Thursday, December 28, 2006

Why the Personal Touch?

Something is happening in Iraq and Iranian fingerprints are all over it.

I haven't commented on our capture of Iranian agents in Iraq.

One, I figured the press would be all over this. And two, I've just about given up hope that our enemies in Syria and Iran can do anything bad enough to catch our attention (of the JDAM or coup kinds).

The coverage the blogs are giving it also focus on why the press isn't covering this very much (to avoid giving us the reason to go to war with Iran)

But note this:


Details of the arrests were sketchy. The New York Times, which first reported the arrests on Sunday, said the Iranians were picked up in a pair of raids in central Baghdad late last week.

At least four Iranians were still being held by the U.S. military, including some described as senior military officials, the paper said.


Why are senior military officials of Iran risking being caught inside Iraq? Why wouldn't the Iranians send in lower level people who Tehran can safely deny work for them? I mean, moving weapons and cash or conveying messages is the work of flunkies and lackeys.

Perhaps the Iranians have little confidence in their local puppets to carry out Tehran's bidding and need to send somebody with authority to knock some heads together. This would be good.

Or, the Iranians made a big decision and could only send in high level people to pass the decision along to their local stooges.

So what is it? Are the Iranians planning something with their local hand puppets, as I've long worried? Or are the Iranians simply worried about losing in Iraq and so are just trying to stem the rot by slapping their people around?

And Ahmadinejad has been rather bold of late.

Whatever the reason, the Iranians thought it important enough to risk getting high level people caught. I want to know why they were in Iraq.

We caught them. Let's find out why they were there, shall we? They were there for a reason and I fear we won't like why.

UPDATE: The agents may have simply been there to help kill Americans and Iraqis. So no big deal as far as the media is concerned:

The other two appeared to be military technical experts, in Iraq to show pro-Iranian Shia fighters how to make better bombs against foreign troops, and Iraqis who did not support Iranian goals.


Perhaps they are not as high ranking as I assumed if they were really just technical advisors.