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The night Canadian Master
Corporal Darrell Priede of Brantford died in Afghanistan, the Afghan war
took a sudden dangerous new twist.

A stream of secret U.S.
military intelligence reports released this week by the WikiLeaks
website suggests the May 2007 death was the result of a Taliban attack
with a heat-seeking, surface-to-air missile launched from the shoulder.

In all likelihood, the deadly weapon was provided by Iran.

Those two facts alone may be transforming the almost nine-year-old Afghan war.

Iran
has long been suspected of covertly supplying arms to the Taliban, but
the WikiLeaks data dump suggests it could now be almost as crucial to
the Afghan insurgency as Pakistan.

Summaries of classified U.S.
military and diplomatic reports among the documents demonstrate a
growing concern over Iran's influence in Afghanistan and catalogue fears
Iran's Revolutionary Guard is waging a secret campaign to arm, train,
fund and equip the Afghanistan insurgency.

Master Cpl. Priede's death may have been a point of convergence for those fears.

Early
on the evening on May 30, 2007, the Canadian military photographer
accompanied a combined force of British paratroopers and members of the
U.S. 82nd Airborne Division on a night assault on suspected Taliban
positions near the Kajaki dam in Helmand province.

The dam, a
strategic part... >>>