Updates at the bottom

Wow. I had a feeling that the accusations of Iran’s nuclear program were a little more hype than fact, and there had been reports that weapons were being picked up that came from Iran. It occurred to me that just because the weapons came from Iran doesn’t mean Iran was formally fueling the insurgency, at best. It seems that General Pace has confirmed my suspicions.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces hunting down militant networks that produced roadside bombs had arrested Iranians and that some of the material used in the devices were made in Iran.

“That does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this,” Pace told reporters in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. “What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers.”

Makes sense to me. I mean, just because you find a few weapons in Iraq doesn’t mean that the government officially sent them. It’s as though they found an Al Qaeda operative living in Iraq and then claimed that meant there was an operational connection between them and the government.

Wait, a little problem. See, the weapons we saw in the pictures were 81mm shells, and as it turns out, Iran doesn’t make weapons at that size.

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.

Well… fantastic. Come on, guys. If you’re going to fabricate something, at least make it a little more difficult to debunk.

UPDATE: A few readers have pointed out that Iran actually DOES make 81mm shells. However, looking at the PDF report linked to in the article confuses the issue a bit. Allow me to explain.

Page 5 lists off “defense production”, under which is “81, 120, 130, and 320mm mortars and artillery information” with a check under M (I’m not sure what this means, granted).

Page 15 lists quantities of production. For example: 155mm M109, 440 made, around 150 in service, had them since 1979. On this page there is no record of 81mm shells being produced.

The conclusion seems to be that 81mm is listed in places as “stock sizes” (someone on another site mentioned that 81mm is extremely common). However, the report appears to indicate that there is no record of Iran actually producing any. Any experts out there want to clarify this?

I think the greatest barometer of how our morale is going with the Iraq Fiasco is military recruitment. They already slipped the educational standards down, as well as age. So what’s next? Simple: let all the criminals in, now.

The military routinely grants waivers to admit recruits who have criminal records, medical problems or low aptitude scores that would otherwise disqualify them from service. Overall the majority are moral waivers, which include some felonies, misdemeanors, and traffic and drug offenses.

The number of felony waivers granted by the Army grew from 411 in 2003 to 901 in 2006, according to the Pentagon, or about one in 10 of the moral waivers approved that year. Other misdemeanors, which could be petty theft, writing a bad check or some assaults, jumped from about 2,700 to more than 6,000 in 2006. The minor crimes represented more than three-quarters of the moral waivers granted by the Army in 2006, up from more than half in 2003.

Now the defense is that these aren’t serious crimes. I would argue that there’s no way to paint this other than desperation. It seems now that the public support is dwindling, people don’t want to fight, so the military is starting to let in anyone and everyone who’s willing.

When I was in middle or high school, we saw old WWII videos that were apparently intended to get of-age men to join the military. Those old reels advertised the war. You brave young men are going to fight against the evils of whatever, and YOU could stop it!

Today if you watched Army/Navy/Marine commercials, you wouldn’t know there was a war. It’s just a way to get some stability in your life, get a career, get some college money, and do cool stuff like ride a chopper or climb a wall with a rope hanging off it. You’d almost think the military is trying to get people to join DESPITE there being a war, instead of because.