"A previously undisclosed US Army investigation into an audacious January attack in Karbala that killed five US soldiers concludes that Iraqi police working alongside American troops colluded with insurgents", the July 12 USA Today reported.
The Iraqi guerrilla attack on the night of January 28, the paper reported, "stunned US officials with its planning and sophistication. A column of SUVs filled with gunmen who posed as an American security team passed through Iraqi police checkpoints at a provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city.
"Within a few minutes, the attackers killed one American, wounded three and abducted four. The captives were later found shot to death; the gunmen escaped.
"The US 'defense hinged on a level of trust that ... early warning and defense would be provided by the Karbala Iraqi police. This trust was violated', the report dated Feb. 27 says."
USA Today reported that the US Army's investigative file on the Karbala assault had been made available to the paper "and authenticated" by the US Army.
Among details included in the file were that US-trained Iraqi police vanished from the compound before the attack, that the attackers knew exactly where to find and abduct US officers, and that the attackers had evidently been briefed on how the US forces would defend themselves.
Some US soldiers who survived the assault told investigators they believed some of the attackers were allowed to blend in among Iraqi police inside the compound in the hours before the attack.
USA Today added that US soldiers also told investigators they saw an Iraqi police commander in the compound talking on a mobile phone and laughing as the assault ended.
Earlier this month, US Army spokesperson General Kevin Bergner publicly alleged that the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards, had planned and directed the Karbala assault.
Bergner claimed that an alleged senior Lebanese Hezbollah activist, Ali Mussa Dakdouk, was captured on March 20 in southern Iraq. Dakdouk, Bergner said, had been sent to Iraq "as a surrogate for the Iranian Quds Force" to finance and arm Iraqi Shiite militia cells to carry out attacks on US troops.
The goal, Bergner said, was to organize Shiite militants "in ways that mirrored how Hezbollah was organised in Lebanon".
Bergner claimed Dakdouk was a liaison between the Quds Force and a breakaway Shiite group led by Qais al Khazaali, a former spokesperson for Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr.
Khazaali's group, Bergner said, had carried out the January attack against US troops in Karbala a provincial government building.
Hezbollah has denied any activities in Iraq, saying it operates only in Lebanon. Bergner made no mention of the role of local Iraqi police in the Karbala attack.
Cooperation between Iraqi local police and anti-occupation guerrillas — or as the Pentagon puts it, "infiltration" of the police by "sectarian militias" — "remains a significant problem", according to the Pentagon's last quarterly Iraq war report to the US Congress, issued in early June.
Given that public opinion surveys have found that at least 60% of Iraqis approve of attacks on the US occupation forces, such cooperation is hardly surprising.
"There's no way you can fight this kind of war without significant problems with infiltrators. It was a major problem in Vietnam. It was a major problem in Korea. It's a problem in any kind of campaign where you are working closely with local forces", Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq war analyst with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told USA Today.
Confirming Cordesman's assessment, Reuters reported on July 13 that "US soldiers killed at least six Iraqi policemen and seven suspected militants during a dawn raid in east Baghdad on Friday to arrest an Iraqi police lieutenant accused of militant links ... A US warplane made an air strike during the fighting after US soldiers were attacked with 'heavy and accurate' gunfire from an Iraqi police checkpoint, rooftops and a nearby church, the US military said in a statement".
Marine General Peter Pace, head of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Washington that when US troops "went to arrest this lieutenant, some of the police who were with him began firing on our folks".
Pace also said that the number of Iraqi Army battalions that are capable of operating against anti-occupation guerrilla fighters independently of US forces had dropped from 10 to six over the last two months. There are a total of 103 combat battalions — each with up to 700 soldiers — in the US recruited and trained Iraqi Army.
Prior to US President George Bush's troop "surge" strategy — which has boosted the size of the US occupation force from 138,000 to 160,000 troops since January — Washington's puppet Iraqi Army was described by Bush as the key to any reduction in US forces in Iraq.
Associated Press reported on July 17 that the Joint Chiefs are looking at ways to have "an even bigger troop buildup" if the current "troop surge strategy needs a further boost".
The current US troop "surge" has only been possible through extending soldiers tours in Iraq from 12 to 15 months. AP reported that in a July 16 interview with the wire service in Baghdad, Pace acknowledged that US forces' multiple and extended tours in Iraq was undermining support for the war among military families.