Left I on the News

Despite years of claims of Iran supplying weapons to resistance forces in Iraq (going back at least a year and a half), there continues to be the little matter of proof. It now appears that the services of magician David Copperfield are being employed, because those weapons are managing to cross the border...without being seen!

"It's fair to say that no one has caught anyone red-handed bringing in lethal aid across the border," said Major Anthony Lamb, who oversees training of Iraqi border enforcement units.

"Hundreds of searches are carried out every day, but as yet, there hasn't been a direct seizure of lethal aid."

Since the invasion in 2003, the United States has built hundreds of "forts" along Iraq's borders, including more than 60 along a 500-km stretch along the edge with Iran in the south.

Each fort is manned by 12 to 40 guards who carry out frequent patrols, although the frontier, heavily mined since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, is not fenced. The Iranians have guards all along their side too, visible in the near distance.

As well as the forts, there are two battalions of Iraqi border commandos trained to hunt down smugglers and staunch the flow of illegal goods into the country.

At the two official border crossings in the south, where as many as 300 trucks a day arrive from Iran, customs and border police have managed to crack down on the movement of drugs, illegal cars, banned perishable foods and other illicit goods.

But so far, nothing approximating a rocket has been found.

Sadly, this actual information will do nothing to change "conventional 'wisdom'" which takes it as a simple fact that Iran is arming Iraqi resistance fighters and militias. After all, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." What a brilliant masterstroke of Donsense (tm) that was! No evidence of Iraqi WMD? "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." No evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapon program? "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." No proof of Iranian weapons in Iraq? "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." No proof that virtually anyone held in Guantanamo is guilty of a crime? "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." No evidence of any crimes committed or being planned by an American citizen which might justify wiretapping? "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." And on and on.