Goldfarb: Odierno And Petraeus Wrong About Iran-Al Qaeda Connection
Goldfarb: Odierno And Petraeus Wrong About Iran-Al Qaeda Connection
Michael Goldfarb responds to my previous post, in which I quoted Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno in order to rebut John McCain’s erroneous assertion that Iran was “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back” into Iraq. Goldfarb ignores the parts of the quote that he doesn’t like, grabs onto Odierno’s statement that “al Qaeda uses Iran and they do in some cases traffic some of their individuals through Iran to Iraq,” and asks:
Am I missing something, or isn’t that exactly what McCain said? And since no one is disputing that Iran has control over its borders, we are now talking about degrees of support, which is to say, Iran is supporting al Qaeda, we just don’t know to what extent.
Yes, Mike. You are missing something. What McCain said was that Iran was “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back” into Iraq. Second, while no one is disputing that Iran has control over its borders, I do dispute the idea that al Qaeda individuals moving through Iran translates into “Iran supporting al Qaeda.” And so does Lt. Gen. Odierno.
And, by the way, so does Gen. Petraeus. Asked if Iran is “supporting al Qaeda,” Petraeus told CNN’s Kyra Phillips that the “foreign fighters and suicide bombers that help al Qaeda” are flowing “through Syria”:
PETRAEUS: The flow of foreign fighters and suicide bombers that help al Qaeda typically is through Syria.
Watch it:
This is not to say that it is impossible for Iran to be supporting Al Qaeda, just that the two highest ranking commanders on the ground in Iraq, as well as all the available evidence, say Iran is not supporting Al Qaeda.
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This is classic right-wing logic. McCain claimed that Iran was actively training Al Qaeda members. But, somehow McCain isn’t wrong because at some point a member of Al Qaeda may have passed through Iran on their way from one country to another.
First, McCain didn’t claim some kind of lukewarm support for Al Qaeda, he claimed that it was “common knowledge” members of Al Qaeda were being trained in Iran. Second, allowing transit through a company would probably be seen as at best indifference rather than support.
I think it would be a far stretch to say for example that the United States supported the 9/11 terrorists because we allowed them to live in the United States and attend flight school here. At best, the incompetent Bush administration was indifferent to the presence of known terrorists living among us.
March 20th, 2008 at 11:11 pmI think the evidence is pretty clear that Iran is not providing much in the way of support for al Qaeda. However, this debate very quickly drifted into whether it is possible for a Shi’a government to support a Sunni terrorist organization. As the 9/11 commission found, it is:
So, I don’t think it’s fair to suggest McCain is somehow confused by the realities of Sunni-Shi’a conflict — perhaps it is the mainstream media, as well as most of us, who think that the Sunni-Shi’a divide makes it somehow impossible for there to be a relationship between the two groups in any way. To your credit, you have said this all along. But it is mistaken of people like Sen. Obama to say, “Just yesterday, we heard Sen. McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al-Qaida..Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al-Qaida ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America’s enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.” Such a comment ignores past connections that have been made between Iran and al Qaeda.
March 21st, 2008 at 12:32 am