Taliban Admits Receiving Supplies From Iran

If anyone has any doubts that we are in a proxy war against Iran (both in Afghanistan and Iraq), then check out this article:

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London Daily Telegraph
September 15, 2008

Taliban Claim Weapons Supplied By Iran

By Kate Clark, in Kabul

A Taliban commander has credited Iranian-supplied weapons with successful operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The comments by the commander, who would not be named but operates in the south east of the country where there has been a surge in Taliban attacks, were a rare admission of co-operation between elements within the Iranian regime and forces fighting British and American troops in Afghanistan.

"There's a kind of landmine called a Dragon. Iran's sending it," he said. "It's directional and it causes heavy casualties.

"We're ambushing the Americans and planting roadside bombs. We never let them relax."

The commander, a veteran of 30 years who started fighting when the Soviet Union was occupying Afghanistan, said the Dragon had revolutionised the Taliban's ability to target Nato soldiers deployed in his area.

"If you lay an ordinary mine, it will only cause minor damage to Humvees or one of their big tanks. But if you lay a Dragon, it will destroy it completely," he said.

A "Dragon" is the local nickname for a type of weapon known internationally as an Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP) or "shaped charge" and has been used with devastating effect in Iraq by Iranian-backed groups. It is shaped so that all the explosive force is concentrated in one direction - the target - rather than blasting in all directions and weakening its impact.

A former mujahideen fighter who knows the Afghan arms market well and who asked to be known as Shahir said the Dragon mines came directly from Iran.

Iran has denied these allegations, but Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador in Kabul, said the British Army, which is deployed in south-western Afghanistan, had intercepted consignments of weapons which they believe were "donated by a group within the Iranian state".

The only other possible source, the arms expert said, would be Pakistan's Tribal Areas where a relatively sophisticated arms industry has grown up. "Until now," he said, "no-one in the Tribal Areas has been able to copy these mines. Both the metal and the explosives are different, very high quality and very effective, obviously not Chinese or Pakistani."

He said there were two routes for Iranian weaponry getting to the Taliban. "There are people inside the state in Iran who donate weapons. There are also Iranian businessmen who sell them."

Iranian-made weapons, he said, whether smuggled or donated, were the most popular among Taliban fighters and fetch premium prices on the open market. "A Kalashnikov rifle made in Iran costs two to three hundred dollars more than one made anywhere else" he said. "Its beauty lies in the fact that it can also fire grenades, up to 300 meters. This is something new and it's in great demand."

Iran, a theocratic, Shia Muslim state should have little common cause with the Taliban, an extremist Sunni Muslim movement which massacred hundreds of Afghan Shia civilians and killed nine Iranian diplomats when it was in power.

Only the worsening relations between Iran and America might explain the weapons supply.

Sir Sherard said Iran was playing "a very dangerous game".

He added: "I suspect some of their agencies genuinely don't know what others are up to. We've seen a limited supply of weapons by a group within the Iranian state, not necessarily with the knowledge of all other agencies of the Iranian state, sending some very dangerous weapons to the Taliban in the south."

Kate Clark's full report is on BBC2's Newsnight on Monday Sept 15 at 10.30pm, and the BBC World Service on Thursday Sept 18 at 10.10am.

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The stakes are increasing as Iran continues its aggressive confrontation with the rest of the world via its surrogate terrorist groups.

Can you imagine Ahmadinejad with a nuclear weapon?

Charles M. Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Iraqi Militias Must Go

Back in 2004, the Mahdi Army consisted of only a few thousand members, mostly young street hoodlums attracted to Muqtada al Sadr because his father was a well-respected ayatollah who was executed by Saddam Hussein.

Those of us working the perilous streets of Baghdad that year were disheartened when our bosses decided to leave the Mahdi Army untouched because al Sadr indicated he would turn to politics. We didn’t believe he or his militia would ever disarm and he launched two uprisings that year. Many Americans were killed or wounded by his militia thugs.

Now Muqtada’s private army is conservatively estimated to consist of around 60,000 members. That doesn’t include the sympathizers among Iraqi civilians or the family members who help sustain and equip these black-uniformed killers. It also doesn’t include the Iranian advisors who provide arms, ammunition and training to their Iraqi revolutionary brothers – just as they did in 2004.

