Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: Fool us once ...
By Ayesha Awan
Indiana Daily Student (Indiana U.)
02/16/2007

(U-WIRE) BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The popular saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Wise up — don't be fooled again.

U.S. intelligence has laid out so-called "evidence" that Iran is supplying weapons to Shiite insurgents in Iraq.

A similar claim was made in October 2005, saying that Iranian technology was being used to kill British troops in Basra. Where is the "evidence"? The type of bomb being used is also used by the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, so thus, the origin of the bombs has to be Iranian.

That kind of faulty logic doesn't hold up. Anybody can make any type of bomb if they set their mind to it. The adaptability of insurgent tactics demonstrates this.

Now, the U.S. has brought up these claims again, allegedly with a preponderance of "evidence" to back them up. The "evidence" is foggy at best.

Because the explosives being used now — explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, — are more sophisticated than previous, commonly used improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the government is implying they are planned, not improvised.

How exactly does that point to Iran? Anyone can "plan" anything they choose to.

Officials allege they are smuggled across the virtually unguarded Iraq-Iran border in kits. However, according to the BBC, those who presented the evidence "could not make a direct link to Iran." The New York Times says that the claim was "inference based on general intelligence assessments."

When presenting the "evidence" there was much discussion of the five Iranians detained in Irbil. They allegedly belong to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The key word there is "allegedly." Translation: They have not been proven to belong to such a force. Yet here we have top U.S. officials using an unproven allegation as some sort of pseudo-proof that Iran is supplying weapons to Shiite insurgents? Ridiculous.

Everyone should be skeptical of these claims. Even top military officials are. The British troops in Basra that initially alleged the Basra-Iran connection have stopped making that claim.

These new developments should ring a huge bell for every single literate member of the American public.

Remember when our favorite member of the Bush family claimed that Iraq had ties to al-Qaida, therefore it was responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks?

Remember when he also said that Iraq had massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?

Dick Cheney said in 2003 that there was "overwhelming evidence" that Iraq had ties to al-Qaida.

In 2004, the Sept. 11 commission reported that it found "no collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

President Bush said in 2002, "Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon."

In 2005, the U.S. finally called off the search for the above-mentioned weapons. How many did the find? None.

If the government could have been so horribly wrong about Iraq, it is equally as likely to be wrong about Iran.

Don't buy into the fabricated propaganda this time around.

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