Posted on 04/24/2008 6:00:37 AM PDT by nuconvert
Groups With Iran's Backing Blamed for Baghdad Attacks
April 24, 2008
New York Times
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.”
His staff said that of 114 rocket and mortar attacks that had hit the Green Zone in the past month, 82 percent were fired from Sadr City, Mr. Sadr’s stronghold in east Baghdad.
Despite the attention paid to the Green Zone, though, far more missiles hit other areas during that period, his staff said, including 292 missiles that struck other American and coalition bases in the capital and 291 that hit Iraqis.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
MSM “duh” of the day alert. Now can we bomb Iran?
The Latest Proof that the Karl Rove Playbook Has Become the MSM’s Bible
Real Clear Politics | April 22nd, 2008 | Arianna Huffington
Posted on 04/22/2008 1:49:18 PM PDT by The_Republican
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2005391/posts
/sarc
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.