SSDD
Posted on 07/10/2011 3:55:07 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
Reporting from Baghdad— Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Sunday that weapons supplied by Iran are behind a rash of attacks against American forces in Iraq, part of an escalating campaign of violence ahead of the planned U.S. troop withdrawal by the end of the year.
"We're seeing more of those weapons going in from Iran, and they've really hurt us," said Panetta, who arrived in Baghdad on an unannounced visit after a two-day stop in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials said 15 U.S. troops were killed in June, the most in any month in two years. More than half of the deaths were caused by rockets known as Improvised Rocket Assisted Mortars that U.S. officials say are provided to Shiite militant groups by Iran.
A senior U.S. official said the attacks against U.S. forces were an effort by the Iranian-backed militias to make it appear as though they were forcing out American troops, all of whom are due to withdraw by the end of the year under a 2008 agreement between Washington and Baghdad.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other U.S. officials also have said publicly in recent days that Iran is behind the surge in violence against the 46,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq. The high-level effort by the Obama administration to blame Iran for the attacks comes as U.S. officials are stepping up the pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to resolve whether he will ask for some American troops to remain beyond the year-end deadline.
By playing up the Iranian threat, U.S. officials may be hoping to spur such a request from Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Wow, Leon, do you really think so?
It justifiably makes the Iranians very nervous because America is so quiet. The Iranians and the Arabs tend to bluff and bluster a lot, bragging how powerful they are, and how they will smite their enemies with their superior weapons.
But Americans don’t do this.
Iranians have also long had a strategy of “decentralization of bluster”, in which several individuals give off very different policy statements. But after the fact, they will choose one of these, and just say that the others were talking out of turn.
But Americans don’t do this either. When they give out an official policy statement, they tend to mean it. And if it blows up as an idea, they will just shrug and change their policy.
But worst of all, from the Iranian viewpoint, Americans do not exaggerate their battlefield victories. In fact, they even downplay them, and underestimate enemy casualties.
The American military does this very intentionally, because those we fight have very poor battlefield intelligence, and are reliant on what we say as being more accurate. Without us saying, though, they are to a great extent blind, which is not what you want on the battlefield.
“But American’s dont do this....” Might have been true in the past.
You have to remember “this ain’t America no more”
Now that we are the largest muslim nation, , , our perspective has changed. A muslim president makes everything different. Israel? No problem now, America has helped arm the MB’s (presidentially endorsed) new Egypt. Obama has gifted IRan both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now they are emboldened knowing there will not be any repercussions from America. We are the paper tiger.
I approve!
Do you actually think anyone in this chicken chit Government, has the balls to punish Iran??
Leon,you are bleeping genius.
You should have been following FR, for the past couple of years.
Good God man...you are clueless.
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