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.”
Thank you for writing this!!!
Great information to have at hand. Mark it “saved.”
So what if they did? We had no right to be there, whatsoever. Period. None, No, Not at all, Nothing, NADA, Zip Zilch ZERO. They had every right to kill as many invaders as they could. Don’t like it? Stop invading and massacring people just to steal.
Were the situation reversed, Americans would be justified in killing every single Iraqi and Iranian troop possible. And so, they are justified. GET. OUT.
Honestly what are the warmongers trying to say? If the situation were reversed, we would kill every Iranian and Iraqi troop in the country. Who the hell is on the wrong side of the world?
The complaint is insincere on the surface. The US is not alone in coming to terms with and allying with people who killed its soldiers in previous conflicts. Even during the Iraq war and Syrian and Libyan mayhem the US subsidized and made alliances of convenience with people who had killed Americans.
More:
“(Maj General Kevin) Bergner cited 20,000 “items of ammunition, explosives and weapons”… an additional Karbala cache containing 570 explosive devices, nine mortars, four anti-aircraft missiles, and 45 RPGs; and in the southern city of Basra alone, 39 mortar tubes, 1,800 mortars and artillery rounds, 600 rockets, and 387 roadside bombs. […]
U.S. military officials (in Iraq) and at the Pentagon were saying that caches found in Basra in particular had revealed Iranian-made arms… They say the majority of rockets being fired at U.S. bases, including Baghdad’s Green Zone, are launched by militiamen receiving training, arms and other aid from Iran […]
A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists… was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding”
https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/05/iraq-the-elusiv.html
Perhaps the first-ever anti-war internet debates were held on SiliconInvestor.com, an international stock investment forum that also offered Facebook-like posting rooms. In early 2003, posting under the name PartyTime I created two sites that featured tens of thousands of messages debating the Iraq War. The sites also include many references that were updated throughout the war Iraq War period. The fist site was called: DON’T START THE WAR and the follow-up site was called Stop The War! These two sites were very likely the very first internet anti-war debates.