(01-15-2010 08:41 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  WMD.............. Who fed us Iran or Mossad? or both................

Well, Rumsfeld's "dear friend" Ahmed Chalabi of the "Iraqi National Congress" --who detailed its agents inside Iraq to the CIA before the war, and was the primary source for WMD intelligence-- turned out to be an Iranian agent. In 2004 we kicked down the doors of the Iraqi National Congress Office in Baghdad and caught Chalabi meeting with three high ranking members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

(01-15-2010 05:52 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  I agree now that Obama is in office that he'll grow weary, but there was no guarantee that the initial Bush invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq woudln't lead to

A) direct American military action vs Iran or
B) direct American encouragment of Iranian regime change.

And certainly Obama's recent performance doesn't lend well towards another 4 years of weariness, but instead points towards a possible conservative win and its more aggressive FP.

And now, interestingly enough, both the Iraqi military and the Afghan military (though most certainly without force projection) is better trained with better weapons systems and has a new modicum of world support and allies. And with our involvment in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military has new and better intel on the ground in the ME, forward operating bases armed to the teeth with drones aimed at Tehran, and naval bases within spitting distance of Iranian docks.

Plus, one hundred years of Iranian waiting will only see 100 more years of Iraqi and Afghan military improvements, and American and NATO technological improvements.

In so many ways the Iranians, while certainly not impotent with their possible nuke program, have certainly been maginalized as a power player by the American ME presence.

If we are to believe that Iran preferred American involvement in the ME, then Iran lost the bet.

Not yet, they haven't lost.
Some day, we will leave.
Then, they will win.
That is their plan.

(01-15-2010 12:09 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(01-15-2010 08:41 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  WMD.............. Who fed us Iran or Mossad? or both................

I've thought Mossad from the day one, but both makes a lot of sense. If Mossad reported and Iran corroborated (or vice versa), and we couldn't verify independently, then we would have been between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

I have tended to think Mossad because the timing has always struck me as a bit strange, and one interpretation of the timing is that we wanted to be in Baghdad before Passover, and that would fit a Mossad scenario.

But in some ways Iran probably had more to gain from our going into Iraq than anyone else. By going first into Afghanistan and then into Iraq, we have certainly neutralized a couple of major threats to Iran, allowing them time to focus on guess what?

I think the simpler explanation is that the timing was driven largely by the US election cycle. There was a limited window of time to press Congress to act before the fundraising/campaign cycle for the 2004 election started to ramp up.

(01-15-2010 02:36 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  

(01-15-2010 12:09 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  But in some ways Iran probably had more to gain from our going into Iraq than anyone else. By going first into Afghanistan and then into Iraq, we have certainly neutralized a couple of major threats to Iran, allowing them time to focus on guess what?

Maybe the Iranians where afraid of the Taliban's religious infiltration, but to claim the Iranian thuggery prefer American military might to a neutered Iraq and a stone-age Afghanistan?

It's pretty well documented that Iran provided intelligence for the US involvement in Afghanistan probably going back several years prior to 2003. They almost certainly wanted Sadaam out of power, and probably felt pretty comfortable with chaos next door.

and it was a major factor in costing him Ted Kennedy's Senate Seat......hahahahahaha