed in northern Iraq arranged to have the weapons shipments sent over from Iran, they weren't involved in this particular incident. I realize that this goes against the grain of the omnipotent nature of the Zionist conspiracy, but such is life...
Do you notice how the story of Iranian agents coming in through Kurdistan looks a lot like the story the FBI had accused spy Larry Franklin feed AIPAC to see if they would run off to the Israeli embassy with it? Is it a counter-sting?
No, the story that Franklin tried to feed AIPAC involved (to my recollection) something about VEVAK planning to kidnap Israelis in Kurdistan. It had nothing to do with IRGC or Hezbollah explosives shipments, unless he's talking about the contention that the bombings in southern Iraq are being orchestrated by VEVAK, which is still a different matter altogether and in a different part of the country.
But far be it for logic or consistency to interrupt the Two Minutes Hate...
Do you notice how a cabal of plotters, including Franklin, Michael Ledeen, Harold Rhode, and the Italian Defense Department and military intelligence met with "the Iranian Chalabi," fraudster and Iran-Contra figure Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, in an attempt to torpedo better relations between Iran and the United States?
Yeah Juan, whatever. The link he cites leads to another musing of his from August 2004 that tells you far more about the professor than it does about Franklin, Ledeen, Rhode, Ghorbanifar, or the Italians:
It [the Franklin espionage case is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by the United States, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying).
... With both Iraq and Iran in flames, the Likud Party could do as it pleased in the Middle East without fear of reprisal. This means it could expel the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan, and perhaps just give Gaza back to Egypt to keep Cairo quiet. Annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the waters of which Israel has long coveted, could also be undertaken with no consequences, they probably think, once Hizbullah in Lebanon could no longer count on Iranian support. The closed character of the economies of Iraq and Iran, moreover, would end, allowing American, Italian and British companies to make a killing after the wars (so they thought).
Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power or powers.
I will once again reinterate that this man is the president-elect of MESA, the professional academic Middle East Studies Association.
If you can tell the difference between his arguments and those of say, his fellow traveler Pat Buchanan, feel free to let me know.
He concludes with this:
Be afraid when you begin to see US government agencies themselves handing out this highly suspect sort of information to major news networks. It means that the sting on the American people has moved from the smoke-filled back rooms to some higher operational level.
Or maybe trial balloons are being floated to see how gullible we are.
Funny Juan, I ask myself that every time you float away from substantive discussion and analysis on Iraq and into looney conspiracy theories.
Martin, as I noted earlier, doesn't buy that Iraq is shipping explosives into Iraq, but at least he bases such a belief on his far reasonable (and dare I say more articulate?) belief in the administration's past mendacity rather than some insane conspiracy that there's some Israeli plot afoot.
Meanwhile, back in the reality-based community, Iran shipping explosives into Iraq to aid the insurgency ups the tempo considerably as far as Iran's role in Iraq is concerned.
The vast majority of the discussion as far as how to deal with Iran to date has focused on the nuclear issue, in large part because I doubt either the US or the Europeans want to deal with it right now. All the same, I don't think that this is an issue that both parties are going to be able to just kick a little further down the road, especially if the US keeps taking casualties from these IEDs the way we have been over the last couple of weeks.
While I know that at least one possible solution to the situation is declaring victory and going home (Martin among others, for instance, has argued over at LaT that this is already in fact occurring), but I would suggest that another equally valid option is to be up-front with information like this and put it all on the table so that we can discuss these issues and formulate ways around them.
Vague descriptions that Iran is being "unhelpful" inside Iraq from Rumsfeld really isn't cutting it anymore. Mexico is "unhelpful" as far as preventing illegal immigration is concerned, but they aren't shipping weapons and explosives to the coyotes or Mara Salvatrucha or the Gulf Cartel.
If the IRGC's Qods Force, of which Iran's new president Ahmadinejad was a founding member, is basically taking part in acts of war against the US government, then perhaps that's an issue we might want to raise with the new Iranian government as well as with our own people when he comes to visit New York City.
Faster, please.
