The New York Times reports on training camps inside Iran teaching people to kill Americans:
WASHINGTON — They wake before dawn, with time to exercise, eat and pray before the day’s first class in firing Kalashnikov rifles. Over the next eight hours, they practice using bazookas or laying roadside bombs, with a break for lunch and mandatory religious instruction. There is free time in the evening to watch television or play Ping-Pong.Lights out at 11 p.m.
Such is a typical day at a dusty military base outside Tehran, where for the past several years members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah operatives have trained Iraqi Shiites to launch attacks against American forces in Iraq, according to accounts given to American interrogators by captured Iraqi fighters. American officials have long cited Iranian training and weapons as reasons for the lethality of attacks by Shiite fighters in Iraq. Iranian officials deny that such training takes place.
Now, more than 80 pages of newly declassified intelligence documents for the first time describe in detail an elaborate network used by Iraqis to gain entry into Iran and train under Iranian supervision.
Well not quite just now and not quite just for the first time. Bill Roggio has been describing the process for nearly a year. In December 2007 he wrote: “The Long War Journal has spoken to several mid-level and senior US military and intelligence officers, all of whom have declined to go on the record due to the sensitive nature of the Iranian issue. Based on these conversations as well as other information, The Long War Journal has learned the nature of the Qods Force operations in Iraq and how they move resources into the country.” The article is accompanied by a diagram showing the Iranian ratlines into Iraq.
In August 2008, Bill Roggio had a further article with a more detailed map and noting the location of the Qods camps. And the AP knew it too.
Qods Force and Hezbollah currently run training camps for the “Special Groups” as well as the Hezbollah Brigades in at least four locations inside Iran, at Qom, Tehran, Ahvaz, and Mashhad, the senior military officer told the AP. The camps are co-run by Iran’s Qods Force and Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon.
The concept of an engagement queue came out of fire control literature to describe the order in which the commander paid attention to things. In the case of Iran’s involvement in attacking Iraq, the public already has a vague knowledge of Teheran’s actions. People who read Bill Roggio’s site, for example, would have been well informed. Many people in the media would have known the same set of facts too. But for editorial reasons it wasn’t important enough to make the top of the fold. Technically speaking the problem of Iran’s aggression is a ‘known known’. But the lack of emphasis on it in the MSM means it is way back in the public policy engagement queue. In a way it is like the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac problem: known, but who cares?
Someday we may all care, but no one can predict when or whether. Only when something dramatic happens will something in back of the queue jump to the fore. Then MSM can write, ‘in October 2008, the New York Times warned about the impending disaster …’ There are a lot of things which we know, but whose relative importance is denigrated by current assessments. They are known, but are dismissed as inconsequential.
Which of the things which we know about the current Presidential candidates which are now regarded as marginal will turn out to be central?
Tip Jar
PJM Home
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
22 Comments
1. hdgreene:Well, you might ask Joe Biden — if you can get the gag out of his mouth. From ABC News:
“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”
No Kidding. But what if our judgment tells us you’re really wrong? At that point, ain’t it patriotic to work with all our heart and all our soul to undermine the policy? You know, like Barack Obama and the war in Iraq. Slow Joe goes on:
“There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision’,” Biden continued. “Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”
Kinda like the surge in Iraq after the unsound Dem’s declared the war there lost.
Oct 21, 2008 - 2:28 pm 2. hdgreene:Oh, some of that was my comments, not ABC news. You should be able to pick it out!
Oct 21, 2008 - 2:31 pm 3. trangbang68:What is that old saying about hiding in plain sight? Obama is obviously not the kind of leader we need in a world full of tinder waiting for a match and yet….
Oct 21, 2008 - 2:41 pm 4. lc:Bill Clinton was a similar kind of glib Big Man on Campus personality. Fortunately he had peace purchased by others to squander. Obama doesn’t have that margin of error.
