Opinion (Andrew Stephen): This, Mr President, is how wars start

If only they could get their stories straight. We are told on Sunday by senior US military officials in Baghdad that deadly new "explosively formed penetrators", which have killed 170 US soldiers in Iraq, are "coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government". Fast-forward a day, cross the world to Australia, and we find General Peter Pace - chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who should know a thing or two about what is going on - telling us on a visit to Canberra that "what I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this".

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