I hope that Gentle Readers aren’t paying too much attention to the news these days (other than the news out of Spring Training camp), but the problem with paying a little attention to the news is that you can get a false impression—exactly the false impression that Our Only President wants you to get. Yes, it’s clear that there are Iranian-made munitions in Iraq. Surprise! Hint: None of the various factions in Iraq are buying their munitions at Wal-Mart. They’re getting them from somewhere, and not entirely from Saddam Hussein’s old stash. Although, of course, lots are from there. But still.
From Our Only President’s press conference this morning:
I can say with certainty that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops. And I'd like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds force was ordered from the top echelons of government. But my point is what's worse -- them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening? And so we will continue to protect our troops.The first quick point, of course, is that we cannot trust that anything Our Only President says is true. If he told me it was a sunny day, I’d bring an umbrella. Now, that’s been true of lots of Presidents, so take it for what it’s worth. But if you asked me to bet that the munitions in question are actually Quds force items, or that they were used to harm our troops, or that the devices were in Iraq at all, or that there is a Quds force in Iran, or that he wasn’t talking entirely about Mooninites, I would not wager with you. The whole thing could well be a lie from beginning to end. No, it’s probably not. But that’s where we are. We have a President that we know is willing to lie about stuff like this. So we can only trust so much.
The second point is that even if the items in question really are Quds force items, there are lots of ways that they could have got to people who used them to harm our troops. It is certainly possible that the “top echelons of government” ordered the Quds force to give them Sadr’s army with specific orders to kill Americans. Of course, we don’t really know what the top echelons of government are in Iran, so a claim like that is pretty dicey. It’s also possible that a handful of Iranian Guardsmen sold a handful of these devices to an arms dealer in Pakistan who sold them to a Sunni sympathizer in Saudi Arabia who passed them to a Ba’athist faction. Or that some Quds force hotshot is working on his own but with his commander turning a benevolent blind eye, or that some Quds force hotshot was working on his own against the express orders of his commander, and has now been shot for disobedience. We know almost nothing of what is going on in Iran.
Again, it would be shocking to me if there were no Iranian munitions in Iraq now in the hands of factions in this war who hate and try to kill Americans. It would be shocking if there were no Turkish munitions in Iraq now. It would be shocking if there were no Saudi munitions in Iraq now. It would be surprising if there were no French munitions. It would be a little surprising if there were no American munitions in the hands of our enemies. There is—and remember, I am an ignorant American who knows next to nothing about these kinds of things—a black market in weapons. The existence of any particular kind of weapon in Iraq means nothing.
Now, I think it’s fair for our people to say that on the basis of this sort of thing, Iranian military forces found in Iraq will be treated as hostile. That seems reasonable, and it seems fair to warn Iran of that. On the other hand, it to YHB that it would be an error to bomb Cambodia because of this. I’m just saying.
Actually, though, my point is not about what would be good or bad policy, because of course any policy adopted by Our Only President will be fucked up beyond all recognition anyway. My point is that if you pay only a little attention to the news, you might well think that although skeptics question how high up whether or not the Quds force was ordered from the top echelons of government to supply the devices, there is general agreement that there was some at least semi-official deliberate action by the Iranian government. And there is no such agreement.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.