Let us put to rest the notion that Iran is supplying Iraqi Insurgents with weapons or any of their "stuff" as Gen Pace said. Where is their proof? Have they trotted out any? No! Because Iran would not supply anything to the Sunnis, or al-Sadr or "al-Qaeda in Iraq". The only folks Iran is on great terms with in Iraq are OUR guys the Shiia in the Iraqi government.
Now, given all of that why are so many in congress repeating the same mistakes that took us into Iraq now with regard to Iran? There are no facts to back up the bullshit spewed by this administration as they charge toward an attack on Iran!
Now what about Americans helping to arm the insurgency even inadvertantly? He are some issues congress needs to be aware of and it seems entirely plausible to me. Much more so than an Iranian hand in Iraq......
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Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood. Until the last few months, the insurgency got by with weapons and ammunition looted from former Iraqi army depots. But now that Sunnis were besieged in their neighbourhoods and fighting daily clashes with the better-equipped Shia ministry of interior forces, they needed new sources of weapons and money.
He told me that one of his main suppliers had been an interpreter working for the US army in Baghdad. "He had a deal with an American officer. We bought brand new AKs and ammunition from them." He claimed the American officer, whom he had never met but he believed was a captain serving at Baghdad airport, had even helped to divert a truckload of weapons as soon as it was driven over the border from Jordan.
These days Rami gets most of his supplies from the new American-equipped Iraqi army. "We buy ammunition from officers in charge of warehouses, a small box of AK-47 bullets is $450 (£230). If the guy sells a thousand boxes he can become rich and leave the country." But as the security situation deteriorates, Rami finds it increasingly difficult to travel across Baghdad. "Now I have to pay a Shia taxi driver to bring the ammo to me. He gets $50 for each shipment."
The box of 700 bullets that Rami buys for $450 today would have cost between $150 and $175 a year ago. The price of a Kalashnikov has risen from $300 to $400 in the same period. The inflation in arms prices reflects Iraq's plunge toward civil war but, largely unnoticed by the outside world, the Sunni insurgency has also changed. The conflict into which 20,000 more American troops will be catapulted over the next few weeks is very different to the one their comrades experienced even a year ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1989397,00.html
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