Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Wall Street Journal (wsj.com)
January 18, 2008 CHARLESTON (AFP)--U.S. soldiers have already been targeted in the first two weeks of January by as many suspected Iranian explosives as in all of December, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.
"During the first half of January there were as many IEDs (improvised explosive devices) as there were in all of December," Gates told reporters aboard a plane after a visit in Charleston, S.C.
Gates' military adviser, Peter Chiarelli, said later the secretary was actually referring to explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), which U.S. officials say Iran has been supplying to insurgents in Iraq.
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said Wednesday that EFP attacks had dropped in recent months but increased at the start of January.
"The signature attacks that employ Iranian-provided weapons have decreased substantially," he told a small group of reporters accompanying him on his visit to the Iraq-Iran border post at Zurbitiyah.
"The EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) had been running at a low level until about the first 10 to 12 days of this month, when we saw a noticeable increase but, in the last several days they have gone down again," he said.
US officials said they observed a steady reduction in the use of Iranian explosives between October and November. They said they believed that showed a possible reduction of weapons being sent from Iraq's neighbor.
January 18, 2008 CHARLESTON (AFP)--U.S. soldiers have already been targeted in the first two weeks of January by as many suspected Iranian explosives as in all of December, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.
"During the first half of January there were as many IEDs (improvised explosive devices) as there were in all of December," Gates told reporters aboard a plane after a visit in Charleston, S.C.
Gates' military adviser, Peter Chiarelli, said later the secretary was actually referring to explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), which U.S. officials say Iran has been supplying to insurgents in Iraq.
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said Wednesday that EFP attacks had dropped in recent months but increased at the start of January.
"The signature attacks that employ Iranian-provided weapons have decreased substantially," he told a small group of reporters accompanying him on his visit to the Iraq-Iran border post at Zurbitiyah.
"The EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) had been running at a low level until about the first 10 to 12 days of this month, when we saw a noticeable increase but, in the last several days they have gone down again," he said.
US officials said they observed a steady reduction in the use of Iranian explosives between October and November. They said they believed that showed a possible reduction of weapons being sent from Iraq's neighbor.