Acts of War by Iran, Acts of Perfidy by the Left

For many of us who are prior military or who have family in the military, little can be more maddening than watching our soldiers attacked in Iraq by neighboring Iran in a proxy war while we do nothing to force a halt to their actions. Possibly the only thing approaching that in frustration is the left wing media and State Dept. officials who spin for Iran, and the Democrats in Congress whose mantra of "taking care of our soldiers" is so bereft of any true substance as to be a mockery. As I posted here, we are finally seeing indications of preperation for the use of force against Iran. And that has sent the NYT others on the far left into a fierce rearguard action.

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The NYT leads today with an effort in agenda journalism - Questions Linger On Scope Of Iran's Threat To Iraq - aimed at undercutting the justification for the use of force against Iran.

The United States has gathered its most detailed evidence so far of Iranian involvement in training and arming fighters in Iraq, officials say, but significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement and the threat it poses to American and Iraqi forces.

Didn't we just hear our two top officials in Iraq say that Iran was the single greatest threat to Iraqi stability and U.S. troops in Iraq today? Apparently, the NYT has not willingly suspended its disbelief.

We have some two hundred soldiers dead just from Iranian supplied IEDS, and hundreds of others wounded and maimed. Our forces and the Iraqi Parliament in the Green Zone are coming under daily attack from Iranian rockets and mortars. We have captured numerous Qods force operatives and high level Hezbollah agents in Iraq, and have a very full picture of how they are training and directing forces against the U.S. Until two weeks ago, Basra, the economic center of Iraq, was more a part of Iran than Iraq. There seems no uncertainty of the threat Iran to the Iraqi Shia. More than 300,000 of them in southern Iraq petitioned their government in November to battle the Iranian scourge:

The Iranians, in fact, have taken over all of south Iraq," said a senior tribal leader from the south who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his life. "Their influence is everywhere."

. . . [T]he petition organizers said many citizens are fiercely opposed to Iranian meddling in Iraqi affairs.

. . . "The most painful stab in the back of the Shiites in Iraq by the Iranian regime has been its shameful abuse of Shiite religion to achieve its ominous end," the sheiks said a statement. "The only solution and hopeful prospect for Iraq, and in particular the southern provinces, is the eviction of the Iranian regime from our homeland."

Read the entire article. The only uncertainty about the threat Iran poses seems to be among the far left and our MSM.

So how could the NYT justify this uncertainty? Why, with quotes from several anonymous sources - and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Some intelligence and administration officials said Iran seemed to have carefully calibrated its involvement in Iraq over the last year, in contrast to what President Bush and other American officials have publicly portrayed as an intensified Iranian role.

. . . Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California who has called for opening talks with Iran, said that while she believed that there was evidence that Iran was aiding Shiite militias, she worried about the tenor of the administration’s latest warnings.

“This is not a new thing,” she said of Iran’s involvement. “Why all of a sudden do the sabers start to rattle?”

This is amazing. One, it conflicts with the clear statement of General Petraeus, who presumably is in the single best position to make this assessment. Two, after the highly politicized canard produced by our intelligence agencies in the December, the NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons programs, I am not inclined to credit any weight to an anonymous intelligence source. Three, if you look at what the NYT has written and the position of Senator Feinstein, they are not contesting that Iran is conducting a proxy war in Iraq. Rather, they are suggesting that the murder and maiming of our soldiers at the current level, whatever that maybe, is acceptable. It leaves me near speechless.

Let me give the NYT and others on the left a big hint. Taking care of our soldiers doesn't mean putting them in permanent garrisons in the U.S. Keeping our soldiers out of war is not "taking car of our soldiers." That is their mission, though it is a decision that should only be taken with great caution. Rather, taking care of our soldiers means that when they are committed to a war, making damn sure that our government does everything possible to allow for force protection. That means that the only acceptable level of casualties from the acts of Iran are zero. And it means that if Iran is causing American casualties, they should be paying an impossibly high price for their actions.

To continue:

Iran . . . has shifted tactics to distance itself from a direct role in Iraq since the American military captured 20 Iranian operatives inside Iraq in December 2006 and January 2007. Ten of those Iranians remain in American custody.

Since then, Iran seems to have focused instead on training Iraqi Shiite fighters inside Iran, though the exact number remains unclear. . . .

Surely the NYT is not suggesting that Iran is not funding nor arming these proxy forces, in addition to training them. Apparently, the point the NYT is making is that the Iranians are simply not exercising direct control over the day to day targeting of these groups. To the NYT, that distinction without a difference is apparently important. One wonders if there is a single reporter or editor at the NYT with military experience or with relatives serving now in Iraq. If there were, I seriously doubt that agenda journalism like this would be tolerated.

I can see the reasons for not responding to Iran's provications in the past, given the unsettled problems in Iraq. Those problems are now resolving. And Iran needs to be next in our sights.