Reading Juan Cole this AM I came to the his extract from the Reuters news of violence in Iraq and this entry
BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed one suspected insurgent and arrested four members of an Iranian-backed special groups cell during an operation in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
I assume that the formulation "Iranian-backed special groups cell" came directly from a U.S. military news release and I wondered where this came from. My understanding has been that "eastern Baghdad" aka Sadr City is in general the stronghold of the Mahdi Army and civilian branches of the Sadr movement.
I did a few searches on that language and found that the whole "special groups" was a term that had been injected into the discussion of Shia violence in Iraq last July by Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, in a news conferenceat the "Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad" in early July.
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