In perhaps the boldest and most sophisticated attack in four years of warfare, gunmen speaking English, wearing U.S. military uniforms and carrying American weapons abducted four U.S. soldiers last week at the provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and then shot them to death.
This will have the effect of making US military in Iraq jumpy and maybe suspicious of any soldier they don’t personally know – which no doubt was one of the aims of the attack.
The uniforms and weapons, I suppose, can be stolen easily enough or bought on the black market. That they apparently spoke English well enough to not arouse suspicion is significant.
Global Guerillas has another example of the increasing sophistication of the attacks, a “hook, line, and sinker” ploy that brought down a Blackwater helicopter, with the four crew members then being shot in the head.