[Vision2020] Pace Will Not Link Bombs to Iranian Government

[Tom Hansen]

>From the Army Times at www.ArmyTimes.com -

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Pace will not link bombs to Iranian government

Army Times Staff report
Posted : Monday Feb 12, 2007 20:11:18 EST
   
In an interview with Voice of America, Marine General Peter Pace, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he did not agree with military leaders in
Baghdad, who told reporters on Sunday that the government of Iran is
providing roadside bombs to Iraqi insurgents.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. military presentation in Baghdad
on Sunday was the result of weeks of preparation and revisions as U.S.
officials put together a package of material to support the Bush
administration's claims of Iranian intercession on behalf of militant Iraqis
fighting American forces.

The experts, who spoke to a large gathering of reporters on condition that
they not be further identified, said the supply trail began with Iran's
Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, which also is accused of arming the
Hezbollah guerrilla army in Lebanon. The officials said the EFP weapon was
first tested there.

The deadly and highly sophisticated weapons are known as "explosively formed
penetrators," or EFPs, which have killed more than 170 troops from the
American-led coalition. Three senior military officials in Baghdad said the
"machining process" used in the construction of the deadly bombs had been
traced to Iran.

General Pace said he could not, from his own knowledge, repeat the assertion
that the elite Quds brigade of Iran's Republican Guard force is providing
bomb-making kits to Iraqi Shiite insurgents, VOA reported.

"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran.
What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se [specifically],
knows about this," he told VOA. "It is clear that Iranians are involved, and
it's clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by
what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit," he
said.

General Pace made his comments during a visit to Australia.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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"Seldom, if ever, has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sense of
uncertainty and fear -- with such a realization that the future is obscure
and that survival is not assured."

- Edward R. Murrow

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