Big news in Iraq: Three major terror busts

US officials are saying Iran and Syria connections have been ‘exposed.’ Via ABC’s The Blotter:

U.S. forces have arrested the two leaders of the network believed responsible for the brazen raid in Karbala by terrorists disguised as Americans, in which five U.S. soldiers were kidnapped and later killed in January, U.S. military officials said today.

In operations over the past several days in Basra and Hillah, coalition forces captured Qais Khazali, his brother Laith Khazali and several other members of the Khazali network, a splinter faction of the Mahdi army.

Senior U.S. military sources tell ABC News that hard evidence linking the Khazalis to the Karbala raid, including the ID cards of several of the dead American soldiers, was recovered at the scene.

The coalition also found evidence linking the men to Iran and to an arms smuggling operation that included the high impact Explosively Formed Projectiles, or EFPs, according to U.S. officials.

The network’s connection to Iran raises the question of whether the Karbala raid was designed to exchange the captive American soldiers for the Iranian officers arrested by U.S. forces in Irbil in December — a plan that obviously went awry when the getaway vehicles were chased by Iraqi security, and the Americans were shot.

In related war on terror news, arrests have been made in the 7/7 London terror bombings. Andrew Cochran at the Counterterrorism Blog has the details.

While the Democrats have to buy votes in order for them as a ‘unified team’ to show ’support’ for the troops, the world wide war on terror rages on.