sets stage for a new confrontation<\/em>\u00bb. L’emploi d’un terme th\u00e9\u00e2tral pour qualifier l’op\u00e9ration de communication de Washington a ici sa place.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tNous donnons ici une partie de la pr\u00e9sentation que fait Cockburn de cette op\u00e9ration. Elle est excellente, bien argument\u00e9e, bien inform\u00e9e, avec le sens critique qu’il faut pour remettre la politique am\u00e9ricaniste au niveau de mis\u00e8re intellectuelle et de manipulation sans vergogne o\u00f9 elle \u00e9volue.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t\u00abThe allegations by senior but unnamed US officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The US has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe insurgent groups have repeatedly denounced the democratically elected Iraqi government as pawns of Iran. It is unlikely that the Sunni guerrillas have received significant quantities of military equipment from Tehran. Some 1,190 US soldiers have been killed by so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But most of them consist of heavy artillery shells (often 120mm or 155mm) taken from the arsenals of the former regime and detonated by blasting caps wired to a small battery. The current is switched on either by a command wire or a simple device such as the remote control used for children’s toys or to open garage doors.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbSuch bombs were used by guerrillas during the Irish war of independence in 1919-21 against British patrols and convoys. They were commonly used in the Second World War, when shaped charges’, similar in purpose to the EFPs of which the US is now complaining, were employed by all armies. The very name explosive formed penetrators \u00ac may have been chosen to imply that a menacing new weapon has been developed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbAt the end of last year the Baker-Hamilton report, written by a bipartisan commission of Republicans and Democrats, suggested opening talks with Iran and Syria to resolve the Iraq crisis. Instead, President Bush has taken a precisely opposite line, blaming Iran and Syria for US losses in Iraq.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIn the past month Washington has arrested five Iranian officials in a long-established office in Arbil, the Kurdish capital. An Iranian diplomat was kidnapped in Baghdad, allegedly by members of an Iraqi military unit under US influence. President George Bush had earlier said that Iranians deemed to be targeting US forces could be killed, which seemed to be opening the door to assassinations.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe statements from Washington give the impression that the US has been at war with Shia militias for the past three-and-a-half years while almost all the fighting has been with the Sunni insurgents. These are often led by highly trained former officers and men from Saddam Hussein’s elite military and intelligence units. During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, the Iraqi leader, backed by the US and the Soviet Union, was able to obtain training in advanced weapons for his forces.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe US stance on the military capabilities of Iraqis today is the exact opposite of its position in four years ago. Then President Bush and Tony Blair claimed that Iraqis were technically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and to be close to producing a nuclear device. Washington is now saying that Iraqis are too backward to produce an effective roadside bomb and must seek Iranian help.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe White House may have decided that, in the run up to the 2008 presidential election, it would be much to its political advantage in the US to divert attention from its failure in Iraq by blaming Iran for being the hidden hand supporting its opponents.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIt is likely that Shia militias have received weapons and money from Iran and possible that the Sunni insurgents have received some aid. But most Iraqi men possess weapons. Many millions of them received military training under Saddam Hussein. His well-supplied arsenals were all looted after his fall. No specialist on Iraq believes that Iran has ever been a serious promoter of the Sunni insurgency.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe evidence against Iran is even more insubstantial than the faked or mistaken evidence for Iraqi WMDs disseminated by the US and Britain in 2002 and 2003. The allegations appear to be full of exaggerations. Few Abrams tanks have been destroyed. It implies the Shias have been at war with the US while in fact they are controlled by parties which make up the Iraqi government.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 12 f\u00e9vrier 2007 \u00e0 04H59<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
C’est donc la premi\u00e8re fois que les USA fournissent des preuves de l’implication iranienne en Irak, conform\u00e9ment au plan de la nouvelle strat\u00e9gie en Irak pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e au peuple am\u00e9ricain le 10 janvier dernier. L’op\u00e9ration est en tous points similaire \u00e0 celle qui mit l’Irak en accusation en 2002-2003 et mena \u00e0 l’invasion de mars 2003.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6426,1135,4684,2773,6427],"class_list":["post-68516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-accusations","tag-cockburn","tag-ied","tag-iran","tag-preuves"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}