PARIAH JOHN: TRAITOR IN VIETNAM, NOW TRAITOR IN IRAQ

Twelve men disguised as U.S. soldiers entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala in southern Iraq on January 20, where members of a U.S. civil affairs unit were conducting a meeting with local officials concerning security for the upcoming Ashura festival. 

One U.S. soldier was killed on the spot.  Four others were led away in handcuffs.

The attackers were well trained and had specific intelligence as to the location of the meeting within the compound and who would be in attendance.  They spoke English with no discernible accent.

"The precision of the attack, the equipment used and the possible use of explosives to destroy military vehicles in the compound suggests the attack was well rehearsed prior to execution," said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for Multinational Division Iraq.

The raid was too sophisticated to have been pulled off by the Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi army, a military intelligence source told Web logger Bill Roggio.  AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) may have the sophistication to pull off such a raid, but it would have been difficult for Sunni extremists to mount such an operation in the overwhelmingly Shia south.

The raid resembled the one Hezbollah mounted against Israeli troops last summer which triggered the Israel-Lebanon war.  This is one of several reasons why many in military intelligence think the raid was conducted by the Quds (Jerusalem) Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The raid could have been in response to raids the U.S. military conducted in December, when it nabbed two Iranian intelligence officers in Baghdad, and in Irbil Jan. 11, when five Iranians — one, apparently, the operations director of the Quds force — were detained.

The five Iranians captured in the Irbil raid are still in U.S. custody.  The captured soldiers could have been used as bargaining chips for their return.

The attackers appeared to be making a run for the Iranian border.  The bodies of the four Americans taken prisoner were found near Mahawil, about 27 miles due east of Karbala.  The soldiers were killed after Iraqi police, who became suspicious at a check point, began trailing the attackers.

"Abducting Americans and transferring them to any desired location is easier than buying a bunch of Chinese crap," wrote Reza Zaker in Sobh-e Sadegh, the journal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The U.S. is expected to release intelligence outlining Iranian support for insurgents in Iraq.  Iran has supplied sophisticated bombs to both Sunni and Shia extremists, U.S. officials say.

Members of Shia death squads also are reported to be seeking sanctuary in Iran before the surge in U.S. troops in Baghdad that President Bush has announced gets fully under way.

President Bush's belated decision to permit U.S. troops to kill Iranians who are trying to kill them came shortly after the Karbala attack, which in earlier times would have been recognized by one and all for the act of war that it was.

But as evidence mounted over the weekend of Iranian involvement in the terror in Iraq, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, describing his country as an "international pariah" for fighting it.

Sen. Kerry followed to the podium former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami, whose speech he praised.  Sen. Kerry's remarks were front page news in Iranian newspapers.

In the "War Crimes" museum in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), there is a photo of Sen. Kerry greeting the general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist party.  Perhaps Sen. Kerry is angling for similar recognition in Tehran.

"Like Jimmy Carter, he'll never forgive America for rejecting him, and he'll console himself with the approval of America's enemies," said the Web logger Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit).

When journalists write of a "civil war" in Iraq, they mean mostly to imply that the Sunni-Shia unpleasantness is an Iraqi thing in which we have no business interfering.  But the "civil war" is regional, driven by an aggressive Iranian foreign policy. 

In Lebanon, the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah is trying to topple the democratically elected government.  In the Palestinian territories, members of Fatah and of Hamas are killing each other with great frequency and considerable relish. The Saudis are backing Fatah; the Iranians Hamas.

The Saudis and the smaller Gulf sheikdoms are terrified at the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran, and are trying to acquire a bomb for themselves.

The Iraq war was always about much more than Iraq, as soon may become abundantly clear — maybe even to John Kerry.  But then Pariah John never did have a firm grasp of the obvious.