Freeing the last group of hostages cost us $1.7 billion and assorted concessions. I wonder how much this bunch will cost us.
The three Americans appear to have been seized by Shiite militiamen in the Dora neighborhood in southern Baghdad, the police colonel said. The area from which they were taken is controlled by Shiite militias, including Iran-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, he said.
I've written about the League and Obama's backing for it before. It's an Iranian proxy. Kidnapping Americans is what it does.
Staff Sgt. Ahmed Altaie was the last American soldier to come home from Iraq. His body was turned over by Asaib Ahl al-Haq or The League of the Righteous; a Shiite terrorist group funded and trained by Iran.
Altaie had been kidnapped, held for ransom and then killed.
It was not Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s only kidnapping and murder of an American soldier. A year after Altaie’s kidnapping, its terrorists disguised themselves as Americans and abducted five of our soldiers in Karbala. The soldiers were murdered by their Shiite captors after sustained pursuit by American forces made them realize that they wouldn’t be able to escape with their hostages.
Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s obsession with American hostages was a typically Iranian fixation. Iran’s leaders see the roots of their international influence in the Iran hostage crisis. Its terrorist groups in Lebanon had abducted and horrifically tortured Colonel William R. Higgins and William Francis Buckley.
Higgins had been skinned alive.
Most Americans have never heard of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, sometimes referred to as the Khazali Network after its leader, even though it has claimed credit for over 6,000 attacks on Americans.
Behind them is the IRGC, which kidnapped and then freed the American sailors after ritually humiliating them. The situation appears to have been a classic setup.
The colonel said the group had been invited to the home of their Iraqi interpreter. But a resident of the apartment building where the Americans were reportedly seized said they were taken from a second-story apartment that he described as a well-known brothel.
This is what is known as a setup. One of the abductees is a woman. She wasn't likely visiting a brothel, but this was a good way to set up an abduction. Also the League considers a whole range of places to be brothels, including shelters for battered women. The media knows this. It could easily mention it. But it's choosing to carry water for Obama and his Iranian terrorist pals instead by making the hostages look bad so that Obama looks good.
Obama effectively let Iran and its militias take control of Baghdad. Even though American air power helped stop ISIS from advancing further and has acted as air support for the Shiite militias, Iran's Shiite terror militias are still bent on attacking America.