This is ancient history, but it has always bugged me. In the 2000 presidential elections, the program “Frontline” broadcast a profile on the two main candidates. Included in this program was a discusion of AlGore’s marijuana use and his political decision to lie about that use when Gore started his political career. Also mentioned in this program was a DUI incident of Bush’s. This show was broadcast the night before EACH of the Gore/Bush debates. YET, the weekend before voting it “revealed” that Bush had a DUI arrest and implied all sorts of things, among them that Bush lied and tried to cover the arrest up.
Curiously, Gore’s campaign manager’s father was a lawyer in Portland, Maine, from where this DUI “revelation” came from.
It all just makes me sick.
Oct 21, 2008 - 2:42 pm 5. NahnCee:I still think that Bush is going to nuke Iran before leaving office, so the issue of Tehran training terrorists and Biden’s vapors may not be pertinent in January.
Oct 21, 2008 - 2:48 pm 6. Dave in NC:NahnCee:
From your mouth to GOD’s ear!
Oct 21, 2008 - 2:51 pm 7. Piltdown Man:A little off-topic, but related: Did you say President Barack Obama?
Oct 21, 2008 - 2:59 pm 8. wretchard:A little off-topic, but related: Did you say President Barack Obama?
For some people, Obama’s Presidency is not only inevitable but foreordained. Nancy Pelosi rates the probability at 100%. This video, “Taking Sanctuary in Barack Obama” not only celebrates him as de facto President, but almost literally as the Lord and Savior. The blood fees which Biden suggests will be extracted by enemy challenges within the first six months are part of the sticker price that will be paid in order to come by this wonderful, wonderful, transformational person.
It will be fascinating to see what happens whent things unravel, an eventuality which Biden is already inoculating people against. There will be two responses: the crisis was a Bush legacy which poor Barack has to clean up (blaming Clinton was also a standard explanation for Bush’s problems); and second, ‘nobody could see it coming’.
Even more fascinating will be to watch the response of people who did see it coming. There will be a terrible temptation to gloat and say, ‘I told you so’ once the bloopers pile up, assuming an Obama Presidency. But that will be a mistake. Obama is the product of something larger than himself; an expression of an elite class. And even if Obama never existed, sooner or later, the talent spotters of that class would have have found something very much like him to serve their interests and broadcast their message. Therefore the challenge will be to show how the current institutions need to be reformed, replaced or competed against in an orderly way so that our systematic blindness can be ameloriorated — I will not say cured.
Oct 21, 2008 - 3:19 pm 9. Kinuachdrach:“Obama is the product of something larger than himself; an expression of an elite class.”
Very well put, Wretchard.
Think of the implications. The US has an elite ruling Political Class which is completely out of step with the mass of the people and has protected itself by Gerrymandering on an incomprehensible scale. Congress has the confidence of less than 20% of the people, while the US military has the confidence of more than 80%.
An international mistake by the political elite (ie their Obama surrogate) which costs the military heavily could be the spark that leads to a Turkish-style solution — with the overwhelming backing of the people, the US military tosses out the entire elite Political Class and saves democracy.
Oct 21, 2008 - 3:38 pm 10. dkite:I find this interesting with the current dislike of ‘anti-intellectualism’ in some corners of the republican establishment.
It’s quite remarkable. The US’ place as world power is a factor if it’s ability to absorb more blows without collapsing. Not because of it’s ability to win, but it’s ability to not lose, to persevere and eventually prevail against an exhausted opponent.
That’s how it won in Iraq. If it were up to the great thinkers and current power brokers of Washington, they would have lost.
We are in for some interesting times. Biden is right, there are going to be tests, no matter who is there. I don’t think any sinecure is going to be safe. We just saw one of them collapse two weeks ago.
Of course, as the credit failure showed, it isn’t the US that suffers the most. Europe now has nationalized banks because they were all going to collapse. The US trundles on, able to absorb a mistake of historic cost.
Derek
Oct 21, 2008 - 3:41 pm 11. hdgreene:Say: “Do I want to be ruled by these folksy folks?” Envision it.
Oct 21, 2008 - 3:43 pm 12. nelson:Thinking about a possible Obama administration, I remembered an old Soviet joke.
