Pentagon Caught Red Handed in an attempt to Frame Iran

[laststeamtrain]

Pentagon Caught Red Handed in an attempt to Frame Iran: Iran Does Not Manufacture 81MM Mortar Shells

By Kurt Nimmo

Global Research, February 13, 2007
Another Day in the Empire - 2007-02-12

Pentagon carelessness fabricating bogus “evidence” against Iran is really quite stupendous. As I wrote here yesterday, the 81mm mortar shell offered up to the complaisant corporate media as “evidence” Iran is supplying weaponry to the Shi’a of Iraq is an obvious ruse, as the date on the proffered shell does not follow the Muslim calendar and other markings are in English when it only makes sense they would appear in Persian script.

But it gets worse.

As a recent email points out, Iran does not manufacture 81mm mortar shells. According to a report offered by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, connected to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the neocon Brookings Institute, the smallest mortar produced by Iran is the 107mm M-30. This information is included in the JCSS’s “Middle East Military Balance,” updated last February. It can be read in this PDF file on page 15. According to JCSS, “The Middle East Military Balance has been the most authoritative source on Middle Eastern Armies since 1983.” It is quite fortunate for us the hubris-filled neocons care not to double check their engineered lies—erroneously described as a “machining process”—before unleashing them on an unwitting public.

As Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told the Associated Press, the “United States has a long history in fabricating evidence,” an undisputed fact more than underscored by the lead-up to the Iraq invasion when the neocons claimed Iraqi weather balloon trailers doubled as biological weapon labs and clumsily recycled a student’s homework as evidence Saddam was dabbling in weapons of mass destruction.

Considering the shoddiness of the mortar ruse, it makes perfect sense so-called “experts” involved in the scam told “a large gathering of reporters” (more accurately described as script readers and errand boys) “they not be further identified,” lest blame be delivered to their doorstep.

“Why are US officials hiding behind the cloak of anonymity when presenting the most detailed evidence yet that Iran is supplying anti-US forces in Iraq with weaponry?” muses Eason Jordan. “After weeks, if not months, of US official planning to present a damning ‘dossier’ of incriminating evidence against Iran, and after this same US administration presented us with lopsided, erroneous information about the capability and evil intentions of the Saddam Hussein regime, the best the US government can give us today is incendiary evidence presented at a Baghdad news conference by three US officials who refuse to be quoted by name?…. The American people deserve straight talk from identified US officials.”

<snip>

Maybe, if we are lucky, at some point in the future, the names of these “experts” will emerge in the course of a new Nuremberg trial.

<more>

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NIM20070213&articleId=4772

[sakabatou]

1. The WMDs come out again

[Kagemusha]

2. The reason I'm not jumping on this "fake evidence" charge is...

So what if Iran doesn't purchase 81mm rounds, does it BUY any? Does it USE any? That's way more detail than I personally know, so I hate getting sucked into these debates about the fine details...

But even if Iran does simply purchase mortar rounds (they explode no matter what the writing on them says after all), and some ended up in Iraq, er, big deal..

[Captain Hilts]

3. Don't confuse "The Pentagon" with political appointees that work there.

Trust me, Joe and Mary Shit Soldier do NOT want to invade Iran.

[whistle]

4. The Pentagon should have at least used Iranian stencil lettering

....to paint the fake markings on the false weapons, rocket grenades, etc.

[Old and In the Way]

5. When this administration is finished...we''ll need a truth and reconciliation

committee, just to separate fact from the manufactured fiction that this administration has fed us the past 6 years.

[williesgirl]

6. K&R - we MUST get these criminals out of our WH now!

[threadkillaz]

7. you mean manufactured intelligence...

nahhh, couldnt be..

[AnotherMother4Peace]

8. They recycled the old "this has the fingerprints of......."

I believe it was Condie who used this phrase about an Al Quida/Iraq connection. Now the mouthpieces are dragging out the same old innuendo. I heard the same phrase used on the MSM recently about an Iran/Iraq connection.

[jazzjunkysue]

9. hysterical: "Fabricating evidence." Like Germans calling us war criminals.

This is poetic.

[SlipperySlope]

10. Except Iran *does* make 81 mm mortar shells.

This needs to be quashed fast before someone embarrasses himself.

Iran makes 81 mm mortar shells.

The original post is all about how those shells don't show up on page 15 of the JCSS document. It appears he didn't look on page 5, where they are mentioned.

If you prefer, you can go right to the Iranian Defense Industries Organization (a branch of the Iranian Ministry of Defense) and see what they manufacture.

Here is their website: http://www.diomil.ir/

Here is a picture of their 81mm shells:


Here are the specifications on those shells:


Don't pass on the "Iran doesn't make 81 mm shells" meme, because it is false, and you can end up looking like a fool.

Instead, hammer on the "there is no proof that the Iranian government has anything to do with this" point. Just because a few shells were stolen from Iran and ended up in Iraq, doesn't mean the state is behind it.

[Doondoo]

11. K&R

[laststeamtrain]

12. Retraction: Iran Does Make 81mm Mortar Shells(What SlipperySlope said:)

What SlipperySlope said:

Retraction: Iran Does Make 81mm Mortar Shells
Monday February 12th 2007, 12:37 pm

I have received email indicating the Iranian Ammunition Industries Group manufactures and sells 81mm mortar shells, as indicated on this page. However, this does not diminish the argument that there is no definitive evidence Iran supplies weaponry to Iraq’s Shi’a militias, as originally stated.

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=765