Another Bush Provocation Sabre Loses Its Rattle

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker calls attention to the explosion, so to speak, of the administration's false justification for threats against Iran, premised on the assertions that certain very powerful bombs (explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s) could have been made only in Iran. James Glanz and Richard Oppel for the NY Times report that the same type of explosive devices were discovered in a raid on Saturday by the U.S.' First Cavalry Division: But while the find gave experts much more information on the makings of the E.F.P.’s, which the American military has repeatedly argued must originate in Iran, the cache also included items that appeared to cloud the issue. Among the confusing elements were cardboard boxes of the gray plastic PVC tubes used to make the canisters. The boxes appeared to contain shipments of tubes directly from factories in the Middle East, none of them in Iran. One box said in English that the tubes inside had been made in the United Arab Emirates and another said, in Arabic, “plastic made in Haditha,” a restive Sunni town on the Euphrates River in Iraq.