{"id":34471,"date":"2020-01-05T08:54:50","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T16:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=34471"},"modified":"2020-01-06T10:07:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-06T18:07:00","slug":"did-iran-kill-600-americans-in-iraq-war-ii-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/05\/did-iran-kill-600-americans-in-iraq-war-ii-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Iran Kill 600 Americans in Iraq War II? No."},"content":{"rendered":"

Due to the current ubiquity<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

When Petraeus attacked them they responded, not the other way around. (Danny Sjursen was in East Baghdad at that time and confirmed this<\/a> to me in an interview just a few weeks ago.)<\/p>\n

And when they did respond with copper-core EFP bombs, they were made in Iraq by Iraqis<\/em><\/a>. Despite all of Michael Gordon’s claims in the New York Times<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

Here are a couple of blogs full of links from back then:<\/p>\n

America Switches Sides in Iraq War<\/a><\/p>\n

Is Iran Supplying IEDs to the Sunni Insurgency?<\/a><\/p>\n

Washington Post<\/em> Liars Caught!<\/a><\/p>\n

EFPs Are Made in Iraq By Iraqis<\/a><\/p>\n

And here are a few more articles:<\/p>\n

Andrew Cockburn in the L.A. Times<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Wired<\/a><\/p>\n

Surprising honesty in the lying New York Times<\/em> for once<\/a><\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/p>\n

Phil Giraldi<\/a>, another<\/a><\/p>\n

And of course, many, many great pieces<\/a> by the heroic Gareth Porter.<\/p>\n

Okay. So there you have it.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> 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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,32,3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-34471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iran","category-iraq","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34471"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34481,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34471\/revisions\/34481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34471"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=34471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}