The Deadly Shiite-Sunni Alliance That Doesn't Exist

According to the RNC fax that went out today and got reprinted by the Associated Press, now the Shiite militias receive training on how to build EFPs from Iran. See, before American military leaders claimed that the EFPs could only be built in Iran, until they found bombmaking factories inside Iraq. So now, they've changed the story to fit the new facts. Subtle.

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell would not say how many militia fighters had been trained in Iran but said that questioning of fighters captured as recently as this month confirmed many had been in Iranian training camps.

"We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them. We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees debriefs," Caldwell said at a weekly briefing.

I don't doubt that some Shiite militia has been trained in Iran; heck, a lot of them, including Sistani, were EXILED in Iran before the war. But here's the thing: we know that the EFPs are mainly being used by SUNNI groups. The vast majority of American troops who have been killed by EFPs were killed by Sunni insurgents. So, the question remains, who's training them? Who's supplying them? And who's manufacturing them? It certainly isn't Iran. It probably is Saudi Arabia. But we can't say that out loud.

Here's some more darling news.

Also Wednesday, Iraqi Cabinet ministers allied to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatened to quit the government to protest the prime minister's lack of support for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal.

Such a pullout by the very bloc that put Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in office could collapse his already perilously weak government. The threat comes two months into a U.S. effort to pacify Baghdad in order to give al-Maliki's government room to function.

Meanwhile, bodies lay scattered across two central Baghdad neighborhoods after a raging battle left 20 suspected insurgents and four Iraqi soldiers dead, and 16 U.S. soldiers wounded, witnesses and officials said.

The fighting Tuesday in Fadhil and Sheik Omar, two Sunni enclaves, was the most intense since a massive push to pacify the capital began two months ago.

This gun battle apparently lasted throughout the day in central Baghdad, where it's so safe you can stroll hand-in-hand with John McCain. By the way, the surge is going so well that 15,000 more National Guard troops are going to be called up, because the numbers have to get larger to really undertake this counterinsurgency strategy. In other words, we were lied to about the eventual size of the escalation, which continues to escalate.

It's just interesting that the US military would try to pin all Iraq's problems on meddling from Iran at this point, when we know this:

An Iranian opposition group based in Iraq, labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, gets protection from the U.S. military despite Iraqi pressure to leave the country.

The U.S. considers the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, a source of valuable intelligence on Iran.

The group also is credited with helping expose Iran's secret nuclear program through spying on Tehran for decades.

Iranian officials tied the MEK to an explosion in February at a girls school in Zahedan, Iran.

We are shielding an Iranian terrorist group responsible for bombings inside their country, while yelling about Iranians responsible for bombings inside Iraq.

Poetic.

UPDATE: Apparently they're now saying that Iran's ACTUALLY arming Sunnis. Too much. They're all swarthy people, right, so who cares if they're mortal enemies with 1400 years of historical feuding? They want to come to our house and kill us!