More warmongering against Iran
Remember back in 2002, when the New York Times allowed Judith Miller to print fabrications about Iraq’s WMD capability? They kinda sorta apologized, but never really owned up to the role they played in dragging this country into a disastrous war.

They haven’t learned their lesson. Michael R. Gordon was one of the NYT journalists who aided the Bush administration’s bogus Iraq claims. This article does the same with unsubstantiated claims about Iran being the source of 25 percent of American casualties. As you might expect, the story is rife with unattributed sources—and evidence is thin.

Get this:
“civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies”
“military officials say”
Damn, that’s convincing.

“Other officials believe Iran is using the attacks to send a warning to the United States...”
Ooh, love that construction! Other officials! Like Doug Feith? The assistant sub-under-secretary of the Interior? the guy who answers Karl Rove’s phone?

“An American intelligence assessment described to The New York Times...”
Let’s celebrate passive voice!! I wonder how this unknown personage “described” this intelligence assessment. Did he use sock puppets? Interpretive dance? Smoke signals? Scary drawings on napkins, which was the sum total of the Iraqi WMD program? Kind of like the Hula Hoop schematic from The Hudsucker Proxy?

Oh, and get this:
“Administration officials said they recognized that intelligence failures related to prewar American claims about Iraq’s weapons arsenal could make critics skeptical about the American claims.”

No, really?? Ya think? Maybe they should say something portentous about mushroom clouds and smoking guns. That’ll convince us!

OK, I think I need to light some incense now to try to get rid of the odor of bullshit wafting from the pages of the Grey Lady. Damn, I should use this stuff in my garden. We're talking high-quality nitrogen.

Also as you might expect, Juan Cole tears it up.

“This claim is one hundred percent wrong. Because 25 percent of US troops were not killed fighting Shiites in those three months. Day after day, the casualty reports specify al-Anbar Province or Diyala or Salahuddin or Babil, or Baghdad districts such as al-Dura, Ghaziliyah, Amiriyah, etc.--and the enemy fighting is clearly Sunni Arab guerrillas. And, Iran is not giving high tech weapons to Baathists and Salafi Shiite-killers. It is true that some casualties were in "East Baghdad" and that Baghdad is beginning to rival al-Anbar as a cemetery for US troops.”

It’s Sunni guerrillas who are responsible for the most American casualties, not Shia militias. And think about it. Why the hell would the Iranian government want to arm the same people who are kidnapping, torturing and murdering Shia just for being Shia?

It’s not surprising that some Iranian weaponry is ending up in Iraq. Arms dealers are arms dealers, and they don’t care who finally ends up with their stuff. But why would the Iranian government deliberately provoke the U.S. and try to increase the chaos in Iraq? The religious leaders who really run Iran are trying to get Ahmedinejad to STFU and behave. Do you really think they’re happy that a few Iranian weapons are ending up in Iraq, where they could be used against Shia?

This whole argument about the complicity of the Iranian government is a fine example of one of my favorite logical fallacies: hasty generalization. I’ve heard it’s one of the favorite fallacies of the Bush administration too. /sarcasm

Interestingly, the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, won’t touch the Iran claims with a 10-ft pole. "We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se [specifically], knows about this," he said. "It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

Watch him catch hell from the administration for not going along with their kabuki theatre.

Josh Marshall does a good job of pointing out the inherit inconsistency of warmongering against Iran. He points out that the volume of arms the U.S. is claiming that Iran is selling is not causing the current civil war and attendant chaos. Attacking Iran for their supposed arms sales would cause a regional catastrophe; it would inflame anti-American sentiment that is already at a fever pitch, it would endanger our ground troops in Iraq—but it wouldn’t solve a damn thing.

ETA: I take it all back! It's obvious that Iran is heavily involved in attacks on U.S. troops. There's a Powerpoint presentation! If it's in a Powerpoint presentation, it's got to be true.
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002534.php