Iranian weapons allegedly used against US troops

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BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. will not “walk away” from the challenge of

Iran’s stepped-up arming of Iraqi insurgents who are targeting and

killing American troops as they prepare to leave Iraq, U.S. Defense

Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday.

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Panetta also pointedly pressed Iraqi leaders to appoint a defense

minister, after more than a year of indecision, and to make up

their minds about asking the U.S. to keep a military presence here

beyond December.

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“Damn it, make a decision,” he told a group of soldiers on his

first visit to Iraq as Pentagon chief. He was responding to a

soldier who asked whether Iraqi leaders are ready to properly

govern their country. Panetta said the Iraqi indecision was

frustrating to the American government, but added that political

complications are part of being a democracy.

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Panetta and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin,

expressed worry about increasingly deadly attacks on U.S. troops by

Shiite militias using weapons that Panetta and others assert are

supplied by Iran.

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“We’re very concerned about Iran and the weapons they’re providing

to extremists in Iraq,” Panetta said.

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“We cannot simply stand back and allow this to continue to happen”

he said. “This is not something we’re going to walk away from. It’s

something we’re going to take on head-on.”

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Panetta said Iraq must more aggressively go after the Shiite

militias that are using what he called Iranian-supplied weapons.

And he said the U.S. is determined to act on its own to “go after

those threats” from Iranian weapons.

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“We’re doing that,” he said.

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Asked later in an interview with a group of American reporters what

unilateral action U.S. troops had taken against the Iranian-armed

militias, Austin suggested that the emphasis was on defensive

actions such as patrolling the perimeter of U.S. troop

positions.

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“We’ll do what we need to protect ourselves,” Austin said. Pressed

to say whether Panetta was correct in saying the U.S. was acting

unilaterally against the Iranian problem, he said, “I won’t discuss

our operations.”

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Three rockets fired from a mainly Shiite neighborhood hit Baghdad’s

Green Zone during Panetta’s visit, Iraqi police said. No casualties

were reported.

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Panetta was visiting the U.S. military’s Camp Victory on the

capital’s western outskirts at the time of the attack on the Green

Zone, the heavily secured district in central Baghdad that is home

to the U.S. and other embassies as well as Iraqi government

offices.

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In his pep talk to the troops on the sprawling compound outside of

Baghdad that houses the U.S. military headquarters, Panetta

appeared to slip on the politics of the Iraq war, which was started

by the Bush administration in March 2003 on grounds that then-ruler

Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Some in the Bush

White House also suggested a Saddam link to the Sept. 11, 2001,

terrorist attacks on the U.S. by al-Qaida – a connection that

President Barack Obama and other Democrats have called wrong and

unproved.

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Panetta told the troops he is firmly focused on ensuring that

al-Qaida never again is able to attack the U.S.

homeland.

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“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States

got attacked,” he said.

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Asked later to explain that remark, he said he was not talking

about the rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq but instead the

need to go after al-Qaida in Iraq once it developed a lethal

presence in the country following the invasion. He has said there

are about 1,000 al-Qaida fighters in Iraq. That compares with an

estimated 50-100 in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden’s group was

sheltered by the Taliban until the U.S. invaded

Afghanistan.

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Panetta will also huddle with the top U.S. military and diplomatic

representatives in Baghdad before meeting with Iraqi leaders to

discuss the possibility of keeping some U.S. troops in Iraq beyond

2011. He will also press Iraq for stronger action to stop

stepped-up attacks on U.S. forces.

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Panetta was meeting separately with Austin and with Ambassador

James Jeffrey.

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Later, he was to talk with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and

President Jalal Talabani.

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The Obama administration believes Iraq needs a slimmed-down U.S.

military presence beyond 2011, when virtually all U.S. troops are

scheduled to depart. Many Iraqi leaders agree, but they’ve been

unwilling to make a formal request.

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There are now 46,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

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