Due to the current ubiquity of claims that Iran killed 600 Americans in Iraq War II, I figured it might be worth bringing up the fact that that is a complete and damnable lie.
In the case of Petraeus’s surge against Sadrist forces in Sadr City and Najaf in 2007 and 2008, Sadr was the least Iranian-loyal of all the major Shi’ite factions. The U.S.’s favorites from Dawa and SCIRI were also Iran’s favorites. Sadr wanted the U.S. and Iran both out. (At a couple of points the U.S. chased Sadr into Iran, but that was a self-fulfilling blunder, not proof they were right about him.)
When Petraeus attacked them they responded, not the other way around. (Danny Sjursen was in East Baghdad at that time and confirmed this to me in an interview just a few weeks ago.)
And when they did respond with copper-core EFP bombs, they were made in Iraq by Iraqis. Despite all of Michael Gordon’s claims in the New York Times back then, and all the claims since, no one has ever demonstrated that these bombs came from Iran at all, much less directly from the Qods force.
Here are a couple of blogs full of links from back then:
America Switches Sides in Iraq War
Is Iran Supplying IEDs to the Sunni Insurgency?
EFPs Are Made in Iraq By Iraqis
And here are a few more articles:
Andrew Cockburn in the L.A. Times
Surprising honesty in the lying New York Times for once
And of course, many, many great pieces by the heroic Gareth Porter.
Okay. So there you have it.
Update: Former Marine Corps Captain Matthew Hoh writes: “Yes the EFPs were all made in Iraq, in workshops by Iraqis. I was at JIEDDO (joint IED defeat organization) in 2008. … I can confirm the intelligence on all that.”
