Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-69.57.43.25-20130828001049/@comment-1971498-20140203122518

Umm except you fail to realize that there's no proof that the "Mandarin" is anything else but Trevor Slattery or Killian since they're the only ones who use such a name in the MCU, thus making said terrorists connected to AIM by default. Also the War Machine armor was specifically re-touched by AIM in the film which you may have forgotten as it was briefly shown that its conversion into Iron Patriot was done by them. Heck the main reason why the Iron Patriot always shut down every time an Extremis soldier touched him is because AIM built fail-safe so that they could abduct the armor for their use.

While those terrorists' affiliation may be uncertain, they still worked in obtaining informatin for Mandarin, a creation of AIM, so regardless of their identities, they're still connected to them. I don't get what's so hard to understand about this. There's no need for proof when it's clearly there. There's no proof a "real" Mandarin because the true alter ego of the Mandarin is Aldrich Killian. Whether the "Mandarin" seen in the prelude is Trevor who's representing for Killian or Killian himself is beside the point, the fact is, the terrorists were under the impression that they were working for the Mandarin, which is directly created Killian, and that is a fact you simply cannot ignore or dismiss without backing it up with official sources that say otherwise.