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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran seeking to infiltrate Iraq |
| 2005-02-21 |
| Fresh intel suggests that Tehran is trying to expand its influence over whatever government emerges in postelection Iraq. According to U.S. officials familiar with the latest intelligence, the Iranian government has been secretly directing its agents inside Iraq to plant themselves in influential positions throughout the Iraqi government—into agencies that handle economic affairs, like the ministries of Oil, Public Works and Finance, as well as departments like the Interior Ministry that handle national security. The Iranians also are directing their agents to infiltrate Iraqi security agencies on the "working level" by taking jobs in regional or local government offices and particularly local police forces. According to the most pessimistic U.S. analysts, the ayatollahs' ultimate goal: "Taking over the government of Iraq." A less pessimistic view is that the latest intel merely shows an ongoing campaign of "classical espionage" by Tehran against Iraq. U.S. government sources say a significant number of intel reports have recently documented the Iranian covert-action campaign and that the reports include internal Iranian government discussions about how Tehran's agents in Iraq are being deployed. Many of the Iranian agents in question, the intel reports say, are members of the Badr Corps, a paramilitary affiliate of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a political party with longtime Iranian ties that is one of the principal partners in the coalition of Shiite parties that won the largest number of seats in the new Iraqi constitutional assembly. U.S. analysts now believe the corps is riddled with agents controlled by Iranian intelligence. U.S. officials note that most of the parties and politicians who won biggest in last month's Iraqi elections have historical ties to Tehran. Both SCIRI and the Dawa Party, the other major partner in the winning Shiite coalition, were based in Tehran for years during Saddam's rule, and maintained close relations with Iran's theocracy. So did at least one leader of the Kurdish coalition that will be kingmakers in Baghdad. Dawa chief Ibrahim Jaafari, a favorite to become Iraq's new prime minister, is known to favor an Islamic influence on any new Iraqi constitution. Some Bush administration officials are horrified that Jaafari's principal rival for the prime minister's office appears to be Ahmad Chalabi, the secular-minded but controversial Shiite who during the Saddam era maintained a Tehran office that was financed with U.S. tax money. Once the Pentagon's prime candidate to succeed Saddam, Chalabi fell out of favor in Washington last year when intel agencies alleged he gave Iran information compromising U.S. code-breaking operations. (Chalabi denied any wrongdoing.) Despite the ominous new intelligence, nongovernment experts say it's possible nationalist-minded Iraqis can thwart Tehran's effort to take control in Iraq. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #12 Thank you, itsy. But I'm afraid the term "Pollyanna" doesn't mean what you think it means. Go read the book -- it's in the Juvenile section of your public library, assuming you are Stateside. If not, it isn't expensive from Amazon.com or others of its ilk. In the meantime, it is possible to make your point without being rude. It's even possible to be snarky without being rude -- that is called wit. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-02-21 10:46:20 PM |
| #11 Many people, including some Americans stationed in Vietnam, were critical of South Vietnamese armed forces during this period. But such criticisms seldom took into account a number of factors affecting the performance of those forces. American materiel assistance in these early years consisted largely of providing cast-off World War II American weapons, including the heavy and unwieldy (for a Vietnamese) M-1 rifle. Meanwhile the enemy was being provided the AK-47 assault rifle by his Russian and Chinese patrons. "In 1964 the enemy had introduced the AK47, a modern, highly effective automatic rifle," noted Brigadier General James L. Collins, Jr. in a monograph on development of South Vietnam’s armed forces. "In contrast, the South Vietnam forces were still armed with a variety of World War II weapons_." Then: "After 1965 the increasing U.S. buildup slowly pushed Vietnamese armed forces materiel needs into the background." As a consequence, South Vietnamese units continued to be outgunned by the enemy and thus at a distinct combat disadvantage. General Fred Weyand, finishing up a tour as commanding general of II Field Force, Vietnam, observed in a 1968 debriefing report that "the long delay in furnishing ARVN modern weapons and equipment, at least on a par with that furnished the enemy by Russia and China, has been a major contributing factor to ARVN ineffectiveness." It was not until General Creighton Abrams came to Vietnam as deputy commander of U.S. forces in May 1967 that the South Vietnamese began to get more attention. Soon after taking up his post Abrams cabled Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson. "It is quite clear to me," he reported, "that the US Army military here and at home have thought largely in terms of US operations and support of US forces." As a consequence, "shortages of essential equipment or supplies in an already austere authorization has not been handled with the urgency and vigor that characterizes what we do for US needs. Yet the responsibility we bear to ARVN is clear." Abrams acknowledged that "the ground work must begin here. I am working at it." CW Abrams PHOTOAbrams spent most of his year as the deputy working to upgrade South Vietnamese forces, including providing them the M-16 rifle. By the time of Tet 1968 he had managed to get some of these weapons into the hands of South Vietnamese airborne and other elite units, but the rank and file were still outgunned by the enemy. Thus Lieutenant General Dong Van Khuyen, South Vietnam’s senior logistician, recalled that "during the enemy Tet offensive of 1968 the crisp, rattling sounds of AK-47s echoing in Saigon and some other cities seemed to make a mockery of the weaker, single shots of Garands and carbines fired by stupefied friendly troops." Even so, South Vietnamese armed forces performed admirably in repelling the Tet offensive. "To the surprise of many Americans and the consternation of the Communists," reported Time magazine, "ARVN bore the brunt of the early fighting with bravery and elan, performing better than almost anyone would have expected." Nobody mentioned that the ARVN had achieved these results without modern weapons that could match those of the enemy. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-02-21 5:35:44 PM |
