WarSclerotic

Iran’s Al Qods Brigades (external terror arm)

While condemned for placing US troops in Iraq in danger, the 400,000 classified documents WikiLeaks exposed Saturday, Oct. 23 on the 2004-2009 years of the Iraq War bared a catalogue of extreme abuse by Iraqi forces against fellow Iraqis and Iran’s deep involvement in terrorist operations against Americans and Iraqis alike – to both of which the US turned a blind eye.
debkafile‘s analysts point to three more striking facts emerging from these revelations, over and above the US Department of Defense spokesman’s dismissal of the documents as “raw observations by tactical units, which were only snapshots of tragic, mundane events.”
These three facts are important because they relate to the present:
First: US troops “were instructed not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition” This instruction could only have come from the IS defense Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff down to the overall Iraqi war commander codenamed “Frago 242.”

It has been said that international law did not require the US to investigate allegations of Iraqi-on-Iraqi detainee abuse, because all of them were reported after June 30, 2004 – when Iraq once again became a “sovereign country”, according to the United Nations resolution 1546. The United States no longer directly controlled Iraq’s security services, and thus, it was no longer legally obligated to police them.

Also brought out is the case of the US helicopter accused of shooting dead Iraqi insurgents after they offered to surrender.

Second:  The incumbent Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who gained the support of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was recorded as having in the past headed Iran-backed Shiite terror networks responsible for political assassinations on his orders.
Three:  Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Al Qods Brigades, under the command of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, orchestrated and led many of the attacks that terrorized American force and Iraqis over the years. Even when not directly involved, the documents recount how Tehran provided Iraqi militias with rockets, magnetic bombs attacked to cars, the lethal shaped EFP bombs, side arms and missiles, one of which downed a US helicopter in Baghdad in July 2007.
Al Qods fighters collaborated with Iraqi extremists to encourage the assassination of Iraqi officials.

According to one document, its commanders prepared a chemical weapons attack against the Green Zone in Baghdad for wiping out the entire American diplomatic and military command in Iraq along with Iraqi government heads.  In this way, Tehran sought to diminish US authority and expand its own lead role in shaping the country.

Washington’s inadequate response to Iranian aggression in Iraq continues up the present.

The reports make it clear that the lethal contest between Iranian-backed militias and U.S. forces continued into 2010 after President Barack Obama tried to open a dialogue with Iran and reaffirmed the agreement between the U.S. and Iraq to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

The WikiLeaks documents include a secret US military tally which reveals the staggering figure of 109,000 Iraqi dead in the first six years of the war – many more than previously estimated. It is also estimated that 63 percent were civilians.

The documents do not refer to the 4,287 American troops who died and 30,000 wounded in the conflict.

These figures and the three points referred to above raise a big question mark over whether the Iraq War was worth starting and fighting for seven years. The brutal Saddam Hussein regime (which also happened to be a barrier to the spread of Iranian influence) is about to be replaced by a no less brutal regime headed by a pro-Iranian terrorist who Tehran holds on a string. The United States is shown to have opened the door for Iran’s rise as the dominant Middle East power.

The spread of its influence of late was not a spontaneous natural phenomenon, but grew exponentially out of the strategic and logistic infrastructure Iran was allowed to lay down in Iraq in conjunction with its past and present allies, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian extremists of the Gaza Strip.

The WikiLeaks Iraqi War papers do not describe the Lebanese Hizballah’s key role in creating and training the Shiite militias for their role in helping Tehran subjugate Iraq or the backup provided by Syria, such as the intimate collaboration between the al Qods Brigades, Syrian Intelligence and Hizballah networks, or the sanctuary Iraqi insurgent commands enjoyed in Damascus and Hizballah-control towns in Lebanon.

This three-way collaboration in Iraq was the engine that powered Iran’s present impetus for a strategic leap not only on Baghdad but on areas west up to the shores of the Mediterranean.

America’s failure to stand up to Iranian-engineered terror in Iraq may also be seen as the backdrop for Israel’s inertia in the face of the same adversary, Tehran, its constant threats of destruction and massive buildup of missile and rocket arsenals for arming Hizballah and Hamas against Israel.
Just as US inaction in Iraq substantially undermined America’s standing and influence in the Middle East East,  so too the failure to reduce its enemies has strategically weakened Israel.