Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Call It War, Mr. President

By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com 9/5/2007

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been waging war against America in Iraq from the very first days of U.S. military operations against Saddam Hussein. And yet, until just recently, no one in the U.S. government has been willing to acknowledge this openly.

Iran began planning operations to undermine an eventual U.S. invasion of Iraq many months before U.S. military forces arrived in the region in late 2002.

Whereas the United States was still relying on a Commando Solo aircraft to beam crude Arabic-language radio programming into Iraq, the Iranians unrolled a whole series of slick, Arabic language television stations that blanketed the entire country with anti-U.S. propaganda.

The effect on Iraqi public opinion was devastating. At one point, Iran had 42 radio and TV stations in Arabic beaming into Iraq, whereas the U.S.-led coalition had just one.

A new report jointly sponsored by the Weekly Standard and the Institute for the Study of War, released last week, provides extraordinary new details of Iran’s propaganda, intelligence, and military offensive against the U.S. presence in Iraq since those early days of the war.

• Iran is using Hezbollah to train Iraqi terrorists, sending top Hezbollah operatives into Iraq periodically to ensure hands-on management of their terror protégés;

• Iran has set up training camps near Tehran where they regularly graduate classes of between 20-70 terrorists, who then return to Iraq as a self-contained network to carry out terrorist operations against U.S. military and Iraqi targets;

• The Revolutionary Guards “Qods Force” is running operations in Iraq through a network of ‘secret cells” within Shia militias, whose agents assassinate key Iraqi leaders, run death squads, infiltrate government ministries, and distribute weaponry to other insurgents.

• Iran is also working with Sunni terrorist groups, include al Qaeda in Iraq and an Ansar al Islam, and has been terrorists from both groups at special camps inside Iran.

This deadly litany of Iranian actions leaves no doubt about the intentions of Iran’s leaders.

They aim to defeat us in Iraq. It’s as simple as that.

They have declared war, and intend to continue waging war until we defeat them, or they defeat us.

... so slow to learn ...

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