If it walks like a duck…
US: Quds, Hezbollah Training Hit Squads
(http://www.military.com/news/article/us-quds-hezbollah-training-hit-squads.html?ESRC=dod.nl)
August 16, 2008
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Iraqi Shiite assassination teams are being trained in at least four locations in Iran by Tehran’s elite Quds force and Lebanese Hezbollah and are planning to return to Iraq in the next few months to kill specific Iraqi officials as well as U.S. and Iraqi troops, according to intelligence gleaned from captured militia fighters and other sources in Iraq.
More from the article:
The fighters are expected to return to Iraq between now and October, but the officer said there’s no intelligence suggesting they are actually in Iraq yet. The information came from militia fighters captured in Iraq and other sources in the country that the officer would not describe.Many of the fighters fled to Iran this spring after Iraqi government forces cracked down first on militia sanctuaries in Basra and Baghdad’s Sadr City district, then in Amarah and now in Diyala province, the military officer said.
One of the reasons the U.S. believes the special groups moved out during that period is the sharp decline in the number of deadly roadside bombs bearing Iran’s signature explosive design. In March, there were 55 such attacks. By July, that number had dropped to 17 and by August 13 there had been just four, according to U.S. military charts obtained by The AP. U.S. intelligence believes those sophisticated bombs can be traced back to Iran. The military counts 446 of them so far this year; 178 of them were found and disabled before they could explode.
Iran, Hezbollah’s benefactor, denies giving any support to Shiite extremists in Iraq.
The officer said training is going on in at least four locations in Iran: Qom, Tehran, Ahvaz and Mashhad. The number of “special group criminals” – the U.S. name for Iraqi fighters sponsored by Iran – is unknown but is estimated in the hundreds and possibly more than 1,000.
According to the officer, the training camps are operating under the direction of Quds force commander Brig. Gen. Ghassem Soleimani, with the knowledge and approval of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The elite Quds Force is a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
My Commentary:
“It is difficult to find a parallel to the unwisdom of the British and weakness of the French Goverrnments in this disastrous period. Nor can the United States escape the censure of history. Absorbed in their own affairs and all the abounding interests, activities and accidents of a free community, They simply gaped at the vast changes that were taking place in Europe, and imagined they were no concern of theirs. The considerable corps of highly competent, widely trained American professional officers formed their own opinions, but these produced no noticeable effect upon the improvident aloofness of American Foreign policy.” -Winston Churchill
This quote is a portion of the introduction to In The Words Of Our Enemies, by Jed Babbin. Babbin writes in the first paragraph of the Introduction about one conclusion Churchill reached about World War II tha should be on the minds of Americans after reading the article from AP. “There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action.”
You notice he uses the word action. Not talk, not cajoling, no “negotiating”. As Babbin writes, “Our policy according to Secretary of State Rice toward Iran is one of isolating it, by diplomacy and U.N. Security Council “sanction” resolutions from the world community.”
This has had amazing results, Madame Secretary. Again from Babbin’s book, “So far Iran is so isolated that: (1) Russia is openly building and supplying Iran’s nuclear program, and has supplied Iran with sopisticated anti-aircraft missile eyetems that essentially preclude air strikes against nuclear sites by all except stealth aircraft or missileds; (2) China is trading arms and technology to Iran for oil: and (3) Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has allied his nation with Iran (and China) in hopes of gaining weapons and technology and constricting American access to oil.” That is some isolation. The “isolation” has spread to our own hemisphere.
Babbin’s thesis is simple and pertient. Our enemies, those who who hate us for supporting Israel, being infidels, and spreading our decadent lifestyle, actually say what they believe. They have written it down, broadcast it on TV and radio, posted it on the Internet, and preach it in the mosques and madrasas.
The radicals of Islam, like Al qaeda’s bin Laden, al Zawahiri, and Iran’s Ayatollah al Khameini, have distorted the interpretation of Islamic teaching to fit their purpose. This extreme parsing of Islamic teaching began in its modern form with Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who lived in the US in the 1940’s and published Social Justice in Islam. On returning to Egypt, he was jailed and tried in an assassination attempt on Egyption president Nasser. While awaiting trial, Qutb managed to smuggle out the manifesto, Milestones. This document forms the basis of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.
Zawahiri expanded upon Qutb’s work. Second in command of Al Qaeda and its number one spiritual advisor, he “created the theoretical framework to justify” suicide bombers, the killing of innocents (even women and children) and other Muslims. This is detailed in Lawrence Wright’s excellent primer, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. He sums up Zawahiri’s teaching: “With such sophistry, Zawahiri reversed the language of the Prophet and opened the door to universal murder.”
These are the people Iran supports and encourages. Iran does so in the face of international censure and will continue. George W. Bush was correct in describing an “axis of evil”. Almost every day there are new revelations about Iran’s military build-up or its support and sponsorship of terrorism. See my post on 14 August 2008 on this blog, Iran Builds “Smart” Submarine.
The next president will have to act, not talk, to preserve and defend the United States and its citizens. Folks, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, flies like a duck, then it’s a duck.
Our enemies are speaking to us with words and actions. Appeasement with Iran is not working. Our weakness emboldens Russis’s Putin and Venezuela’s Chavez. Australian Broadcasting reported August 18, 2008 that “the Russian military [is] moving short range ballistic missile launchers into South Ossetia.”
Please consider these words in the upcoming Presidential and Congressional elections. Straight-talk McCain is clear that evil must be defeated. Obama is over his head in these matters, the “above my pay grade” response to a different subject applies here also. There are many “-isms” bandied about but I propose a new one. To define Sen. Obama’s approach to foreign policy of talking them to death, let’s refer to that as Obamism. If he is elected president, Obamism can take its place beside Nevilleism and Daladierism.
