.US to build military base on Iraq-Iran border: report
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US forces plan to build a military base on Iraq's border with Iran to better control what they say is an undercover flow of Iranian weapons and fighters, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
"We've got a major problem with Iranian munitions streaming into Iraq," Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of US army forces in central Iraq, told the Journal.
"This Iranian interference is troubling and we have to stop it."
The base, with living quarters for some 200 soldiers, will be built six kilometers (four miles) from the Iranian border and will likely be completed by November, Major Toby Logsdon, the US officer overseeing the project, told the Journal, without giving a location.
The US military also plans to install X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors at the Zurbatiya border crossing, the main crossing between Iran and Iraq.
Also planned are six fortified checkpoints on the major highways leading from the Iranian border to Baghdad, to be manned by soldiers from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, according to the Journal.
On August 24 Lynch said some 20 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were inside Iraq training Shiite extremists to launch attacks on US and Iraqi security forces.
The US military has regularly accused Iranian forces of training Iraqi militants to use rockets and explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) -- fist-sized bombs capable of slicing through heavy vehicle armor -- but Lynch's comments marked the first claims that they were operating inside Iraq.
The US military says EFPs are manufactured in Iran, smuggled into Iraq and delivered to Shiite extremists for attacks on US-led coalition forces. Tehran denies the charge.
AFP
Well at least we are going to look like we are going to come through on our word. Pray to your favorite god this is not just more bad PR.
"We've got a major problem with Iranian munitions streaming into Iraq," Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of US army forces in central Iraq, told the Journal.
"This Iranian interference is troubling and we have to stop it."
The base, with living quarters for some 200 soldiers, will be built six kilometers (four miles) from the Iranian border and will likely be completed by November, Major Toby Logsdon, the US officer overseeing the project, told the Journal, without giving a location.
The US military also plans to install X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors at the Zurbatiya border crossing, the main crossing between Iran and Iraq.
Also planned are six fortified checkpoints on the major highways leading from the Iranian border to Baghdad, to be manned by soldiers from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, according to the Journal.
On August 24 Lynch said some 20 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were inside Iraq training Shiite extremists to launch attacks on US and Iraqi security forces.
The US military has regularly accused Iranian forces of training Iraqi militants to use rockets and explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) -- fist-sized bombs capable of slicing through heavy vehicle armor -- but Lynch's comments marked the first claims that they were operating inside Iraq.
The US military says EFPs are manufactured in Iran, smuggled into Iraq and delivered to Shiite extremists for attacks on US-led coalition forces. Tehran denies the charge.
AFP
Well at least we are going to look like we are going to come through on our word. Pray to your favorite god this is not just more bad PR.
posted by madtom at 2:06 PM
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