Gordon Buries the Lede

In the New York Times this morning is Part 47 of Michael Gordon's ongoing series devoted to uncritically passing along unsubstantiated allegations against Iran. As usual, Iran is up to no good (say military sources). The allegation is a familiar one by now:

Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military.

The devices, known as explosively formed penetrators, were used to carry out 99 attacks last month and accounted for a third of the combat deaths suffered by the American-led forces, according to American military officials.

As with previous versions of this story, Gordon doesn't do nearly enough pushing back. How, for instance, can we be sure that these devices are being supplied by Iran when, as has been reported elsewhere, we've actually found factories in Iraq that are making them? And even if these devices are being supplied by Iranians, what reason is there to believe the Iranian government is responsible, as opposed to regular Iranians trying to make a buck or support their fellow Shia in Iraq? To date, the U.S. military hasn't done much of anything to substantiate these allegations publicly or to address obvious questions, and until they do, their claims deserve far less deference than Gordon is giving them.

Gordon is more precise is one key respect, though. In previous versions of this story, the military was intentionally vague about whom the Iranians were supposedly supplying these bombs to. Was the military claiming that Iran was arming Sunni insurgents? It was never clear. Military briefers would cryptically refer to "extremist groups" or "militants" in an obvious attempt to imply, without actually saying so, that Iran was somehow in league with al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents groups, who were responsible for the vast majority of American deaths. This never made any sense, but to the extent people believed it, it helped shore up the narrative the administration wanted to tell.

In this morning's piece, however, Gordon is quite clear:

Such bombs, which fire a semi-molten copper slug that can penetrate the armor on a Humvee and are among the deadliest weapons used against American forces, are used almost exclusively by Shiite militants.

This makes sense, of course. It would be strange indeed if Iran was supplying Sunni militants. But this is also a key fact, one that, at least to my knowledge, has never been stated quite so clearly. Remember, many of these Shiite militants are allied with the Malaki government, which we are fighting to protect. Most of our military efforts in Iraq have been directed at fighting Sunni insurgents. Gordon reports:

While the group [al Qaeda] is seen by the American military as the most serious near-term threat, there are other signs that Shiite militias remain active. According to General Odierno, the day-to-day commander of American troops in Iraq, Shiite militants carried out 73 percent of the attacks that killed or wounded American troops in Baghdad in July.

That's a staggering number, if true. The administration would have us believe, particularly of late, that our primary enemy in Iraq is al Qaeda of Mesopotamia. But if 73% of attacks in Baghdad in July were carried out by Shiite militants, who are certainly not al Qaeda fighters, then that's a major story, one that underscores just how unmanageable the situation in Iraq is.

We are simultaneously under attack by Sunni and Shiite militants, who, when not attacking us, are attacking each other. Both Sunni and Shiite militant groups are (apparently) being supplied, whether with official blessing or not, by sympathetic parties in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Some have suggested that we are in a proxy war with Iran. I think it's far more accurate to say that we are stuck in the middle of a proxy war between Iran and its Sunni rivals.

Meanwhile, in order to root out al Qaeda, we've started arming the very Sunni militants we were previously fighting. And we continue to support a Shiite-led central government that is openly allied with Shiite militias who, when not ethnically cleansing Sunnis in the Baghdad area, are apparently blowing up our troops with Iranian-made bombs. There's a word for this type of situation and it rhymes with fustercluck.