The Independent on Those Captured British Sailors/Marines

H/T to Meteor Blades at the dailykos for this.

Patrick Cockburn writes at The Independent:

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

That's the first paragraph.

The story has made it all the way to John Nichols's blog at The Nation. I'm not sure what to think as it's also currently the above-the-name link at the Drudgereport.

But whatever.

Here's more from Cockburn:

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

And:

The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking Arbil.

"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran. "The Americans thought he [Jafari] was there," said Mr Hussein.

So these guys were on "an official visit" meeting with the leaders of the regime the US is currently supporting (and can't not support, out of fear it would collapse without that support). Dubya goes in and snatches 'em anyway.

Meteor Blades is very careful to point out some caveats here:

Hussein did not explain how he came by this knowledge. And The Independent apparently did not bother to seek the usual non-denial denial from U.S. authorities. So, some caution, as always, is in order regarding the newspaper’s claim.

Exactly right.