US Military Exaggerated Deaths from Shiite Militias;
EFPs used by Sunnis in Sunni Areas;
No significant Drop in Casualties with Security Plan
Sunni Arab guerrillas account for 90 percent of deadly attacks on US troops in Iraq, concludes Drew Brown of the McClatchy wire service. He shows, as well, that explosively formed projectiles were used with deadly effect against US Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams tanks in al-Anbar Province, Taji, Muqdadiya, and West Baghad, all Sunni areas. This datum proves that Sunnis and not just Shiites are deploying EFPs and it shows that Sunni Arabs have workshops where they can mill the components. The US military had seemed to be arguing bass ackwards that all EFPs came from Iran. Iran is not giving them to Sunnis in Ramadi, that is ridiculous. The key components can be fashioned by people who have experience making explosives for use in the petroleum industry, which is a lot of Sunni Arab Iraqis.
The recently discovered cache of weapons in Diyala province should be viewed with great suspicion. The Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK base is in Camp Ashrafiya in that province, and they have been boasting in Washington of having had a great success in convincing the US military that the Explosively Formed Projectiles came from Iran. Yeah, and they are likely the ones importing them. MEK is a manipulative cult that wants to get up a war between the US and Iran, and is linked in with the Neoconservatives.
AP reports that guerrillas detonated a bomb in the Bayaa market area, killing 10 and wounding 20. In Baghdad, 10 bodies were found on Wednesday, down from 30 on Tuesday. A mortar attack on another Iraqi neighborhood killed 9, and there was scattered violence in other cities. In Basra, a British soldier was killed by Shiite militiamen.
An Iraqi official leaked government figures on Iraqi civilians killed in January and February, and tried to spin the US press by saying that there had been a significant drop in such casualties.
But this official reported deaths for 1-31 January and compared them for the toll 1-27 February. Uh, the per day total isn't that different, it is just that February is a short month and the figures were given through the day before it ended!
1990 divided by 31 is 64 per day.
1646 divided by 27 is 61 per day.
While human life is precious and a drop of 3 a day is welcome, I wouldn't call that drop significant.
Moreover, the Iraqi government health ministry grossly undercounts the true civilian death toll from violence; UN numbers are higher.
The new Iraqi oil bill will have to get past Sunni and Sadrist parliamentarians, as well as get past the oil workers' union. It has been roundly denounced by these political forces who fear it will give away much of the country's wealth for the next 20 years and will reinforce sectarian divisions.
Karen Kwiatkowsky on the Bush administration's aspirations for long-term military bases in Iraq. You can't always get what you want (bases in Iraq), but you can get what you need (bases in Kuwait and Qatar).
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/01/2007 06:31:00 AM
7 Comments:
Glad to see Drew Brown is doing real journalism and not just acting as a stenographer. McClatchy seems to do a good job. I'm not sure which papers carry their service but it seems that many of the really researched pieces carry the McClatchy name.
We should understand that the USA is bombarded daily by lies and propaganda from the Bush Administration and the military. Once upon a time Americans generally believed that this was in violation of our constitution and that it was the corner-stone of totalitarianism. Both are true.- Joehg
That article does not state that EFPs were used in Anbar and other Sunni areas, merely that there were deadly attacks against Abrams and Bradleys in Anbar. You can cause fatalities in these vehicles using a big enough conventional explosive. Also, significant numbers of Shia live in or around Muqdadiya and in west Baghdad -- indeed, the pattern of IED use in west Baghdad is according to local soldiers associated with Shula/northern Ghazaliya, which are Mahdi Army stomping grounds, and unheard of in exclusively Sunni south Ghazaliya.
In addition, weapons migrate, particularly weapons in high demand like EFPs. It would be perfectly reasonable for an EFP to be given to a client group within the Mahdi Army, then passed to a middleman, then sold to a Sunni group.
As far as I know, nothing the US military has said contradicts their initial claim that EFPs have been used exclusively in Shia areas, which supports the manufacture of the copper plates in Iran. This is not to say that there is direct proof of such manufacture, merely that the military has said anything to disprove it.
This is highly speculative and perhaps improbable but what if, either by design or default, the Surge both in Iraq and in the Gulf, were aimed at Iran but aimed at a resolution with Iran? More to the point, perhaps the end game might be to solidify and stabilize the pro-Iranian Shia/Kurd government by incorporating the Shia militias either formally or informally into the security forces by eliminating rogue elements. Perhaps also a change in government with the installation of a more autocratic Shiite PM. The Surge against Iran i this scenario complements the one in Iraq as the stick to the carrot of Iranian participation in a concert of powers which guarantees the nation.
The Sunni resistance then is to be seen as the only real target of the Surge. With the oil law enacted and the resistance at least contained if not set on its heels with extreme elements neutralized might then be more willing to acknowledge the stablized and inevitable new order in the Gulf.
I don't see this as likely,but neither is it impossible
The first order of business every morning after coffee's on is a visit to IC. The second - antiwar.com.
Today, IPS's Jim Lobe has a piece Is Bush Backing Into Baker Hamilton After All?
food for thought
Iran is arming Mahdi Army groups? Wouldn't this contrary to the Iranians' interests given that al Sadr is very much a nationalist?
At any rate, some moments on NPR during lunch reveals that Iran is very worried about being sanctioned and cut off from the world and the average Iranian is fed up with the "loose mouth" of their president.
All of this means that the US attempts to be good cop and bad cop are working, with the rhetoric driving the Iranians towards internal regime change and forgoing their nuclear ambitions.
This contradicts what I am reading at other sources so wildly that I cannot make heads nor tails of it.
O yeh, and the NPR parting shot was that Hersh is an alarmist.
"US Military Exaggerated Deaths from Shiite Militias"
Kwiatkowski has said before and did again in the article referenced that the OSP would dictate talking points to be inserted into intelligence briefings verbatim." Documents sent up with variations were rejected.
Are there political appointees still in the Pentagon who dictate talking points to be inserted verbatim into current news releases? Who are they? When will they go on trial?
This is hideous, this practice among Neocons of demanding that only their propaganda be distributed through our government's outlets, but then these same Neocons disappear into the woodwork and place all the blame upon their instruments, i.e. the loyal soldiers such as Kwiatkowski.
This really is disgusting, and it is so typical of everything done by the Neocons/American Enterprise Institute/Project for a New American Century/The Weekly Standard et al.
Why do we tolerate these people?
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