Oct 21, 2008 - 3:52 pm 13. whit:On his way out to internal exile after being deposed, Khruschev has a brief private meeting with his successor, Brezhnev. Showing B. a secret drawer in the office, K. tells him: “Look, I’ve left 3 letters, numbered 1 to 3, for you there, with intructions of how you should behave in the case of a huge crisis.”
Some years later, the first crisis breaks out and Brezhnev opens the first letter by Khruschev, the content of which is simply: “Blame me.” B. does it and soon the crisis is over.
Then comes the second crisis and he opens the second letter, the content of which is: “Blame the Jews”. It works.
Finally it is time for the third and worst crisis, and that’s what B. reads on the third letter: “Write 3 letters.”
What will the people do when they find their Messiah has feet of clay?
Oct 21, 2008 - 4:04 pm 14. wretchard:What will the people do when they find their Messiah has feet of clay?
The question is what the conservatives will do. There’s a convincing case for a moral obligation to help the President succeed no matter what you may think of him personally. Loyalty to the institution rather than to the man. But the problem with this simple formula is that is asymmetrical with respect to schemers. Stalin rose to the top because many cadres felt a loyalty to the Revolution but Stalin felt a loyalty only to himself. In Uncle Joe’s famous words, “Death is the solution to all problems. No man – no problem.”
When you’re faced with schemers like that, it pays to be a little more sophisticated. The key will be to help solve the problems which will inevitably come as the Messiah’s feet eventually run off in muddy rivulets but in such a way as to highlight their causes. Santayana said, “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it”. I’m not sure that’s quite true, but at least it’s entertaining.
Oct 21, 2008 - 4:14 pm 15. Charles:Heard today that obama is raking in 200K per Hour.
Its not likely that all that money is domestic.
Oct 21, 2008 - 4:18 pm 16. cedarford:“Obama is the product of something larger than himself; an expression of an elite class.”
Bush saw his Presidency as an expression of something larger than himself: (1) He was the agent for fellow Corporatists, part of The Team. Of those great men like himself that through brains and pluck – became wealthy – yet for the good of the country, needed to become richer and more powerful. Bush called them “His Base”. He didn’t see working to transfer more of the country’s wealth and power to them as screwing the working poor and middle class, because Bush was a believer in Supply Side economics and “trickledown”
(2) As an evangelical, he saw bigger government as compassionate conservatism as Jesus preached – and Christian Zionism as biblical truth. Thus what he was doing on budgets and in foreign policy was just being the facilitator of truthful things bigger than himself – things the Big Pharma and defense contractor lobbyists and Neocons just articulated better than he did.
Obama may be an avatar from interests outside DC, but if he is an avatar of others, he may still be better to bring change to Gov’t than Lifetime Senators like McCain and Biden. Longtime DC Insiders who believe in nothing but making “The Deal”. Everything is negotiable.
Nothing quite like a 30-year man who has done little to fix a situation previously now declaring the thing is broken and he can fix it.
Of course, a woman and a black man who have 3 years of experience between the two of them – looking in from the outside? And proudly saying they have the mettle to start fixing things when they have never fixed anything of consequence, also should be met with skepticism.
Oct 21, 2008 - 4:19 pm 17. whiskey:Conservatives are unlikely to take Obama’s side, or institutionally defend him. Any more than the NYT defended Nixon, or most GOP pols defended Clinton.
Obama, should he run into trouble, which is likely, given his inclination stated by Biden, Powell, and Jackson, to either sell Israel down the river to Iran, or actively assist in it’s liquidation and second Holocaust, will get impeached. And convicted.
Or it might be Open Borders and instant citizenship, or Reparations for Slavery, or other things Obama simply cannot refrain from doing simply to stick it to his “enemies” the White Middle/Working class. A man who attended Trinity for 20 years hates Whites and has a lifetime habit of White-baiting. Because it gets him applause and support from Black supporters, and proves he is “Black Enough.”
See: Alicia Keys and her AK-47 Jewelry, support for Louis Farrakhan.
