(H/T – JammieWearingFool)
File this one under “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Bill Gertz’s current “Inside the Ring” feature from The Washington Times provides some illuminating reading:
New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran….
Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms.
The Washington Times reported June 5 that Chinese-made HN-5 anti-aircraft missiles were being used by the Taliban.According to the officials, the Iranians, in buying the arms, asked Chinese state-run suppliers to expedite the transfers and to remove serial numbers to prevent tracing their origin. China, for its part, offered to transport the weapons in order to prevent the weapons from being interdicted.
As if that weren’t enough, Iran has added ChiCom-made high-speed catamarans with ChiCom optically-guided anti-ship missiles to its fleet, presumably in preparation for closing the Strait of Hormuz, the major chokepoint of oil coming out of the Middle East.
Not-so-suprisingly, the Bush White House is trying to minimize Red China’s involvement in all this. After all, they did nothing when the ChiComs snatched that EP-3 back in 2001.
Iran has added ChiCom-made high-speed catamarans with ChiCom optically-guided anti-ship missiles to its fleet
That’s the reason our destroyers have chain-guns.