U.S. forces shot down Iranian drone

[LargoWinch]

Taste of things to come?

By Waleed Ibrahim - Reuters

Mon Mar 16, 2009


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces shot down an Iranian drone aircraft that ventured inside Iraq several weeks ago, a senior Iraqi military official said on Monday, an incident that could highlight deep U.S.-Iranian tensions.


"An unmanned Iranian plane crossed the border and it was discovered by multi-national forces' radar. They intercepted it and brought it down ... an American plane brought it down," Major-General Abdul Aziz Mohammed Jassim, head of military operations at the Iraqi Defense Ministry, told Reuters.

Article link here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/world...Name=worldNews

[D-Mack]

Re: U.S. forces shot down Iranian drone

I wondered why they came out with this 3 weeks later, when I saw it on TV.

Why go public now ?

Maybe just a reminder not feel too secure with Obama and his shift to Pakistan/Afghanistan

U.S. may widen strikes in Pakistan

By David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt
Published: March 18, 2009


WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama and his national security advisers are considering expanding the American covert war in Pakistan far beyond the unruly tribal areas to strike at a different center of Taliban power in Baluchistan, where top Taliban leaders are orchestrating attacks into southern Afghanistan.

According to senior administration officials, two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to reach the Taliban and other insurgent groups to a major sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta.

...

http://iht.nytimes.com/articles/2009...a/18terror.php

...

But major general Abdul Aziz Mohammed Jassim, head of military operations at the Iraqi defence ministry, told Reuters he believed the plane had strayed into Iraqi airspace by mistake.

"According to the report received by multinational forces, this drone entered Iraq mistakenly at a point 100 km (60 miles) from Baghdad. It crossed 10 km (6 miles) into Iraq," he said. "It's most likely that its entrance was a mistake."

...
The US has long accused Iran of interfering militarily in Iraq, typically by supplying Shia Muslim militant groups.

The incident roughly three weeks ago provoked no reaction from Tehran and was not made public by the US military until today.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that when the US military acts without fanfare the Tehran regime is "caught off guard," and chooses not to respond. In contrast, "it's when we aim to publicly shame Iran with 'axis of evil'-style rhetoric‚" that the regime responds.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...-drone-us-iraq

[Slimprofits]

Re: U.S. forces shot down Iranian drone

CAN IRAN CHANGE?
High stakes in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reëlection campaign.
by Jon Lee Anderson
APRIL 13, 2009

Lee Hamilton said that the United States could not afford to delay a decision in the hope that Ahmadinejad might be replaced with someone preferable. “We are preparing to begin discussions on a wide range of issues, and we know where we want to go on it,” he said. “We should proceed on our own timetable, not theirs.” He added, “Obama wants to put the relationship on a better and more sustained basis, as do I. Ever since the Revolution, we’ve had this debate here about whether to engage or not, and never resolved it. Now it’s not whether we are going to engage but how.

[..]

Thomas Pickering, a former Under-Secretary of State, who has been meeting with Iranians in an effort to help formulate a new U.S. policy approach, said, “In talking with the Iranians for several years, we have discovered that it’s difficult to know for certain the Iranians’ internal political architecture. There’s no way to have the tight intelligence to know when the right or wrong time to try talking with them might be. With the opacity of their system, it’s always going to be a kind of crapshoot.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2..._fact_anderson

What is the audience?

The message being conveyed in this article is that not just CEO Obama, but the U.S. establishment wants to change the relationship with the Iranians.

[LargoWinch]

Re: U.S. forces shot down Iranian drone

What is the audience?

The message being conveyed in this article is that not just CEO Obama, but the U.S. establishment wants to change the relationship with the Iranians.

Seems that CEO Obama also want to change the relationship with Venezuela:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbG-1nminro