Anti-Semanticism
[posted by Callimachus]
The mind-numbing national catfight about whether Iraq is in a civil war or not is the kind of thing that consumes a nation that already has given up on the job at hand. It's like a fractured couple, one of whom says they're "separated" while the other says "divorcing."
A more to-the-purpose debate would be not whether to call this "the Iraqi civil war" but whether to call it in addition "the covert Persian-American War."
[Hat tip: Captain Ed]
The mind-numbing national catfight about whether Iraq is in a civil war or not is the kind of thing that consumes a nation that already has given up on the job at hand. It's like a fractured couple, one of whom says they're "separated" while the other says "divorcing."
A more to-the-purpose debate would be not whether to call this "the Iraqi civil war" but whether to call it in addition "the covert Persian-American War."
U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.
This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. "There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval," says a senior official.
Iranian-made munitions found in Iraq include advanced IEDs designed to pierce armor and anti-tank weapons. U.S. intelligence believes the weapons have been supplied to Iraq's growing Shia militias from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is also believed to be training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran.
Evidence is mounting, too, that the most powerful militia in Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, is receiving training support from the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.
[Hat tip: Captain Ed]