Juan Cole is an Idiot. But that aside, it's an important question if it's the Iranian government doing this, or Iranians doing this. It's not at all a given that the central government is in total control of it's people, or even how much their left hand knows what the right hand is doing. The same thing goes for Syria. A parallel to our own history could be Iran-Contra, were one group within the goverenment is doing arms deals and supporting foreign forces without the knowledge or conselt of the government as a whole. It's easy to just attribute everything to the central government, but that might not be the hole story. Rumsfeld's attitude about it makes a lot more sense if they think it's 'lose cannons' doing this, rather than official governement strategy.
Seth:
The difference is that the US during Iran-Contra was a democratic state, whereas Iran is a theocracy, so there is a definite difference there. I would also point out that those elements of the regime that are most likely to engage in these types of activities (Qods Force, etc.) are very closely tied to the new president and the parliament. This ambiguity makes it more important IMO for the US to be more up-front about this stuff.
If you look at the surface only, the coalition is struggling and Iran looks like the winner: after all, depite some good reconstruction work being conducted inside Iraq, the Iranians are backing a successful insurgency - with Syrian help. The Iranians are dominating the political debate, which will isher in sharia law under a Teheran friendly prime minister. The Iranians are well on the way to developing nuclear weapons in the safe knowledge that the Americans are tied down militarily, diplomatically (UN) and politically (no appetite inside the USA for more conflict). The Iranians are successfully backing - again, with Syria - a Hamas resurgence in Gaza, which will fill the vacuum created by Sharon's removal of settlers in a few day's time.
So, on the surface, a lot to be depressed about. But...there's always a but and it is wrong to assume that the good guys have been inactive. Consider these actions over the last few years:
(a) Israel sets up a security fence and also moves its citizens into Israel proper, from the settlements.
(b) Sharon has been to see Bush at least 5 times in the last 18 months - correct me if I am wrong, but it could be more.
© The US has sold defensive weaponry (patriot anti-missile system) and offensive weaponry (bunker busters etc) to Israel at a far greater rate than normal. Presumably the anti-missile systems are now in place.
(d)The administration has cleared Lebanon of Syrian military units.
(e)The administration has set up powerful military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and in former soviet republics on the Iranian northern border. They have kept friendly the non-Persian arab states ot Iran's south.
(f) The administration has wisely supported the EU-3 negotiations, knowing they will fail.
(g) The administration has been trying their best to keep Putin on side.
What have we got on this view of events? Iran surrounded and trying to keep Iraq unstable; Israel protected as best as it can be in case of Iranian, Syrian or palestinian attack; Iran diplomatically isolated in the event of a refusal to stop their nuclear programme.
End result: Bush is preparing the ground for a military strike against the mullahs. When this happens, the mullahs will have no international support. On top of that, Israel will be protected in case of Iranian retaliation.
Is this a realistic take on grand strategy or are my expectations way too high? Comments?
if Iran is gonna retaliate on Israel with nukes, or just long range missiles, Id sure as hell rather be in a West Bank settlement with lots of arabs nearby than in downtown Tel Aviv. But maybe thats just me.
oh, and very good post, Dan.
Actually liberalhawk, I would disagree. The general ilk likely to be tossing nukes westward have no concern at all for the surrounding arab population.
Zero.
Iran also have the long range problem if they decide to retaliate en masse.
The retaliation would be with medium to long range ballistic missiles with chem tips, not nukes. However due to the range, Israel would have ample opportunity to detect and take them down - note the success of the patriot system in Kuwait. I would estimate Israel would have 100-125 batteries already in place for this type of eventuality.
Dan, yea I agree with you about that. I'm just saying it needs to be established rather than assumed. While all this is going on, Iran is also overtly working to support the Iraqi government in many areas. If elements of the Iranian government are working cross-purposes, and aren't speaking or acting with one voice, that's relevant for their own stability, not just Iraq's.
Dan,
I don't understand what the timeline with Michael Ledeen is and why the left is so agitated by a conspiracy, and I was hoping you could help clarify.
As far as I can tell, the timeline is as follows:
1. Ledeen is hired by Doug Feith's office as an advisor after 9/11.
2. Ledeen goes abroad to Italy, where he meets with an Egyptian and Iraqi, who warn him of nefarious Iranian activities in Afghanistan.
3. Hadley warns him to knock it off because the administration gets cold feet from Manucher Ghorbanifar. (Side note -- why does the CIA consider him to be a fabricator?)