Obama is not Bill Clinton, nor is his team Begala and Carville, eyes on the Bubba Prize. It’s Ayers, Axelrod, Wright, Powers, Khalidi, and the rest who want a weak and humbled America, a destroyed Israel as an object lesson and “morality tale” and to wreak vengeance on the White Working class, the largest Demographic group.
It’s more like Obama, Jonestown. The Messianic imagery, and all that pretty much guarantees it. It’s not like I have not blogged on Obama = Jonestown extensively.
Oct 21, 2008 - 6:07 pm 18. AZM:Wretchard at 14. (4:14 p.m.)
<>
This is why this blog is so interesting – and entertaining.
I hope conservatives have the gumption to act as you envision. The odds are slightly in favor that we will (there are a large number of situations that can sink a single individual without wetting a nation, by way of weak analogy) but the question is this: how will the opinion be shaped after the fact? Of our own actions we can be somewhat sure. Of the actions of the opinion-formers, nothing can be properly known at this time.
What we do know is that success has many parents and that failure is an orphan. The heat of Obama’s promise-everything-to-everybody kitchen is about to orphan many souls.
When push comes to shove, Obama will be shoved under the bus by his supporters, in much the same way as as he sacrificed his own friends and suporters. It will be a political murder of convenience. Or, it may be a political murder arising from quashed ideals. Either way, some insiders will say to themselves “it was for a bigger cause”.
It will not be a big surprise to Obama to discover that many of his supporters think America is a far bigger cause than Obama. But, it will come as somehwhat of a painful surprise to Obama that he is not going to be able to bribe or talk them away from that conclusion. Such is the price of Obama’s messianic electoral success. The ones who believe without question today, are likely to be heart-broken and beyond the pale of reason tomorrow.
Oct 21, 2008 - 8:33 pm 19. Jay:I had a pleasant black nurse prep me yesterday for an in office procedure. I did not say anything political to her but I thought that if she believes that O’s regime will help her and her family, she will learn that she was greatly deceived.
Oct 22, 2008 - 11:10 am 20. whit:The pseudo-intellectual “class” in the West only cares for their own position. They do not even train their children to retain the power and position they have. Some of the kids will retain the power because of their inherited wealth and the support of the people hired to support them.
The British aristocracy was able to cultivate the support of the intelligent lower classes by establishing a good educational system. The pre revolutionary Russian system had a good educational system for non peasants but they alienated the intelligent men who saw that most of the Russian aristocrats were drunken fools. Although English writers such as Dickens tried to pain a similar picture of the English upper class the reality was better than their fiction.
Here we have a semi educated (with college degrees of all sorts) political elite who allow their children to be “educated” by other semi educated academics and teachers with “degrees”.
Most of my undergraduates can not cope in a tough world, not because they are stupid but because they have never been properly stressed. I will not nor can not go against the tide.
At least my daughter can cope.
I see disillusionment in the future for the acolytes who somehow manage to break the spell. So much hope and faith placed in a man is bound to bring disappointment and despair. The true believers though, those who remain enchanted will follow their leader to the end.
Oct 22, 2008 - 2:46 pm 21. Steve Skubinna:Now that the election is only two weeks away, the NYT and the rest of the MSM figures it’s safe to admit what others have known all along about Iranian involvement. After all, it isn’t as if they’re giving Bush’s administration credit for being right.
Watch – after the election, assuming Obama wins, there will be a gradual rehabilitation of Dubya by the press, as Obama finds himself living in the same world and dealing with the same problems, and facing the need to rely on the sam esolutions. It will be akin to the press discovering, after 1990, that Reagan was right about the USSR.
That’s if Obama wins. Otherwise, we’ll be hearing ad nauseum about McCain “continuing the discredited and disastrous policies of the failed Bush administration.”
Oct 22, 2008 - 3:02 pm 22. Ravalli County News » Blog Archive » Ignoring Iran’s Aggression:[...] “… the problem of Iran’s aggression is a ‘known known’. But the lack of emphasis o… [...]
Oct 25, 2008 - 10:58 amSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.