| #10 ZF: It took the Vietnamese government decades to pay the loans back. That should have read: It took the Vietnamese government decades to pay the Soviet loans back. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-02-21 5:27:52 PM |
| #9 3dc: Ah, You mean this Phoenix Anonymoose? Hmm.. but if such a program actually did exist then to discuss it would mean... I don't think its a discussion to open. If you believe the liberal media's spin on this, then you should also believe its spin on Iraq. Why bother coming to Rantburg? On Phoenix: There came a point at which the war was won. The fighting wasn’t over, but the war was won. The reason it was won was that the South Vietnamese had achieved the capacity to, with promised American support (similar to the support still being rendered to American allies in West Germany and South Korea), maintain their independence and freedom of action. This was a South Vietnamese achievement. An extremely important part of that achievement was success in rooting out the enemy’s covert infrastructure in the hamlets and villages of rural South Vietnam. An effective campaign for neutralizing members of that infrastructure, based on better and more timely intelligence and acting on it, was developed. Critics of the war denounced the "Phoenix" program as an assassination campaign, but the reality as with so much in this complex war was otherwise. For one thing, captives who had knowledge of the enemy infrastructure and its functioning were invaluable intelligence assets. The incentive was to capture them alive and exploit that knowledge. Congressional investigators were sent out to Vietnam to assess the program (in itself a somewhat bizarre thing to undertake in the middle of a war). They found that of some 15,000 members of the Viet Cong infrastructure neutralized during 1968, 15 percent had been killed, 13 percent rallied to the government side, and 72 percent were captured. William Colby testified later that most of those killed, in fact "the vast majority," had been killed in regular combat actions, "as shown by the units reporting who had killed them." |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-02-21 5:26:22 PM |
| #8 Anonymoose: Overall, this problem "cleaned" most of the South Vietnamese government of enemy agents; however, they could not make the rest honest, honorable, or efficient. The South Vietnamese lost because they were invaded by a huge North Vietnamese conventional force armed with billions of dollars of newly-made Soviet hardware in 1975, even as Congress refused to provide military hardware to South Vietnam. (It took the Vietnamese government decades to pay the loans back). The problem wasn't that the South Vietnamese officials weren't honest, honorable or efficient - it was that Congress screwed the South Vietnamese people and deliberately abandoned them to the Communists - in the face of multi-billion dollar Soviet arms shipments. Note that the South Vietnamese fought hard - they lost 250,000 men in 15 years, or about 15,000 men a year. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-02-21 5:20:00 PM |
| #7 Ah, You mean this Phoenix Anonymoose? Hmm.. but if such a program actually did exist then to discuss it would mean... I don't think its a discussion to open. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-02-21 2:15:13 PM |
| #6 Everybody forgets that the US has re-created the Phoenix Program to deal with infiltrators, spies and saboteurs that weasel their way into the Iraqi government. If you ignore the silly-ass Hollywood take on Phoenix, it was a highly effective program that scotched dozens of very effective, and murderous, espionage networks in the government of South Vietnam. Its tactics were not polite, however, which resulted in much condemnation once the existence of the program was known; the lilly livers demanding that the military operation follow the ground rules of a police force instead of a counterterrorism operation. Their mission was straightforward: once you capture an agent, immediately use him to take down the rest of his net, in a "Night of the Long Knives" fashion. How you go about doing this is up to you. If the agent is too high placed, or too well protected to be apprehended, then sanction him. Overall, this problem "cleaned" most of the South Vietnamese government of enemy agents; however, they could not make the rest honest, honorable, or efficient. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-02-21 9:21:24 AM |
| #5 The biggest problem with itsy's assertion is that I doubt the Shia know quite what they will do yet. There are certainly some with strong agendas - but note the plural. How this plays out is yet to be determined and probably won't happen in one clearcut move, either ... it will evolve, I suspect, in a complicated way. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-02-21 7:34:58 AM |
| #4 be gone troll. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-02-21 5:36:47 AM |
| #3 t(Pollyanna)w: So: "Arabs hate Persians", yada, yada, yada, quack, quack. |
| Posted by: IToldYouSo 2005-02-21 5:33:00 AM |
| #2 Don't be rude, itsy. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-02-21 4:46:07 AM |
| #1 Watch it! Twilight-Zoners are denying Shiite cultural, cum political, unity among the Teheran to Jerusalem corridor savages. Only a troll would challenge the spin-monkeys. |
| Posted by: IToldYouSo 2005-02-21 4:19:43 AM |