4. Ledeen holds a second meeting, organized by MG, in Italy, where he receives more information. The US ambassador to Italy informs Hadley, and shortly thereafter Ledeen loses his position.
Where does Harold Rhode fit into all of this?
Why does Juan Cole detect collusion with the Italian MoD?
David asks..
(Side note -- why does the CIA consider him to be a fabricator?)
Well, it could have something to do with the 3 separate lie detector tests by the CIA that he failed.
Seth:
Or they could be playing a double game, or their support for the Iraqis may change now that Ahmadinejad is in office, etc. This is where I say more clarity is needed.
David:
It's an article of faith in anti-war circles that Ledeen himself forged or was otherwise involved in the forgery of the Niger uranium documents. I don't know where the claim originates from, but a number of current and former CIA officials have attempted to shop it around to journalists.
As for the Italian connection, Juan is re-airing a number of (my view, scurrilous) accusations that originally surfaced decades ago among the Italian left.
davebo:
I don't know nearly as much as I should concerning Ghorbanifar (certainly enough to neither defend nor attack him), but I will just say that if one regards polygraphs as the end-all be-all as far as lie detectors are concerned they might want to take into account the ones that Aldrich Ames passed while spying for the Russians.
liberalhawk:
From a technical perspective, it's not at all clear that you'd be safer in Tel Aviv, either.
One of the things to consider is CEP, or circular error probable. It's the radius of the circle within which 50% of the same kind of missile would hit.
In the case of US and Soviet ICBMs, the CEP was measured in hundreds, and later dozens, of meters. That is, if you fired US or Soviet missiles, 50% of them would land within a few dozen meters of what they were aimed at.
With nuclear weapons, of course, that meant the target was effectively gone.
But it is not at all clear what the CEP of Iranian missiles are. And with a distance of only 35 miles separating Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, it's at least possible that missiles aimed at Tel Aviv might wind up hitting Jerusalem.
(Interestingly, nuclear-armed Iranian missiles might well affect Jerusalem, if their accuracy proved poor. How would that affect Iran's standing, if they blew up the Temple Mount while aiming for Tel Aviv?)
Dan,
I agree that lie detectors can be beaten, although apparantly not by Ghorbanifar.
But fortunately we have about 30 years of history on Ghorbanifar to rely on.
From Kaddafi's alleged hit squads out to kill Reagan to his claims, through Ledeen of course, of Iraq's possession of highly enriched uranium.
Obviously Ledeen is still standing by him. But he also seems to have based his career around Ghorbanifar's "intel".
Obviously I have no idea if he is indeed the source for the forged documents. But I do find it odd that more effort hasn't been put into finding out who is the source.
Davebo:
I would note that Ledeen's much-castigated ties with SISMI would seem to suggest that he relies on much more than the word of Ghorbanifar as far as intelligence is concerned. As I said, I don't know enough about the man to defend or condemn him.
As for not putting in more effort to find out who forged the documents, my understanding (and granted I haven't been following this nearly as well as other people) is that the forger in question was Martino.
Dan, the question of who forged the documents is still very much up in the air.
Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, expressed the opinion that the documents had been produced in the United States and funneled through the Italians.
Seems a bit like an Oliver Stone movie to me but who knows? You've got to admit the FBI's attitude towards the entire affair is extremely odd. The fact that they never even interviewed Martino makes one suspect that they either don't really care who did it or perhaps already know and don't care to make that information public.
wrt to the downtown tel aviv problem (or the rehov dizzengoff problem, if you prefer)
i was thinking in terms of the scud attacks during GW1. Saddam attacked TA and Haifa, but not Jerusalem, iirc. (he didnt hit Beersheba or eilat, as they were out of range) while the missiles proved innaccurate, for the most part they fell roughly in or near the metro areas under attack. In fact it was noted at the time that residents of Tel Aviv went on vacation to Eilat to get way, while Yerushalmis didnt.
I would presume the principle "rational" motivation for an unprovoked Iranian strike on ISrael, and a key consideration even if its retaliation, would be to the huge gain in prestige in the muslim world to Iran, and to Khomeinism, from a successful attack on Israel. A large number of Pal casualties (Israeli arabs seem to be of less concern, for some reason) would seem to offset this considerably.
