check it out:
At a news conference on Wednesday meant to clarify details of the skirmishes, which left at least 250 militants dead, Iraqi officials declared that Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri, identified as the leader of the militia, was actually a Sunni militant who had been able to take control of the militia group by masquerading as a Shiite. Gen. Qais Hamza al-Mamouri, chief of police for Babil Province, said that while Mr. Basri led a Shiite splinter group known as the “Soldiers of Heaven,” he was in fact an impostor from Zubair, a Sunni stronghold on the southwestern edge of Basra. He said the man’s real name was Ahmed Ismail Katte.
actually, it seems like no one has any clue who exactly these "soldiers of heaven" are. so instead, he have a classic pile-on, where everyone is blaming their favorite evildoer, giving us a contradictory hodge-podge alleged culprits:
Some officials have said that Mr. Basri’s group was financed by Shiite Iran, yet the claims on Wednesday hinted at links to Al Qaeda, which is Sunni. Shiite politicians have also said that the group was infiltrated by former intelligence officers of Saddam Hussein. Zubair has been considered a center for loyalists and spies from the old government, which was dominated by Sunnis.
isn't it strange how this group was totally unknown to both the u.s. government and malicki government just one week ago, and yet every single group that the u.s. government doesn't like knew enough about them to infiltrate the group? so either reports of their links are, ahem, a bit exaggerated, or the u.s. just had an intelligence failure of a massive scale in iraq. personally, i'm leaning towards the former option. but massive fuck-ups (intelligence or otherwise) should never be ruled out.
