Taliban's bombs came from US, not Iran

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Doctored intelligence reports continue to come out of CIA and other sources that appear to continue to support the agenda of the Bush Administration. Given this article, it would appear that this intelligence is disinformation designed to further the neo-con agenda. Fortunately, we have the Federation of American Scientists who are more interested in the truth.

Could this intelligence really be promoted by Obama Administration sources? I suppose it could, but it strikes me as much more likely that this flimsy evidence is from rogue intelligence sources given how easily it can be refuted.

In support of the official United States assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to Iranian military assistance.

But the Taliban commander's claim is contradicted by evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Taliban claim was cited by the ODNI in written responses to

questions for the record from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence following testimony by Blair before the committee on February 12, 2009. The responses were released to the Federation of American Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act on July 30.

ODNI wrote that Iran was "covertly supplying arms to Afghan insurgents while publicly posing as supportive of the Afghan government". As evidence of such covert Iranian arms supply, the ODNI said, "Taliban commanders have publicly credited Iranian support for their successful operations against coalition forces."

That statement was taken almost word-for-word from the subtitle of an article published on the website of London's DailyTelegraph and Sunday Telegraph on September 14 last year. "A Taliban commander has credited Iranian-supplied weapons with successful operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan," read the sub-heading of the article "Taliban claim weapons supplied by Iran".

The single Taliban commander quoted became plural in the ODNI version.

via Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.

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