The former No. 2 US commander in Iraq said on Tuesday that Iran is still training, funding and arming Shiite extremists in Iraq, with the aim of keeping a weak government in Baghdad.
"I think we have to keep the pressure on them," said Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, who until recently was second in command in Iraq in charge of day-to-day military operations.
"What they ought to stop doing is training surrogates, funding surrogates and supplying weapons to them, which they are still doing today," he told reporters.
Odierno's comments one day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq during the first visit ever to Iraq by an Iranian president.
US lawmakers denounced the Iranian's president's visit.
However, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon, said the visit was an opportunity for Iraqi leaders to press Ahmadinejad to stop the arms flow.
"This is a venue in which we might be able to move some kind of a dialogue forward to get them to be more cooperative and helpful in this area," Fallon said.
"The levels of lethal assistance into Iraq [are] difficult for us to pinpoint but there certainly has been a diminution of activity in the last several months, particularly with regard to these IEDs, explosively formed penetrators," he said.
"How much of this is directly the result of decisions made in Tehran, how much is due to our own people and their good work in the field, I don't know," he said.
"But this kind of trend is something we want to see accelerated and moved on," he said.
Odierno acknowledged that Iraq needed good relations with Iran, but questioned whether Iran is being "helpful," citing its continued support for Shiite extremists.
He alluded to a boast on Monday by Ahmadinejad that he was able to visit Iraq openly, unlike other foreign leaders who made unannounced visits that lasted just a few hours.
"My comment is I'm not surprised. Because over the last 12 months whenever a visitor would come from the United States, we needed to foil a rocket attack, Odierno said.
"Guess what? That is because it was being done by an Iranian surrogate," he said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS