August 2006: US Military Ordered to Find and Detain Iranians in Iraq

The White House orders the military to capture and detain as many Iranians as possible in Iraq. The Bush administration wants to build a case that Iran is fueling the violence. According to a former senior intelligence official interviewed by reporter Seymour Hersh, US forces have had as many as “five hundred locked up at one time.” But many of these included Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who “get scooped up and released in a short time.” [New Yorker, 3/5/2007]