Al Sadr owes his life and the lives of his fellow Shiites to the American and Coalition forces, but he has refused to deal with the United States. This ungrateful fundamentalist only wants to lead the ultimate Shiite theocracy he sees simmering beneath the surface of the Iraqi political landscape. Any cooperation at all is only because it is in his interests for the moment while he pursues his own agenda.

While al Sadr hides in Iran, the new Iraqi Army has done reasonably well against his militia, even though some of the fundamentalists are surely within the military’s ranks. With Sunnis working with the Coalition for the most part to steadily wipe out the foreign fighters, one of the biggest remaining issues remains the in-fighting among the Shiites. Clearly, many of these Shiites – like al Maliki – have begun to realize that a functioning democracy is the only way to prevent a bloody civil war.

We have been correct to stay the course and we must continue to do so as long as freedom-loving Iraqis work with us. American and Coalition military forces can never impose a democracy on the people of Iraq because democracy is a free-will choice of the people of any nation.

If the average Iraqi citizen wants liberty, then he must be willing to fight for it as well. The Mahdi Army and the other militias must be squashed once and for all, but the Iranian influence in Iraqi society will always remain concealed in the shadows.

SFC Chuck Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Iranian Boats Should Have Been Destroyed

When Iranian boats approached our ships with threats that “the ships would explode”, such imminent danger to our warships and service members was all our naval commanders needed to send the likely members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to “paradise”.

Dangerous and unpredictable countries like Iran only understand and respect strength. Indecision and a hesitancy to react could very easily be interpreted as weakness. Perceived weakness will only increase the confrontations, not reduce them.

While the warship commanders may possess information we don’t have, it still seems like the appropriate response would have been similar to the photo above.

The Reuters article below talks about the incident:

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Iranians threatened U.S. ships in Hormuz: Pentagon
Mon Jan 7, 2008 6:54pm EST
By Andrew Gray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iranian boats aggressively approached three U.S. Naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a main shipping route for Gulf oil, at the weekend and threatened that the ships would explode, U.S. officials said on Monday.

Iran dismissed U.S. concerns about the incident, saying it was a routine contact. But the Pentagon termed the Iranian actions "careless, reckless and potentially hostile" and said Tehran should provide an explanation.

"This is a very volatile area and the risk of an incident escalating is real," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. "It is a reminder that there is a very unpredictable government in Tehran."

Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which is based in the Gulf, said five Iranian fast boats moved aggressively toward the U.S. ships in international waters and their actions were "unduly provocative."

"The ships received a radio call that was threatening in nature, to the effect that they were closing on our ships and ... the U.S. ships would explode," Cosgriff told reporters at the Pentagon via videolink from his Bahrain headquarters.

The incident was the latest sign of tension between Washington and Tehran, at odds over a range of issues from Iran's nuclear program to U.S. allegations of Iranian support for terrorism and interference in Iraq.

U.S. President George W. Bush is due to travel to the Middle East this week on a trip he has said is partly aimed at countering Iranian influence.

Cosgriff said the U.S. Navy believed the Iranian boats belonged to the country's Revolutionary Guard and they were sometimes less than 500 yards (meters) from the U.S. ships.

In October, the United States designated the Revolutionary Guard Corps a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and its elite Qods force a supporter of terrorism.

OIL PRICES ROSE

Oil prices briefly rose on the news about the confrontation as dealers weighed the threat to shipments along the key shipping route. Crude futures jumped 49 cents to $98.40 a barrel before slipping back.

In Tehran, the Iranian Foreign Ministry described the encounter as "ordinary" and said it had been resolved.

"This is an ordinary issue that happens for the two sides every once in a while and, after the identification of the two sides, the issue is resolved," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told Iran's official IRNA news agency.

An "informed source" from the naval force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards was quoted by Iranian state television as saying: "There were no out of the ordinary contacts between the Guards' naval force and American ships."

The source said three U.S. naval ships were asked by Guards' vessels "as usual" to identify themselves "which they did and they continued their path.

Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said after the Iranian threats a U.S. captain was in the process of ordering sailors to open fire when the Iranian boats moved away.

According to the officials, the radio transmission from one of the Iranian ships said: "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes."

