Iranian Very Lethal IED’s Used In Iraq By Insurgents

I apologize for this long post, but I want to make sure to get all the information in as well as the photos for you to see.
OK I have a question. ( ??????) Last year this story came out on August 5th, 2005. I did not have a blog then and I saved it. I am posting it now, because of another article that came out today about this.
My quedtion is this……are these the same IED’s …only written about at different times? The stories are very similar in information.
Some Bombs Used in Iraq Are Made in Iran, U.S. Says
August 5,2005
Iran Focus
New York Times

WASHINGTON – Many of the new, more sophisticated roadside bombs used to attack American and government forces in Iraq have been designed in Iran and shipped in from there, United States military and intelligence officials said Friday, raising the prospect of increased foreign help for Iraqi insurgents.
Unlike the improvised explosive devices devised from Iraq’s vast stockpiles of missiles, artillery shells and other arms, the new weapons are specially designed to destroy armored vehicles, military bomb experts say. The bombs feature shaped charges, which penetrate armor by focusing explosive power in a single direction and by firing a metal projectile embedded in the device into the target at high speed. The design is crude but effective if the vehicle’s armor plating is struck at the correct angle, the experts said.
Since they first began appearing about two months ago, some of these devices have been seized, including one large shipment that was captured last week in northeast Iraq coming from Iran. But one senior military officer said “tens” of the devices had been smuggled in and used against allied forces, killing or wounding several Americans throughout Iraq in the past several weeks.
“These are among the most sophisticated and most lethal devices we’ve seen,” said the senior officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate intelligence reports describing the bombs. “It’s very serious.”
Pentagon and intelligence officials say that some shipments of the new explosives have contained both components and fully manufactured devices, and may have been spirited into Iraq along the porous Iranian border by the Iranian-backed, anti-Israeli terrorist group Hezbollah, or by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. American commanders say
“The devices we’re seeing now have been machined,” said a military official who has access to classified reporting on the insurgents’ bomb-making abilities. “There is evidence of some sophistication.”
American officials say they have no evidence that the Iranian government is involved. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the new United States ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, complained publicly this week about the Tehran government’s harmful meddling in Iraqi affairs.

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And now here is the recent story dated March 6th,2006
EXCLUSIVE: Iraq Weapons — Made in Iran?
Intelligence Officials Say Weapons Responsible for Increasing U.S. Deaths in Iraq
ABC News

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.
They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops’ strongest armor.
What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.
“The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production,” says explosives expert Kevin Barry. “So it’s the same make and model.”
U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.
“I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there,” says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. “I think it’s very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops.”
Very Lethal’
U.S. intelligence officials say Iran is using the bombs as a way to drive up U.S. casualties in Iraq but without provoking a direct confrontation.
John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Februrary 2, saying, ”
The U.S. Army has embarked on a crash effort to find ways to stop the bombs, according to an unclassified report issued last month. The devices are easily hidden and detonated by motion detectors — like those used in garden security lights — that cannot be jammed.
When exploded, the copper disc becomes a molten liquid bullet that can penetrate the thickest armor the United States has.
“They penetrate the armor of an M1 Abrams tank,” Clarke says. “They’re shape charges. They go through anything, and they are very lethal.”
There is currently no real defense against the weapons, he says.
“The Pentagon has a major crash study underway to figure out how to stop them,” Clarke says, “but they haven’t figured it out yet.”

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And now here are the photos….. there were no photos with last years story but there are this year.

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Wild Thing’s comment….
Please pray every day for our troops, and every time you think of them during the day as well. Pray for their safety! When you are driving down the road and you feel safe in your vehicle with no bombs going off over your head pray for our troops. When you go in and out of a building and do not have to worry about bombs like they do in Israel, pray for our troops. When you take your children to school and do not have to make sure they know where the exits are to run for cover like they do in Israel, please pray for our troops safety. They have our six, they are fighting the most vile enemy in the world and they make sacrifices every day for all of us.