By Steve Hynd
Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal is still on about the Iranian detainees, held without charge for over two years, who were finally released by the US military in Iraq recently. To Bill, it's a shocking thing to have released them.
But former US Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week revealed the shameful details behind the release:
The former U.S. ambassador to Iraq says he does not know of any evidence linking three Iranian Quds Force officers to specific acts against U.S. forces even though the three were jailed by U.S. authorities for more than two years.
The prolonged detention put the United States at odds with elements of the Iraqi government, which long argued that the men were performing a liaison function with the Kurds in northern Iraq. Iraq released the three to Iran immediately after they were turned over by the Americans two weeks ago.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, defended the arrest and incarceration, arguing that the three were members of an organization that "arms, trains, funds, equips ... and directs" extremist elements in Iraq. He also said they were on an "intelligence-gathering mission."
But Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq from March 2007 to February 2009, told The Washington Times, "I was not aware of any specific information linking [the three Iranians] to specific acts against coalition personnel."
Mr. Crocker added that he thought the arrest and detention were justified because the three were members of the Quds or Jerusalem Force, which, he asserted, had been involved in attacks on Americans and Iraqis.
The Times, citing a former senior U.S. official and a currently serving U.S. official, reported July 15 that the Iranians were performing diplomatic duties when they were arrested in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil on Jan. 11, 2007. It quoted the former U.S. official as saying that the three were essentially held as "hostages" to try to persuade Iran to halt its support for Iraqis taking part in anti-U.S. violence.
After over two years of interrogations, including likely torture by interpreters from the same MeK anti-Iranian terror group who originally fingered the hostages for the US military, there was no evidence linking any of these men to specific criminal acts which would have allowed them to be tried in a court. There's certainly no evidence linking them to EFPs, which are mostly produced inside Iraq, not in Iran as Roggio and the neocons have long claimed. And the US is not formally at war so holding them as POW's was unfeasible. Since they were detained before Congress dumbly designated the Quds Force as a terrorist group - the first time a uniformed component of a national military had been so designated - they couldn't even be held for membership of that force. So they were released, as simple as that: the rule of law.
That Crocker, Petraeus, Roggio and other hegemonists think there's something wrong with that explains entirely why America's international stock is in the cellar.
Colour me skeptical (it's a sort of puce). The article you cite says only that MeK personnel were leading the interrogations and even that should be treated with the utmost skepticism. Look at who wrote the piece, who his sources almost certainly were and why they might have advanced that perspective vis-�is the role/importance of MeK personnel, particularly in the context of what decisions were being taken regarding MeK in early 2007.
ReplyDeleteAs to the EFPs, it might be worth reflecting on what "production" means in this context, keeping in mind that these are highly modularized assemblies. It's particularly worth noting that most reporters and commentators don't understand either the technical aspects of these devices or their production trajectories at all well. Add to all this a parallel technology that is both clearly indigenous and shades to looking very similar in the eyes of the layman and it's a recipe for accounts not adding up to what they're interpreted as.
HGi JPD,
ReplyDelete"shades to looking very similar in the eyes of the layman" Care to be specific on what you think the diffeences are that allow positive ID of some EFPs as Iranian-made (and, moreover, Iranian government made)? As far as I'm aware the US military has - only when pushed - talked about microscopic scoring from the pressing process of some EFP liners and said Iraq doesn't have such precision presses. But it does. New Zealand, Indonesian and Indian companies, to name just three, boast of their sales of such tools to Iraq since 2003 by the boatload. The Iraqi Industry Ministry boasts of indigenous pressing capability at trade fairs all over the mid-East.
