We Don't Like The Way Your Nine Is Looking At Us

Oh, it's on now Abahmazza...Abinozorin...Abizaribad...oh, heck, Evil Arab Guy. Well, OK, technically, Evil Persian Guy, but who's counting. Anyway, you've got your big brown bahookey in a sling now, boy because WE'VE GOT THE SERIAL NUMBERS!!!1!!

In a news briefing held under strict security in the lobby of the local Wendy's, officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades, and several Frostys with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories. When asked why the Iranians would be stupid enough to put traceable serial numbers on weapons they intended to sneak into Iraq and use against American forces, the official said he wasn't sure. "But look at that seven. Is that a threatening seven, or what? That's an Islamic fundamentalist anti-American seven if I've ever seen one."

The officials also asserted that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an wild guess based on general orders from the president. That guess, and the anonymity of the officials who made it, seemed likely to generate skepticism among those suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to find a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and perhaps even trying to bamboozle the American people into a war with Iran.

When pressed on the credentials and expertise of those making these guesses, administration officials made reference to the team that put together Secretary Powell' s UN presentation and the special Office of Faith Based Foreign Policy.

The officials were repeatedly pressed on why they insisted on anonymity in such an important matter. A senior United States military official gave a partial answer, saying that without anonymity, Captain Tuttle a senior Defense Department analyst who participated in the briefing could not have contributed.

“The reason we’re talking about this right now is the vast increase in the number of E.F.P.s being found,” one official said. American-led forces in Iraq, the official said, “are not trying to hype this up to be more than it is. Of course the rest of us are milking it for all it's worth.”

The officials said the E.F.P. weapons arrived in Iraq in the form of what they described as a “kit” containing high-grade metals and highly machined parts. Our intelligence points to a factory in some place called Revell, but we haven't located that area precisely yet.

Officials from the Faith Based Foreign Policy Office asserted without specific evidence that the Iranian security apparatus, called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force controlled delivery of the materials to Iraq. And in a further completely unsubstatiated wild guess, the officials asserted that the Quds Force could be involved only with Iranian government complicity. "At least that's vice president Cheney's opinion," one official told reporters. "You want to tell him different?"

The precise machining of E.F.P. components, the officials said, also links the weapons to Iran. “We have no evidence that this has ever been done in Iraq,” the senior military official said. "And since Iran is the only country in the area that hates us, it has to be them," he added.