From NYT:

"The shells had serial numbers in English in order to comply with international standards for arms, the officials said. One grenade, for instance, was marked with the serial number P.G.7-AT-1 followed by LOT:5-31-2006".

I think it is very nice of the Iranians to comply with international standards when sending illegal weapons into Iraq. Not being familiar with international standards, I am curious as to why the date is in month-day-year form when most of the world uses day-month-year date form.

EFPs will take out a tank. Humvees have some armor issues, but nothing you can add to one will cope with the newer weapons and still allow the vehicle to actually move.

lieberman?

The Iranians are also responsible for bad customer service when you call those "800" numbers on the back of your credit card attempting to resolve a problem. That alone should suffice as reason to nuke them. Twice.

I wonder how many IED's you can buy with the missing $12 Billion in cash?

*Anonymous* US military officials presenting "proof"? How many times have we lapped ourselves on self-parody? I'm getting dizzy. Tragedy and farce have blurred into one amorphous mass.

In the meantime, the democrats are still wringing their hands, dancing around and wondering what to do.

Just once, just once, I'd like to see some politicos do the right thing and risk their political careers. Hell, if they did the right thing, they'd be the ones to get re-elected.

You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

This once again smells like the Bush administration is attempting to fit the intelligence around the policy.

Hezbollah, in the recent war in southern Lebanon used weapons of this nature to destroy a number of Israeli tanks. This is just speculation, but my thought is that some of these weapons are now filtering back through Syria and into Iraq. This would at least explain how weapons of Iranian manufacturing could end up in the hands of Sunni insurgents.

It simply doesn't pass the smell test that Iran would be a direct supplier to Sunni insurgents.

Not to get too obsessed with the kerning here, but today is 23 Bahman 1385 according to the Persian calendar -- though I'm certainly willing to spot the military an assertion that Iran uses Western calendars on their military gear.

Of more importance, I think, is this: if Iran were serious about running a proxy war against the U.S. in Iraq, why not give the Iraqi Shi'a forces access to the same weapons that Hizbullah has -- for example, the AT-5 Spandrel knockoff they make, or the Toophan reverse-engineered TOWs? Not to minimize the danger of IEDs to our troops, but I think that we'd need more for a causus belli than a handful of RPG-7s that made it over a very porous border.

The first commenter hit on something big, IMO. The date format is distinctly American, I believe. Doesn't Europe and most of the world list the date differently? Curious to know how it's done in Iran.

"The officials were repeatedly pressed on why they insisted on anonymity in such an important matter affecting the security of American and Iraqi troops."

That's probably BS. The anonymity is probably because the thing is a product of the Iranian Directorate, which is a reincarnation of Feith's Office of Special Plans:

*****Current military and former intelligence officials remain concerned about a US-led strike on Iran, despite the recent appearance of diplomacy on the part of the US State Department and the offer of an incentives package to Iran.
...
These officials also add that an as-yet uncompleted ‘Phase II’ investigation into pre-war Iraq intelligence suggests the same problems may recur when addressing Iran. They note that the Pentagon’s Iranian directorate mirrors the so-called Office of Special Plans, which played a major role in feeding intelligence to the President that bolstered a case for war.*****

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Pentagon_confirms_Iranian_directorate_as_intelligence_0615.html

I find it had to believe that the Iraqi's has ran out of that 280,000 tons of munitions Rummy allowed them to loot.

Oh. My. God. The order of the numbers in the dates, the non-Persian script, the lack of new information, the timing, the anonymity of the briefers, the prohibition on independent recording of the briefing......Even if there had not already been an intelligence fiasco on Iraq, this would be pretty incredible.
You know, what really makes me sick about the briefing is this: if this dog and pony show is the best the Pentagon intel folks can do, our troops who rely on these people for everyday information are really screwed.

If I had 363 tons of $100 bills, I could obtain some pretty impressive armament, too. To my mind, that is the single biggest act of post-occupation idiocy in this whole stupid-ass "war."

I keep reading that the machining was of "Iranian" type or origin. Since metal is metal, and machine tools these days all seem to come from China, just how is it that they can tell that the EFP's were machined in Iran? Are Iraqis too stupid to run machine shops? If they are, then how did they expect to manufacture those nuclear devices that Bush kept warning us about?

