A Terrorist Goes Free

A Terrorist Goes Free: "On the evening of January 20, 2007, U.S. soldiers serving in the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, Iraq, were attacked by an Iranian-backed terrorist squad. The raid was carried out with precision. At 5 p.m., a convoy of five vehicles made to look just like SUVs used by U.S. contractors entered the Karbala base. The terrorists, estimated at 12 men, opened fire with assault rifles and threw hand grenades. One U.S. soldier was killed in the firefight and four others were captured. The attackers fled the base but were tracked by Iraqi police after they passed through a checkpoint.

With the police in hot pursuit, the kidnappers decided to execute the hostages and abandon their vehicles. Three of the U.S. soldiers were found dead in neighboring Babil; the fourth was wounded and died before he could receive proper treatment.

The U.S. military suspected that the Karbala assault was no average attack. The raid had required specific intelligence, intensive training, and major resources (weapons, vehicles, uniforms, identification papers, radios, etc.). “The precision of the attack, the equipment used and the possible use of explosives to destroy the military vehicles in the compound suggests that the attack was well rehearsed prior to execution,” Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl, the spokesman for Multinational Division Baghdad, said immediately after the attack. “The attackers went straight to where Americans were located in the provincial government facility, bypassing the Iraqi police in the compound.”

The Pentagon also suspected Iran was ultimately responsible for the attack. The Quds Force, Iran’s special operations branch which has founded and supported terror groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Jihad and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, was a natural suspect. The Quds Force’s specialty is proxy warfare.

There was a good reason the attack was so meticulously planned. A terrorist named Qais al-Khazali was behind it. A cleric and adviser to Moktada al-Sadr, Khazali ran the Khazali Network, an Iranian-baked radical Shia terror group later known as the Asaib al Haq or the League of the Righteous."