Poof goes the proof, and the truth, in yet another spoof

From Reuters (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-14T193810Z_01_N14358184_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-IRAN.xml&archived=False)

President George W. Bush said on Monday components from Iran were being used in powerful roadside bombs used in Iraq, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel had been inside Iraq.... Washington's charges about Iranian weapons and personnel in Iraq have added to tensions between the United States and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program.

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Iraq_Threat_No_1.html)

The United States is pouring billions more dollars and fresh platoons of experts into its campaign to "defeat IEDs," the roadside bombs President Bush describes as threat No. 1 to Iraq's future....
The bomb makers have the White House's attention. In a radio address on Saturday, Bush said roadside bombs "are now the principal threat to our troops and to the future of a free Iraq."

Bush said in a speech Monday that Iran had supplied IED components to Iraqi groups, but U.S. officials have presented no evidence to support that, nor did Bush explain why Shiite Muslim Iran would aid Iraq's Sunni-dominated insurgency.

For their IEDs, Iraqi insurgents, who are believed under the direction of former military and intelligence officers, rely on the tons of military ordnance left over from the era of Saddam Hussein, and on store-bought electronic and other items for ignition systems.

The Pentagon's upgraded Joint IED Defeat Organization is getting a sharply increased $3.3 billion this year to foil the often rudimentary weapons, which the Iraqi resistance generally fashions from artillery and mortar rounds. The "JIEDDO" staff of explosives experts and others will almost triple, to 365.

From 2004 to 2006, some $6.1 billion will have been spent on the U.S. effort - comparable, in equivalent dollars, to the cost of the Manhattan Project installation that produced plutonium for World War II's atom bombs.

The investment has paid dividends in Iraq: in "jammers" installed on hundreds of U.S. vehicles to block radio detonation signals; in massively armored Buffalo vehicles whose mechanical arms disable roadside bombs. Forty-five percent of emplaced bombs are cleared before detonation, the U.S. command says.

In one initiative showing how seriously it takes the threat, the Defense Department proposes spending $167 million to build new supply roads in Iraq that bypass urban centers where convoys are exposed to IEDs.

But experts like the Air Force's Bob Sisk, an explosives-disposal specialist whose teams are daily disarming IEDs north of Baghdad, said the most important investment is in intelligence.

From WaPo (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/14/AR2006031401083.html)

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, said today he has no evidence the Iranian government has been sending military equipment and personnel into neighboring Iraq.

Today, Pace, the top U.S. military official, was asked at a Pentagon news conference if he has proof that Iran's government is sponsoring these activities.

"I do not, sir," Pace said.

Rumsfeld, standing beside Pace, said today it is difficult to ascertain whether the Iranian government is directly involved in sending military equipment and personnel to Iraq.