Cosgriff said two Iranian boats also dropped floating white boxes into the water. He offered no explanation for that move but said the U.S. ships passed the boxes safely.

Cosgriff said the U.S. Navy was very mindful of the damage small craft could do to large ships. Al Qaeda militants killed 17 U.S. sailors when they rammed an explosives-laden boat into the side of the USS Cole, a destroyer, in Aden in 2000.

The incident took place about 0400 GMT Sunday, or late Saturday night in Washington, the officials said. Cosgriff said it was daylight with "decent visibility." The three U.S. ships were the USS Port Royal, USS Hopper and the USS Ingraham.

Last March, Iran seized 15 British sailors and marines in the Gulf and accused them of trespassing into Iranian waters. London maintained they were in Iraqi waters but the Britons were held for almost two weeks.

(Writing by Andrew Gray; Editing by David Storey)

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SFC Chuck Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

The Mahdi Army - Iran's Surrogate in Iraq

There will come a day when the United States largely pulls out of Iraq at the request of that nation’s leaders. If our goals are met, then a multi-party Iraqi government will be able to defend itself from outside aggressors and provide a stable, democratic environment that will protect the interests of all the various political factions.

One of the largest wild cards in the future of Iraq will remain Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, a Hezbollah-like militia that has opposed the American and Coalition presence since day one. When I was in Iraq in 2004, the Mahdi Army was already building its relationship with Iran and this militia became a force to be reckoned with. Many Americans died during al Sadr’s uprisings that year.

Al Sadr’s opposition seems surprising since we liberated Iraq’s Shiites from decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein. On the other hand, such opposition isn’t surprising when we realize that Iraq’s most radical Shiites are simply an extension of the Iranian fundamentalist leaders who are the sworn enemies of America.

With Shiites comprising some 60% of the Iraqi population, this majority will surely lead the way toward the future of Iraq – whatever kind of future that may be.

This article from today’s Christian Science Monitor talks about the Mahdi Army of 2007. The above photo is Muqtada al Sadr:

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Christian Science Monitor
December 11, 2007
Pg. 1

Iraq's Sadr Uses Lull To Rebuild Army

By Sam Dagher, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

KARBALA, IRAQ -- For more than three months, the Mahdi Army has been largely silent. The potent, black-clad Iraqi Shiite force put down its guns in late August at the behest of Moqtada al-Sadr.

The move has bolstered improved security in Baghdad, even though the US says some Mahdi Army splinter groups that it calls "criminals" or "extremists" have not heeded Mr. Sadr's freeze.

Away from public view, however, Sadr's top aides say the anti-American cleric is anything but idle. Instead, he is orchestrating a revival among his army of loyalists entrenched in Baghdad and Shiite enclaves to the south - from the religious centers of Karbala and Najaf to the economic hub of Basra. What is in the making, they say, is a better-trained and leaner force free of rogue elements accused of atrocities and crimes during the height of the sectarian war last year.

Many analysts say what may reemerge is an Iraqi version of Lebanon's Hizbullah - a state within a state that embraces politics while maintaining a separate military and social structure that holds powerful sway at home and in the region.

"He is now in the process of reconstituting the [Mahdi] Army and removing all the bad people that committed mistakes and those that sullied its reputation. There will be a whole new structure and dozens of conditions for membership," says Sheikh Abdul-Hadi al-Mahamadawi, a turbaned cleric who commands Sadr's operation in Karbala.

Sheikh Mahamadawi says each fighter would have to be vouched for by fellow fighters in good standing and would have to undergo a series of physical and character tests. "He must have high morals, strong faith, and above all, be obedient."

Sadr is also said to have created a special force called the "golden one" to cleanse the ranks of the Mahdi Army, or Jaish al-Mahdi in Arabic, from unwanted members, according to militia and police sources.

One Mahdi Army fighter, who did not wish to be named, says safe houses have been rented in Najaf for senior militiamen from neighboring Diwaniyah, where a joint Iraqi-US crackdown on the militia has been under way for months.

He says militiamen are spending their time carrying out good deeds like giving blood and sweeping streets to endear themselves again to the masses. The name of the Mahdi Army has, in many areas, become associated with killings, kidnappings, and extortion.

