The Case Of The Meddling Iranians

American Officials Need To Be Reminded What 'Meddling' Really Means.

COMMENTARY
By ANWAAR HUSSAIN
March 12, 2007
BaltimoreChronicle

For more than 18 months now, the George W. Bush administration has periodically raised the charge that Iran is 'meddling' in Iraq. US defense officials recently displayed “Explosively Formed Projectiles” and heat sensitive detectors allegedly required for their remote detonation.

To further buttress the ‘meddling’ charge, the Americans also claimed to have arrested some ‘Iranian provocateurs,' including two diplomats.

That, sirs, is not 'meddling'.

Iranians share close to a thousand-mile-long border with Iraq and have fought a 9-year-long bloody war with that country. The two nations share not just a problematic past but the chief religion of their citizenry, too.

Furthermore, Iran’s worst nightmare, America herself, is now a clear, present and firmly established danger in Iraq that is not only nurturing dissident Iranian factions for a regime overthrow in Iran but is, reportedly, already overseeing covert operations there.

If the Iranians have not started ‘meddling’ in Iraq so far, they indeed have shown an almost inhuman restraint.

As American officials are now sitting with their Iranian counterparts to discuss the ‘meddling’ neighbors, let us remind them what 'meddling' is—the hurt innocence of the American officials notwithstanding, of course.

'Meddling', if not infinite meddling, is the invasion and perpetual occupation of distant Iraq, a country that had no common borders with the United States of America and had shown no hostile intent or action towards the U.S.

'Meddling' is the blowing into smithereens of the entire Iraqi infrastructure and pumping up that country with poisonous gases and depleted uranium in the process.

'Meddling' is firing upon Iraqis some 2,500 tons of depleted uranium munitions, having a radioactive equivalent of thousands of Nagasaki bombs, and a half-life of 4.5 billion years, in 2004 alone.

'Meddling' is the filling of Iraqi prisons with Iraqis, causing the mass killing of close to three-quarters of a million of its population, and demoting the living Iraqis into third-rate citizens of their own country.

'Meddling' is the unleashing of the apparition of sectarianism and, in so doing, bringing a brutal civil war upon that doomed country that continues to take a deadly toll on its unfortunate people with no end in sight.

'Meddling' is the laying waste to Fallujah, just one Iraqi city for example, that has been bombed, re-bombed, its citizens gunned down, its structures devastated by powerful weapons turning it into a hell on earth of crushed bodies, shattered buildings and the stench of death.

'Meddling' is the use of artillery and warplanes dropping 500, 1000, and 2000-pound bombs, 70-ton Abrams Tanks and the murderous AC-130 Spectre gunship.

'Meddling' is the stationing of Marine snipers at appropriate sites in that blighted city who were crisscrossing the entire town firing at will at whatever moved outside the buildings.

'Meddling' is the consequent 7,000 totally destroyed, or nearly totally destroyed homes, the complete destruction of 8,400 stores, workshops, clinics, warehouses, 65 mosques, 59 kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools and technical colleges and 13 government buildings in all districts of Fallujah.

'Meddling' is the gutting of four libraries in that city that housed thousands of ancient Islamic manuscripts and books.

'Meddling' is the stationing of about 140,000 American troops inside Iraq in a dozen or so permanent military bases, and planning a surge of another 25,000 troops.

'Meddling' is the keeping of an additional 100,000 government contractors, not counting the subcontractors, who like trolls tag along in the shadows bristling with state-of-the-art weaponry and drooling at their mouths at the prospect of fresh blood in the Iranians’ collective jugular.

'Meddling' is the maintenance of well over 700 foreign military outposts spread over a total of 140 countries around the world, including Asia, Europe and Africa of which at least 60 are considered permanent.

'Meddling' is the going to war in no less than 23, some say 67, places on the globe since WW II.

'Meddling' is the dropping of over a hundred million tons of bombs on foreign lands over the last 50 years.

That, sirs, is 'meddling'— and not the finding of a few “Explosively Formed Projectiles," heat-sensitive detectors and the arrest of 'Iranian provocateurs,' including two diplomats.

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines 'meddling' as “interfering without right or propriety,” and the WordWeb online terms it as "intruding in other people’s affairs or business; interfering unwantedly."


Copyright 2007 by Anwaar Hussain. The writer, a former officer of the Pakistan Air Force, is now based in the United Arab Emirates.

This story is reproduced courtesy of Fountainhead, Mr. Hussain's blog. Mr. Hussain may be reached by email at eagleeye@emirates.net.ae.

Sources:

1. Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq, The Washington Post
2. http://tinyurl.com/2bnoyr - The Washington Post: Article Disappeared.
3. Scant evidence found of Iran-Iraq arms link, The Los Angeles Times
4. U.S. highlights Iran-meddling charge in Iraq, Reuters
5. Tehran insider tells of US black ops, The Asia Times
6. Skeptics doubt U.S. evidence on Iran’s actions in Iraq, The International Herald TribuneRead

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Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

This story was published on March 16, 2007.