Blaming Iran In Iraq

By Cernig

Via IIan Goldenberg, I see that the U.S. military is admitting that the Surge was aimed at the wrong enemy, if it's own statistics are to be believed.

Nearly three-quarters of the attacks that kill or wound American soldiers in Baghdad are carried out by Iranian-backed Shiite groups, the United States military said Wednesday.

Senior officers in the American division that secures the capital said that 73 percent of fatal and other harmful attacks on American troops in the past year were caused by roadside bombs planted by so-called �special groups.�

The American military uses that term to describe groups trained by Iran that fight alongside the Mahdi Army but do not obey the orders of the militia�s figurehead, the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, to observe a cease-fire.  But Col. Allen Batschelet, the Baghdad division�s chief of staff, conceded that there was overlap between the groups.

�These two groups are so amorphous; they go back and forth between one another,� the colonel said at a briefing in Baghdad.

�We see evidence of a guy who might be working very hard inside Jaish al-Mahdi to present himself as a mainstream, kind of compliant person,� he said, using the Arabic name for the Mahdi Army, �yet we have other indicators that will show him kind of working the night job doing special group, criminal kind of stuff.�

Fictional Reporter - "73% of the 698 U.S. dead in the year to the end of April? Really, 509 dead? So why, exactly, was the Surge aimed at Al Qaeda then?"

2nd Fictional Reporter - "73% ? Really? When did the military finally work out there were so many Shiite special groups in Sunni areas?"

The trouble is, there's no reason to believe that statistic.

It's a nonsense figure some guy pulled out of his ass for propaganda purposes and the "and other harmful attacks" is in there to provide plausible deniability of outright lying.

I refer you to iCasualties map of US casualties by province,  which shows that Shiite areas outwith baghdad see very few IED attacks. (Click on the image to see the full-size map.) And to the same websites count of fatalities by IED, which reveals that only 410 U.S. fatalities throughout Iraq during the period were due to IEDs (59%).

The commander in question is talking about Baghdad only, though, for which no-one has ever given public figures breaking down casualties that I'm aware of. Without actual data to back up his figure, it's unprovable - which is probably intentional. However, IED's have always been cited as the primary cause of U.S. casualties throughout Iraq and especially in Sunni areas. There's no reason to suspect, other than Col. Batschelet's say-so, that Baghdad's metrics are substantially different.

But if you're wondering where you've seen that "73% of casualties caused by Shiite militias with links to Iran" figure before - it was trotted out as a figure by Gen. Raymond Odierno as the percentage of all July 2007 attacks that had killed or wounded U.S. forces in Baghdad which he said were attributable to Iran-backed groups - after the U.S. military had spent all of June hunting Al Qaeda IED factories it had previously said were the main cause. How remarkably consistent of those "special forces"....

(Note, post edited to clarify that quoted text was only about casualties in Baghdad.)