The article clearly mentioned that members of Congress were being allowed to see the evidence and that the administration is being cautious in making the direct accusation that the Iranian government is behind attacks on coalition forces, so there shouldn't be a problem. After all, someone is sending arms to the militants - I imagine they don't have RPG factories in Fallujah.
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A short while ago, MSNBC's lead article was "U.S. general: No evidence Iran is arming Iraqis". Apparently, this is meant to prove that the Bush administration is already cooking the intelligence books so that it can invade Iran to make more blood/oil money for their friends or Israel, or whatever it is that people think.
Part of the problem is that MSNBC confuses the words "evidence" and "proof". According to the news report, the General in question, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said:
- Iranians had been arrested as part of militant networks that produced roadside bombs
- Some of the material used in the devices were made in Iran.
And more specifically:
“What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers.”
This is all evidence of Iranian government involvement. Of course there's circumstantial evidence such as Iran's providing weapons and money to other groups fighting against the West such as Hamas and Hizbollah, but that is besides the point. What all this is not, is proof, which is the accumulation of evidence which allows one to assert something is true.
Now, getting back to the main topic. Did the administration earlier claim as truth that Iran was supplying our enemies, or only that we have some evidence that suggests that the Iranian government might be involved?Tony Snow did seem to definitively accuse the Iranian government in the following exchange in yesterday's press briefing:
Q Tony, when Diane Sawyer interviewed Iranian President Ahmadinejad earlier today, he said that this presentation was based on fabrication. Is the U.S. administration confident that there is conclusive evidence that Iran is providing these weapons to Iraq?
MR. SNOW: Yes.
I'm willing to give Snow the benefit of the doubt here, and perhaps more than I should, in that he may have misspoke and the question is taken somewhat out of context when looking at the entire press briefing. Obviously he doesn't mean "the Iraqi government" when he said that "Iran" is giving weapons to "Iraq", so maybe he meant to say Iranians in general as opposed to the Iranian government. (Going to my earlier point, the proper phrase would have been "conclusive proof", not "conclusive evidence". They obviously have evidence, both physical and circumstantial). A few minutes earlier, the following was asked:Q Tony, the senior military officials made this presentation in Baghdad on background about the evidence against Iran active inside Iraq. Can you talk about the significance of that presentation, about its timing, and what it really means in context of the war right now?
MR. SNOW: What it means is that there is evidence that there's been some weaponry coming across the border into Iraq and it's being used to kill Americans.Snow did not mention or accuse Iranian personnel of being involved - I imagine on purpose.
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My favorite part of the article comes at the end, when an Iranian government official is reported to have said, “Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence."
This from the folks who can't find enough evidence that the Holocaust occurred.
Iranians live in some kind of bizarro world. In my opinion:
The Iranians say the Holocaust never happened - it did
The Iranians say they are not supplying the insurgency in Iraq - they are
The Iranians say that any day now they will have a nuclear weapon - they won't.
In some ways, it's easier to read the Iranian government than our own - at least we know when they are lying, which is always.
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