Pretty Good Evidence

Defense Secretary Robert Gates asserted Friday that the military has collected "pretty good" evidence that Canada is providing vehicles and financial support to criminal elements within the United States. Offering some of the first public details of evidence the military has collected, Gates said, "I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the cars that we found," that point to Canada.

Following Gates' comments, a Pentagon source revealed that the military has also received reports of Canadian currency being found in possession of individuals arrested in the United States.

Is the government of Canada running an effort to undermine law and order in the United States, as part of a drive to regional domination? Not at all. That was fiction.

Nor was what Gates described being collected in Iraq "pretty good" evidence of anything. Let's not forget that Iran shares a long border with Iraq, and has a functioning economy, unlike Iraq. Many Iraqis spent years of exile in Iran during Saddam's reign. It should not come as a surprise that all manner of trade and exchange happens across the border, both legal and illicit. Nor should any example of that trade be read automatically as an act of the Iranian government.

Imagine a hypothetical in which an Iraqi bombmaker has used up all the Iraqi and American-made explosives previously looted from weapons depots we didn't guard during our invasion. Supposing he wanted to buy some more, where would he go? Assuming he is a Shiite, say in Basra, travelling through Sunni territory toward Syria might be hard, but going to a familiar place with a bunch of co-religionists seems more plausible. Is there any reason to think that whatever the military found in Iraq wasn't bought in a black market somewhere by an Iraqi?

Speaking of black markets, weapons are a global business these days. I'm sure that the military has found plenty of Czech automatic weapons in Iraq. Are we to take this as an example of Czech 'meddling' in Iraq? Or as evidence that Czech weapons are well-made, cheap, plentiful, and sold back and forth all around the world? Oh, no, that's right, the Czech Republic donated a bunch of weapons to the government of Iraq in 2005 to provide "moral support" for the struggling government. (I'm sure none of those have made their way to insurgents. Ha.)

What would it actually prove that Gates says there were fragments of Iranian explosives found in Iraq? Given that this administration has previously turned aluminum tubes unsuited for centrifuges into a nuclear weapons arsenal, I think it proves far less about Iran's intentions than it does about our government's.