McCain Adviser Disagrees With Gen. Odierno on Iran-AQI Connection
McCain Adviser Disagrees With Gen. Odierno on Iran-AQI Connection
John McCain can’t seem to make up his mind over whether or not Iran is supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq. On Tuesday, he asserted that Iran was “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back” into Iraq. Then he walked that statement back after being privately corrected by his traveling companion Joe Lieberman.
McCain foreign policy adviser Max Boot defended McCain’s misstatement, asking “What gaffe?“:
There is copious evidence of Iran supplying and otherwise assisting Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni terrorist groups (including Al Qaeda central). The 9/11 Commission itself noted a number of links between Iran and Al Qaeda.
Maybe Boot should take this question up with McCain’s companion Joe Lieberman, who corrected the Arizona Senator.
To support his claim of Iran “supplying and assisting” Al Qaeda, Boot refers to the 9/11 Commission’s report of “strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.” Boot also directs us to this AEI report which spins a bunch of anecdotes and suppositions into “data” supporting the Iran-Al Qaeda claim.
Boot must be celebrating today because it looks like his campaign is sticking with its faulty argument. Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser, told the New York Sun, “There is ample documentation that Iran has provided many different forms of support to Sunni extremists, including Al Qaeda as well as Shi’ia extremists in Iraq. It would require a willing suspension of disbelief to deny Iran supports Al Qaeda in Iraq.”
To buttress Scheunemann’s assertion, Sun reporter Eli Lake offers up a stew of dubiously-sourced claims of Iranian connections to groups or individuals “affiliated,” now or in the past, with Al Qaeda figures. Like Boot, Lake also points to the 9/11 Commission report that “intelligence indicates the persistence of contacts between Iranian security officials and senior Al Qaeda figures,” and noting “evidence suggesting that 8 to 10″ of the 9/11 hijackers “traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001.” Needless to say, none of this adds up.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno had to say last July:
We don’t see any evidence, significant evidence, that shows that [Iranian-controlled] groups that are funding and providing arms to Shi’a extremists are directly related to al Qaeda. Now, we all know that al Qaeda uses Iran and they do in some cases traffic some of their individuals through Iran to Iraq, but it’s a very small number of people and it’s mostly through the Kurdish regions up north, where you have the old Ansar al-Sunna connections. But beyond that, there is no specific connection between the Shi’a extremists — excuse me — the [Iranian] Quds Force operations and supporting the Shi’a extremists and that of al Qaeda, and supporting al Qaeda.
What does Randy Scheunemann know that Gen. Odierno doesn’t?
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4 Responses to “McCain Adviser Disagrees With Gen. Odierno on Iran-AQI Connection”
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Matt,
Ansar al Sunna calls itself al Qaeda in Kurdistan. Max and myself offer open source material, Fran Townsend, the 9-11 Commission report, the New York Times. This says nothing of the guy in charge of security for Suliminiyah province with regards to the Iran-al Qaeda issue. This says nothing of the fact that Richard Clarke, Doug Farah and many others wrote about how senior AQ leaders fled Afghanistan in 2001 for Iran, where they remain under a house arrest so loose as to make it possible for Saif al Adel to coordinate the Riyadh bombings in May 2003. Your side offers theology. You just all know it’s not true. And maybe if you all say it in unison it’s true. Listen this is not that hard a concept. Al Qaeda is a terror cartel. Iran is also a terror cartel. Sometimes they compete. Sometimes they cooperate on a common goal. Like the five families or the big three automakers. The Sunnis and Shiites never cooperate meme is about as dubious as the Iraq is the same as al Qaeda meme. It’s a complex world out there. Oy.
Eli
March 20th, 2008 at 5:11 pmEli,
I appreciate the comment, but, of course, I don’t claim that “Sunnis and Shiites never cooperate.” I do claim, however, that John McCain’s assertion that Iran is “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back” into Iraq is false. Odierno says it’s false. Petraeus says it’s false.
Now, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Iran would enter in to a cooperative relationship with AQ or AQI, I just haven’t seen credible evidence that such a relationship exists (and no, sorry, the various suppositions and anecdotes that you’ve strung together do not add up to “proof,” no matter how many times your right-wing buddies link to it).
But I do agree that it’s a complex world out there. Certainly it’s a lot more complex than your delusive attempt to cast AQ and Iran together under the simplistic heading “terror cartel” indicates that you really grasp.
March 20th, 2008 at 7:50 pmMatt,
I didn’t cast the two together. Do you object to saying Iran is a terror cartel? Ofcourse Iran is also a nation state. But in some ways so is al Qaeda in the FATA provinces of Pakistan. However both Iran and Qaeda use terrorism as statecraft. What’s more, you just dismiss my evidence as “suppositions and anecdotes,” which is a weasily way of not addressing it. Is Fran Townsend a liar? How about the Kurdish security guy? So you don’t think Saif al Adel is in Iran? You don’t believe he was on that phone call in May 2003? I think my side is arguing in good faith here. Finally, the two quotes you muster to “prove” your side on this do nothing of the sort. How does Petreaus asserting that primarily foreign fighters travel to support AQI through Syria disprove that Iran assists al Qaeda in Iraq? And unless you want to say that Ansar al Sunna is not part of AQI, which they are by dint of their membership in the Islamic State of Iraq, then the Odierno quote supports my side not yours. I think you want to dismiss the evidence of Iran’s support for Qaeda over the years because you favor engagement with Iran. But acknowledging the reality of the situation need not undermine your preferred policy. After all, if the left is correct, that Iran is not building a bomb, is not trying to destroy Iraq, is not helping and harboring al Qaeda, then what is the urgency in appeasing them? Engagement then rests only on the phony claim that Cheney secretly wants to invade Iran, and this requires us to believe the progressives are mind readers.
Eli
March 21st, 2008 at 6:26 amI do not believe that progressives are “mind readers,” but I do believe that there is some legitimate concern about the intentions of individuals like Mssers. Cheney, Bush and McCain regarding Iran. After all, the information that was released in the lead up to the Iraqi invasion was, at best, flawed. I remember an article in Time magazine released the week of the invasion in 2003 citing that President Bush had commented to some individuals visiting the Whitehouse that the US was going into Iraq–in February 2002–even though he later claimed that the US was going to explore every avenue to avoid such an action. And just in the last year, Mr. CcCain was heard singing “Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of “Barbarann.” Perhaps progressives are not so much mind readers but observers of human behavior and believers in the idea that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
March 22nd, 2008 at 9:31 am