During the freeze, he says, he continues to be in contact with members of his unit but has returned to his day job as a hotel receptionist in Najaf, where he awaits instructions from his commanders. "There is just bound to be another war as long as the occupation remains. Our main enemy is America."

The Mahdi Army's next phase

In recent weeks, Sadrists - many dressed in black and donning white cloaks to symbolize martyrdom - have marched in Baghdad and the south. The largest rally took place in Najaf on Nov. 15, when tens of thousands of militiamen were bused in from all over Iraq to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the killing of Ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr, their spiritual leader and Sadr's father.

They paraded through Najaf's Valley of Peace cemetery, which was the scene of some of the worst fighting between the militia and the US in 2004. Celebrants flashed victory signs and shouted anti-American slogans. Those attending received a CD showing footage of purported roadside bombings planted by the militia against US forces and militiamen in training.

Mothers of Mahdi Army fighters killed since 2004 wept in a special section of the cemetery reserved for them. Like the Hizbullah cemeteries in Lebanon, hundreds of tombstones were festooned with artificial flowers and billboards praising the heroics of the so-called martyrs.

As for Sadr's intent, his spokesman in Najaf, Salah al-Obeidi, says: "We have new visions for what the Mahdi Army will do in the next phase."

Mr. Obeidi explains that most Shiite parties have embraced the political process wholeheartedly and accept the presence of US forces, while the Sadrists, who continue to oppose it, need to keep their Army as a "national resistance force."

In his latest statement last week, Sadr said: "I tell the evil Bush, leave our land, we do not need you or your armies.... I tell the occupiers ... you have your democracy and we have our Islam; get out of our land."

And using language that could have been torn right out of the fiery speeches of Hizbullah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, he urged the Mahdi Army to continue to abide by his freeze order for now.

The cleric warned the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki against extending the mandate of US-led multinational forces. He blasted Mr. Maliki's Dawa Party and its allies, the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI) and the Badr Organization, for targeting Sadrists. And he chided Iraqi security forces, many of them beholden to ISCI and Badr, for taking part in those anti-Sadrist operations.

The early history of Hizbullah, too, involved bloody internal fighting with a rival Shiite group and training by Iran before it became a skilled guerrilla group.

"Iran is definitely interested in having its own proxy political and military force in Iraq, just like Lebanon. Iran may try to wait a bit now to see who will emerge as the more dominant force," says Riad al-Kahwaji, a Dubai-based military expert on Iran. "All the indications so far are that [Iran] has invested a great deal in the Mahdi Army."

But, he adds, "it has been a bumpy start. The Mahdi Army is far from being the organized fighting machine like Hizbullah."

Shiite rivals do battle

The Mahdi Army freeze grew out of fierce battles in late August between ISCI and its affiliate, Badr, both headed by Sadr's archnemesis Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, in Karbala. In two days of fighting, more than 50 people were killed at the city's shrines during an important pilgrimage. The outside wall of the revered Imam Hussein mausoleum still bears the scars of the fighting.

Video footage of the clashes provided by Sadr's aides in Karbala shows black-clad men loyal to the cleric taunting guards, who are largely made up of Badr partisans, and then hurling shoes at them for refusing them entry into the shrine. Later, these guards are seen firing directly at throngs of pilgrims.

Mr. Maliki himself came down to Karbala at the time and gave police chief Brig. Gen. Raed Shaker, carte blanche to go after the Mahdi Army.

About 500 people were arrested at the time, including several provincial council members loyal to Sadr. General Shaker also declared publicly that the Mahdi Army was responsible for the assassination of at least 400 people in Karbala since 2004.

"These are only the bodies that we found," he said in an interview. "This is all documented. I am not doing this for any political agenda."

Umm Bassem says the Mahdi Army killed her son Bassem Hassoun, an Iraqi Army officer. She says they crippled her second son, Haidar.

"It's the fault of Sayyed [honorific] Moqtada; he encouraged them and armed them," says a tearful Umm Bassem, a nickname that means "mother of Bassem," as she clutches a portrait of her late son.

Mahamadawi, Sadr's aide in Karbala, says there may have been bad apples in the ranks of the Mahdi Army.

