Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-69.57.43.25-20130828001049/@comment-1971498-20140202231330

Except he didn't? This scenario has already played out without any leads going back to Killian and it finished with him being dead in Iron Man 3 when Tony finally got involved. You're going by hypothetical scenarios here that never even happened, I'm simply saying that the terrorists in the prelude comic at least have some connection to AIM, whether ornot that they were the Ten Rings themselves working for AIM (unknowingly) or if it was AIM pretending to be them is simply beside the point. If you read carefully I said that it's also possible that AIM simply fooled the terrorists themselves by making them believe in the Mandarin to act for their cause. Heck, if this isn't connected to AIM, then why was it explicitly showing that the soldiers made the appropriate modifications to allow them to exploit the Iron Patriot suit which Killain very much does in the film? You say that the US and SHIELD could potentially capture one of those "Ten Rings impersonators" except you're forgetting that it's only Rhodes that gets misdirected by Killian's false locations on the Mandarin, by giving him false intel so that he's always the one who's going out alone to take down the Mandarin. Also you're forgetting, the Vice President has Killian covered, why else wasn't the government able to track who implanted the Mandarin's number in US President's cell phone until Tony and Rhodes exposed him themselves?