Regards, Steve
Sometimes I just kill me. Didn't read to the actual bottom of your 2nd order hierarchy piece on Timmerman - where you raise some of the same issues as my own above. Duh and duh again. [Almost as grave a sin as trusting secondary sources. ;)] Duhs aside, I still very much wonder why you would then believe Timmerman's painting the MeK in such an unlikely light and then hop to suggesting coercive interrogation (particularly in a military context). These Qods guys were important chips in the big game and everyone knew they were eventually going to have to give them back - why, rationally, would they jump up and down on their nuts? It makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteI'd hop to it because we know from numerous other reports that the utterly-nutterly MeK were used as interpreters by the US military, that the MeK would have no problems torturing Iranians and that there were also numerous reports the US military often handed-off interrogations to Iraqi army etc so as to put a deniable distance between themseles and "enhanced interrogation techniques". The Iranians won't complain too much - they do the same things, only hands-on, to their own detainees.
ReplyDeleteRegards, Steve
That would be one example, others would be liners being dimensionally and metallurgically (in terms of trace element composition, Rockwell hardnesses, etc.) identical. I've never seen any of the metallurgical elements discussed in open source literature, but they're fundamental to the technology and given the resources brought to bear on the issue (and the capabilities that I know JIEDDO possesses) I've no doubt they were pursued. The capability to produce something that looks like a viable liner to a reporter and produces similar enough effects is widespread - capability to produce something that actually acts as an effective liner in the event is a good deal rarer. Add to all that the similarities in initiation and fusing and it actually makes a compelling case - if one knows the evidence well. The principal interpretative challenge is that EFPs are buried in a whole mass of off-route IED stuff that isn't foreign sourced EFPs but looks similar enough that it gets reported as such.
ReplyDeleteYou mean like the time the US military alleged that Iraqis were pouring their knock-off copy liners after melting the metal on a kitchen stove...ignoring the fact that kitchen stoves don't get hot enough?
ReplyDeleteBeen there, seen that, snorted in derision.
Regards, Steve
There's a difference between having a MeK sourced interpreter and letting their int personnel run an American interrogation. They do that and they're in the shit for a whole host of reasons ranging from being hostage to MeK's agenda (which they didn't trust, no matter how much OSD wanted to reserve them for use as a proxy) and giving the host government increased leverage for getting the detainees cut free (which they wanted to do). Handing Iraqi detainees over to the tender mercies of the Iraqis is contextually a pretty different thing from handing Iranian detainees over to MeK, for a whole range of issues. As to the notion that the Iranians wouldn't complain? Really? In a context in which extremely senior Qods Force figures are released into the middle of a foofera where the IRGC is widely viewed as having just been neck deep in the regime's electoral dirty work? Sorry, but I just don't see it.
ReplyDeleteI think your understanding of the issue might benefit of less time snorting in derision and more time evaluating sources and trying to determine what they're seeing. I mean, you flay Tyson because she uses the generic term "stove" - not surprising unless she's a weekend metal caster. It takes about 20 bucks worth of scrounged equipment to build a refactory that will do quite a decent job of melting the more common copper alloys. Unsurprisingly, the copper and brass the article speaks of is exactly what one gets when one tries to cast one of the alloys that is ubiquitous in Iraq [cartridge brass]. To the layman it seems like a great material because it's relatively easy to cast and mill and it's nice and ductile, but it doesn't perform nearly as well as other materials such as pure copper or any number of other alloys when used as an EFP liner.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, the independent expert folks cited to buttress arguments of a purely Iraqi genesis for the liners didn't actually say what Gareth said he did [and he was pretty pissed off about it], the story around IRA - Hezbullah technology transfer around IR links got really munged in the journalistic re-telling, and the thing that folks believed was a professionally produced Iranian EFP is actually a type of cratering munition known as beehive charge (although it has a copper liner, it's still a conventional shaped charge - as can be seen in the stills showing the legs to fix standoff distance). And all this is just a sub-set of the total set of things that got messed up in the telling of the story.
Bottom line is that this issue is a brutal one to follow in that it's highly technical and convoluted, pretty much everybody commenting on it has an agenda (even the guys trying to portray themselves as the truth tellers) and the vast majority of folks who are just trying to report on it don't actually fully understand what they're looking at or the genesis of the various pieces.