"We are not saying they are all angels, they are humans that can make mistakes; we have punished some and kicked out others," he says, adding that there is an intent by the government to sully the image of the Mahdi Army and finish it off. He also accuses the Karbala police of committing unspeakable crimes against the Sadrists including the killing of two children of a wanted militiaman in October and the torture of prisoners.

The assault on Sadr supporters

Anger against the police force, mixed with vows of revenge, reigns among the Daoum tribe in their village fiefdom on the outskirts of Karbala. Sixty-five of their members were among those arrested in the aftermath of the August events.

Muhammad Miri, who has been released since, lifts up his shirt to show scars on his back from what he says are from torture with wire cables. He says at least 22 prisoners were also sexually abused by police interrogators.

A police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says his claims are true. Widely circulated video footage also shows Hamid Ganoush, a Sadrist provincial council member, blindfolded and on his knees as he is being hit on the head with a shoe by interrogators who press him on the whereabouts of Ali Shria, a Karbala Mahdi Army leader, believed to be in Iran now.

The risk now is that these ever-deepening intra-Shiite feuds may also take on a tribal aspect.

A Baghdad-based US Department of Defense intelligence analyst, who tracks the Mahdi Army and who spoke on condition of anonymity, says intra-Shiite feuds in Iraq have always managed to sort themselves out, adding that he believes Sadr will maintain his freeze despite the rhetoric, as his paramount concern is political survival.

"It's working well. It's serving Sadr's interest well because it's solidifying his position as the clear leader ... and satisfying our desires to eliminate rogue criminal elements," he says. "I am not seeing any evidence that there is [a danger] that this is going to unravel."

Echoing recent remarks by top US military officials, he says that while there has been a decrease in roadside bombs - using Iranian armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) - against US troops, the militia's rogue elements still operate.

He blames recent bombings in Baghdad and mortar attacks on the Green Zone on Thanksgiving Day on these rogue elements. He also says a "massive" cache of Iranian-made arms was found in Diwaniyah recently, and on Dec. 1 a dealer of Iranian weapons was arrested in the city of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq.

"The guy was a major mover of lethal aid in his area," he says.

Some of these so-called rogue groups have also been blamed for the kidnapping of five Britons in May from the Finance Ministry in Baghdad. A group calling itself the "The Islamic Shiite Resistance in Iraq" released video footage of one of the hostages on Dec. 4 accompanied with a written statement demanding British troops leave Basra within 10 days.

Britain has pulled out from inside the city in September and now has only 4,500 soldiers left at an air base outside the city. The pullout of the bulk of this force is expected soon, leaving the Mahdi Army as the strongest armed group among its rivals in Basra.

Top US officials in Iraq have made no secret of their concern over Iranian plans to turn the Mahdi Army into another Hizbullah-like organization, pointing to their capture of a Hizbullah operative in March in Basra.

"His sole purpose in life was to come to Iraq to try to make JAM [Jaish al-Mahdi] a mirror image of Hizbullah," the Defense analyst says.

A senior official in Sadr's rival party, the ISCI, which is very close to the Iranian government, says Mr. Hakim received assurances from Iran at the highest level that they would rein in the hard-line factions within the Islamic Republic who might be supporting Sadr's militia.

"The events in Karbala embarrassed the Iranians," says the official, who requested anonymity, referring to the sanctity of the shrines to Shiite Iran. "There is a nationalist current in Iran, though, that does not want to see stability in Iraq ... this keeps us worried."

The Sadrists have long distanced themselves from Iran publicly and sought to portray themselves more as Arab nationalists.

Sadr's spokesman Obeidi says while the movement admires Iranian-backed Hizbullah, the Mahdi Army is different.

He says the US military and the Mahdi Army's Shiite rivals are trying hard to force the dismantling of Sadr's militia forming tribal councils across the Shiite south, much like the Americans did in Sunni parts of the country to combat Al Qaeda.

But, the spokesman says, this strategy isn't going to work in the south, where many of the tribesmen's sons are Mahdi fighters.

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Keep watching the Mahdi Army, Muqtada al Sadr and their partnership with Iran. When it comes to such Islamic fundamentalist relationships, all we can do is watch, wait and keep our weapons at hand.

SFC Chuck Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

The Iranian Connection - Confirmed Again

I’ve spoken at length in this blog about the support of the various Iraqi insurgent factions by Iran, Syria and others who do not have freedom’s best interest at heart.