Some of the weapons, ie the the RPG rounds, are also manufactured in Switzerland and Bulgaria.

http://www.armarbg.com/Category.aspx?id=4b4bb8fa-a961-49c5-b362-e2bbaf8caba7

Here we are four years into the war and troops are still lacking armor for the Humvees. If this were the Clinton Defense Dept, can you just imagine the outrage?!

By the way, where is the outrage?

According to NPR this morning the Pentagon tried to peddle this stuff in March and September too.

This stuff makes less sense than the "intelligence" used to get us into Iraq. The serial numbers are in English and dated the way we date things in the U.S. - unlike the rest of the world. The "officials" who presented this inforation were "anonymous"? Well, hell, if some guy tells me, I have to believe him! Why would the Iranians peddlet this stuff to Sunis - their enemies - who have been responsible for such bombings?

Why would the Iranians have ANY interest in killing Americans in Iraq? The Americans are the ones keeping the Sunis from killing Shi'ia. I do not buy the assertion that Iran simply wants chaos in Iraq and that they want to stir up trouble because they don't like the Americans. It makes sense that they would want a stable but weak neighbor for trade purposes and their own security purposes.

As long as we're shouting and pointing fingers at countries supplying arms to other nations, let's not forget to include the U.S.A. as the largest arms supplier in the world, and at the top of that customer list is Israel - who recently deposited who-knows-how-many cluster bombs in Lebanon for innocent civilians to step on.
The pot is once again accusing the kettle of the one who is black.

The 170 out of 3105 does raise an interesting question -- where did all the rest of the weapons come from? Al Qa'qaa? Ultimately, from US manufacturers?

I think this would be an excellent question to follow up on, in detail.

I'd be *really* interested in how they tracked these *new* EFPs back to Iran. I never knew that generic "explosives" were clearly labelled with serial numbers.

I recall when the 380 TONNES/TONS of HDX from the al Qaaqa munitions dump went missing; HDX was clearly perfect for creating massively powerful shaped charges.

You'd think someone would at least be able to provide a chemical profile of the explosive in question. But I guess that would only be released if it helped implicate Iran.

God, how ignorant are people if they fall for this?

The Iranian arms story is flawed on so many levels it's hard to comprehend the degree of ignorance necessary to take it seriously.

1) Iraq is awash in high explosive arms because Iraq had huge stockpiles of conventional arms which the US troops were not ordered to secure. Literally hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions have been looted because they were not secured, even months after the invasion.

2) Iraq under Saddam Hussein waged an eight year war of aggression against Iran during the 80s, including chemical weapons, with US backing. While Iraq is demographically predominantly Shiite, same as Iran, Saddam was Sunni, same as Saudi Arabia and same as Al Qaeda. For that reason Iran has a long history of providing arms to Iraqi Shiites, the majority of Iraqis, to fight against Saddam Hussein.

If Iran is still supplying arms to Iraqi Shiites:

1) they're doing so in historical context of continued support of traditional Shite allies, who have been historically opposed to Saddam, and are presently fighting the Iraqi Sunni allies: Al Qaeda!

2) Iran could flood Iraq with munitions if they really wanted to make things difficult for the USA, but aren't.

Anyone credible still around to sacrifice?

Maybe Casey? He was somehow "persuaded" to stay on to delay his memoirs, most likely. Perhaps if he does a Powell, they'll give him a medal and let him go.

This is a response to DallasNE's post "Hezbollah, in the recent war in southern Lebanon used weapons of this nature to destroy a number of Israeli tanks. This is just speculation, but my thought is that some of these weapons are now filtering back through Syria and into Iraq."

Iran and Iraq have a porous border comparable to the Arizona-New Mexico border with Mexico. There's no need for Iran to smuggle anything via Lebanon and Syria.

But you are quite correct that Iran is not arming the Sunnis in Iraq.

They are, on the other hand, arming Shias who are our putative allies in the current government of Iraq; a minor detail overlooked in the briefing.

It is not only the policy of Iran's government to aid their co-religionist counterparts in Iraq's government, but it is also a golden opportunity for thousands of entrepreneurial mini-capitalists in Iran to make a buck.

SSDD.

This is the same kind of "intelligence" we saw before the invasion of Iraq recycled for the neo-con echo chamber and media organ to drum up war fever against Iran.

Lies, damn lies and videotape at 11.