The Iranians want a civil war. They hope that they can manipulate Sadr and his cohorts and ride Shia fury at Sunni Arabs into controlling Iraq.
But the Shias mostly did not act according to the script. And starting in February 2006, the Iranians decided to take a hand directly in starting a civil war. After the Samarra bombing, Shia attacks suspiciously in areas where Sadr had influence picked up pace tremendously.
Yet despite the increased killings by jihadis and Sadrists, the Shias and Sunni Arabs didn't play their roles. The Shias still held back. We can see this with the surge when killings declined when the Sadrists laid low. And the Sunni Arabs continue to move toward the government and away from resisting the government. Even the recent Samarra Part II bombing didn't ignite passions.
But our enemies have hope. They don't actually need a civil war in Iraq. They just need Americans to believe there is a civil war in Iraq. And they can just make stuff up to do that:
For the second time in less than year, the Associated Press seems to have run a story of a horrific massacre involving 20 or more people, using police officers not assigned to the area as their primary sources. For the second time in less than a year, it appears that there is no physical evidence that so much as a single person has died.
Our military can't confirm that any such incident took place.
And in Sadr City, Sadr's boys are trying to turn a battle they lost into a massacre. Says the enemy:
In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Sheik Salah al-Obaidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr condemned Saturday's raids: "The bombing hurt only innocent civilians."
We describe a battle:
An American military spokesman insisted all of those killed were combatants.
"Everyone who got shot was shooting at U.S. troops at the time," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, the spokesman. "It was an intense firefight."
Unfortunately, Maliki is protesting without waiting to sort this out:
"The Iraqi government totally rejects U.S. military operations... conducted without a pre-approval from the Iraqi military command," al-Maliki said in a statement released by his office. "Anyone who breaches the military command orders will face investigation."
Maliki should worry about meeting legislative benchmarks or our Congress won't authorize future U.S. military operations. And every time people back here believe that innocent civilians are dying in a civil war without understanding the real causes of these deaths, the conviction that we should just let them kill each other increases over here.
But then the jihadis and Sadrists as well as war critics here will finally get an actual civil war in Iraq to match their views.
UPDATE: The "massacre" was a strike against Iran's boys in Iraq.
It's a strange civil war when the Shias who are killing Sunni Arabs are Iranian backed and the Sunni Arabs who are killing Shias are jihadis controlled by al Qaeda. But when you are an American Leftist determined to retreat, you work with the situtation you have and not the situation you wish you had.
UPDATE: And there was no mass beheading. Yet it still contributed to creating the impression that Iraq is in hopeless civil war.