The above photo of Iran's Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei depicts the real power behind figurehead and mouthpiece Ahmadinejad. Khamenei's own website refers to him as the "Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

The following article from the Associated Press discusses the well-planned January attack in Karbala – a “commando raid” – which resulted in the deaths of American soldiers:

Iran Linked to U.S. Troops' Deaths
Associated Press - July 02, 2007

BAGHDAD - Iran is using the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah as a "proxy" to arm Shiite militants in Iraq and Tehran's Quds force had prior knowledge of a January attack in Karbala in which five Americans died, a U.S. general said Monday.

U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner said a senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative, Ali Mussa Dakdouk, was captured March 20 in southern Iraq. Bergner said Dakdouk served for 24 years in Hezbollah and was "working in Iraq as a surrogate for the Iranian Quds force."

The general also said that Dakdouk was a liaison between the Iranians and a breakaway Shiite group led by Qais al-Kazaali, a former spokesman for cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Bergner said al-Kazaali's group carried out the January attack against a provincial government building in Karbala and that the Iranians assisted in preparations.

Al-Khazaali and his brother Ali al-Khazaali, both captured in March, have told U.S. interrogators that they "could not have conducted it (the Karbala attack) without support from the Quds force," Bergner said.

Documents captured with al-Khazaali showed that the Quds Force had developed detailed information on the U.S. position at the government building, including "shift changes and defense" and shared this information with the attackers, the general said.

U.S. officials at the time of the Karbala attack said it was unusually sophisticated, with the attackers dressed in U.S. uniforms to get close to the building, and suggested Iran may have had a role in it.

The U.S. military in the past has accused the Quds Force - the external arm of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards - of arming and financing Iraqi extremists to carry out attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. Tehran has denied the U.S. accusations.

Bergner said Iraqi extremists were taken to Iran in groups of 20 to 60 for training in three camps "not too far from Tehran." When they returned to Iraq, they formed units called "special groups" to carry out attacks, bombings and kidnappings, he said.

Dakdouk helped train and organize the groups, making four visits to Iraq in the past year after a May 2006 trip to Iran, the general said. Hezbollah, he said, helps the Iranians as a "proxy ... to do things they didn't want to have to do themselves in terms of interacting with special groups."

"Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity," he said. Asked if Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be unaware of the activity, Bergner said "that would be hard to imagine."

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This war is already beyond the borders of Iraq and has been since the beginning. Those of us who served in Iraq in 2004 suspected the Iranian connection even then – if for no other reason than people like Muqtada al Sadr were making regular visits to Tehran.

SFC Chuck Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

When the Enemy Crosses the Line

When the British sailors and marines searched the suspicious ship off the coast of Iraq, it appears there was no backup standing by. The Iranian vessels that overwhelmed the British boats should have been confronted with the prospect of deadly force long before they ever reached their targets. If backup was available and it was not immediately dispatched, this is unacceptable. If there was no backup available at all, this is unforgivable.

Other British military personnel have been captured before under similar circumstances. Such a risk should have been expected in the contested waters of Iraq. At the very least, helicopter gunships should have been on station over the British boats. Any approach by Iranian ships could have been met with a burst of gunfire across their bows. Such strength would have surely deterred the Iranians. If it did not, then it would have been their misfortune to perish for such a criminal act.

The rules of engagement by Coalition forces are necessary to the degree that our military personnel are not put in mortal danger. When risk to life and limb is imminent due to an attack by anyone, nothing should prevent decisive, forceful action.

The Iranians are Persians with a history that indicates respect for power, but contempt for those who appear weak. While it is true that the British or the Americans could “erase” Iran with their military power, politically timid and indecisive acts will only embolden the Iranians and our other Islamic fundamentalist enemies.

We are waging war against barbarians who only respect strength. If they walk up and stare you in the eye, they must be met with equal intensity. If they decide to reach out and touch you, then they have crossed the line. The only way to deal with such aggressors is to completely and utterly crush them to the point of their surrender or death.

If the British Navy had provided the necessary support to its own military personnel, there would be no hostage crisis. Instead, we would be watching as wreckage from the Iranian boats and the bodies from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard continued to wash ashore.

SFC Chuck Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com