Davebo:
I am aware of Cannistraro's opinion on the subject, though I will be quite up-front and say that I do not consider him a disinterested observer in the affair since I have reason to believe that was one of the individuals who was shopping Ledeen around as the potential forger to various media outlets. There is also the Seymour Hersh version of the story that if I recall correctly holds that the documents were put together by a group of ex-CIA officials who want to expose them later.
The FBI's attitude towards the affair likely reflects the sensitivity of the investigation, which involves no less than 4 separate intelligence agencies (US, UK, Italians, and the French) involved that we know about from open-source information. As for them not interviewing Martino, take a look back back at how many times "Curveball" got interviewed by the CIA ...
Dan.
"As for them not interviewing Martino, take a look back back at how many times "Curveball" got interviewed by the CIA ..."
And of course, the results. What's the definition of insanity again?
;0)
"Keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about,"
Feb. 4, 2003, e-mail—written a day before Powell's U.N. appearance by a senior CIA official.
"I agree that lie detectors can be beaten, although apparantly not by Ghorbanifar."
Anyone can beat one if they know how. Lie detectors 'work' because people think they are lie detectors. They are stress detectors. Introducing false stress into truthful answers is easy as pie, once you know the trick, and eliminating stress from lies is automatic for compulsive liars and sociopaths.. ie, those who are likely to be committing crimes.
But I digress. I'd like to see Cole explain how prefabricated EIDs in the shape of road curbs, as well as shaped charges powerful enough to destroy APCs could be made in a Sunni basement. These are military technologies only a state would be able to produce effectively and in scale.
Wasn't there a judicial finding in Italy that the forged Niger documents were sourced to an agent with ties to French intelligence?
Dan,
A "mute point" is a silent point.
A "moot point" is a point that doesn't matter - usually because circumstances have changed.
Mark, I must admit I'm confused.
Is it your position that the man failed the polygraph tests on purpose??
Seems sort of odd to me.
No, davebo, I think his point is the following:
1. There is no such thing as a machine that knows when you're lying. The machine measures stress.
2. Someone who understands how the machine works can, therefore, lie and nonetheless pass the test.
3. Conversely, therefore, someone who is under stress may well fail the test yet not be lying.
As others who have taken such tests (and in some cases administered them) have indicated, for some people the tests are virtually useless.
Why? Because the very fact that they are wired up, that they are having every answer scrutinized, is enormously stressful. Consequently, the test shows that they are "under stress," which could be interpreted as lying. But when they are spiking on the test on such questions as "What is your name?" or "Do you work for such-and-so?" the results are mostly, if not entirely, useless.
"But when they are spiking on the test on such questions as "What is your name?" or "Do you work for such-and-so?" the results are mostly, if not entirely, useless."
I agree entirely. But in such a case the person would not have been deemed to have failed the test(s).
Dan:
Thanks for a very informative post -- and I found the discussion relevant as well. The only issue I have with anything you have said is that I do not totally discount Cole's assertion that some of the recent Administration statements to the press might be a hint of actions to come (e.g. today the President reiterated that "all options were on the table" with Iran); at the very least I believe they are statements designed to make the Iranian government think twice before continuing this overt assistance to the Iraqi resistance.
One of my buddies was forced to take a polygraph test back when he was in the military. He was rather insulted by the whole affair, so he proceeded to lie his ass off, successfully convincing the polygraph operator that he had been leaking classified material right and left, including material he couldn't possibly have had access to. As a result the polygraph guys were made to look like idiots. My buddy's CO was amused.
first off if you consider your self a hawk you are a coward. wish to dictate to other nations your will and yet not listen to theirs. next their is no honor in the wars any more it takes no skill, it is not the best and the brightest out there fighting it is the poor and the easily manipulated. thirdly,none ow the questions you tried to address where addressed you merely played rope a dope and redirected to your dogma.there are three issues that must be addressed to succeed. they are 1-the disinfranchised 18 to 32 year olds who have no jobs no money and no electricity (no power) there fore are angry and resentful of everyone but there familys. 2-isriael's need to hold the big stick in the middle east.
3-the last and most important -accepting the majority of muslims as good people and their history as that which led to developements in science and math. with out which i would not be typing on a computer today. religious hate must be forgotten!!!