Pat Dollard

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NY Post:

May 14, 2008 — LIBERALS continue to slam Sen. John McCain for his supposed misstatement, back in March, that Iran is aiding al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence of just that.

This week, Robert Naiman at the Huffington Post accused McCain of making this “totally unsubstantiated allegation.” In recent weeks, McCain’s been attacked on the same ground time and again – in the pages of the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The New Republic and the British Guardian, to name a few.

McCain retracted the claim before the end of the press conference where he made it – which has lead the anti-conservative Media Matters for America to describe it as an “admittedly false claim.”

In fact, McCain was right the first time. Iran has helped al Qaeda, inside and outside Iraq, considerably – and still does.

Indeed, a source that Democrats generally deem unimpeachable, the 9/11 Commission, pointed to the al-Qaeda/Iran connection as dating back to at least ’92. That’s when Iranian representatives met with al Qaeda leaders in Sudan and agreed to help with training – later provided by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon to an unknown number of the terrorists.

And when al Qaeda relocated to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, Iran provided transit for many of the group’s operatives – including, the commission believed, eight to 10 of the 9/11 hijackers.

What of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq? The last year or so has furnished much evidence of systematic and continuous Iranian support:

January 2007: US forces in Iraq captured members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as well as documents indicating that the Guard was collaborating with al Qaeda inside Iraq.

March 2007: Kurdish forces in northern Iraq repelled the twelfth incursion from Iranian territory that year by an al Qaeda affiliate, Ansar-al-Islam.

April 2007: US forces operating against al Qaeda in Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad found substantial amounts of Iranian-made weaponry.