The decision comes only months after the Office of Military Commissions started filing charges of murder, terrorism and espionage against Daqduq, marking the Hezbollah terrorist as the first potential defendant without connections to al-Qaeda or the Taliban to be tried before an American military commission.

The Iraqi court’s decision, however, comes as little surprise to the many American intelligence officials and lawmakers who expressed grave concern in December 2011 when, as the remaining American troops exited from Iraq, Daqduq was the last of 1,000 US detainees handed over to the Iraqi government.

That concern was pointedly expressed by Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who said, “Given Iraq’s history of releasing detainees, I expect it is only a matter of time before this terrorist (Daqduq) will be back on the battlefield.”

Those suspicions were heavily fueled by the Iraqi government’s stated promise that Daqduq would only be prosecuted on the single charge of illegalentry into Iraq with a forged passport, a charge which carried a maximum sentence of five years.

However, the Obama administration insisted that it had been assured by the Iraqi government that Daqduq “would be tried for his crimes,” criminality which included murder and terrorism.

Unfortunately, that assurance proved rather shaky in that it rested on an Iraqi promise that an investigative judge would consider the American allegations, a promise that apparently never materialized. As one intelligence officer said, “This is one of many things we just dropped,” adding that Daqduq “will go back to the Iranian terror machine.”

Daqduq’s participation in the Iranian terror machine had begun in 2005 when, as one of Hezbollah’s most experienced covert operatives, he was sentto Iraq to help the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps al-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) arm and train Iraqi Shiites to fight American and coalition forces.

At that time, the IRGC-QF was spending upwards of $3 million every month in an attempt to replicate the Hezbollah militia model by using its terrorist proxy to train small groups of Iraqi Shiites in what were termed “Special Groups.”

To that end, Daqduq, spent his time training the Iraqi Special Groups in Iranian training camps. There, he instructed his terrorist pupils in the use of mortars and rockets; kidnapping operations; and the manufacture and deployment of roadside bombs (IEDS).

In fact, Daqduq was an expert in the use of IEDs, in particular the IRGC-QF-designed Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP), more powerful and deadly than ordinary IEDs. An estimated 10 percent of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003 were victims by EFP.

In addition to his terror training schedule, Daqduq was also regularly sent by his IRGC-QF handlers on operational missions, which included the mission to attack the Provincial Joint Coordination Center (PJCC) in Karbala, Iraq, some 60 miles south of Baghdad.

As part of that operational mission, Daqduq was named chief advisor and liaison between the IRGC-QF and Qais al-Khazali, head of the Special Groups in Iraq and militia commander of Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), the insurgent group charged with carrying out the Karbala raid on January 20, 2007.

In that attack, AAH gunmen riding in armored SUVs, wearing American-looking military uniforms and holding identification cards were waved through a PJCC checkpoint by Iraqi guards. Moments later, they exited the vehicles, throwing grenades and spraying the compound with small arms fire, killing one American soldier and wounding three others.

A united Iraq died a few days after the withdrawal. The only people who still believe in the fiction of a centrally governed Iraq are holding down desks in the State Department. There are several Iraqs now. There is Iran’s Iraq, the one overseen by Tehran’s puppet in Baghdad, Prime Minister Maliki. Then there is Iraqi Kurdistan which stands on the verge of declaring its independence, an act that will touch off a violent territorial dispute accompanied by ethnic cleansing.

Iraqi federalism is only popular among some in the Shiite majority, for whom it means majority rule. Maliki’s warrant for Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and the latter’s subsequent flight and sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan has ended the fiction of joint rule in Iraq. The Kurds have branded Maliki a dictator and are swiftly breaking their remaining ties to Baghdad.

President  Barzani of Iraqi Kurdistan declared that, “Power-sharing and partnership between Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and others is now completely non-existent and has become meaningless” and concluded his speech by hinting at an independence referendum, a move almost certain to touch off a violent conflict, particularly in oil rich Kirkuk.

For now it’s a countdown to the inevitable. Barzani has been conducting a diplomatic tour to line up support for the next phase. As has Tariq al-Hashemi. Facing a Shiite majority and Maliki’s consolidation of power, they need all the domestic and international support that they can get. Western troops have left leaving behind a power vacuum that Iran is swiftly filling up.

Obama’s recent meeting with Barzani was typical of the empty discussions that have taken place since the withdrawal. While Obama urged Barzani to work within the Iraqi Constitution, the United States has made some concessions that pave the way for independence, including issuing visas through the US Consulate in Erbil, allowing Kurds to bypass Baghdad. The underlying message is that while the United States does not officially support Kurdish separatism, it is reducing obstacles to its independence.

The United States and the United Kingdom might be gone, but Barzani has managed to find a new ally in an unlikely place, Istanbul. Turkey has turned to Iraqi Kurds to check growing Iranian influence in Iraq. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and Prime Minister Maliki have exchanged harsh words, with Erdogan criticizing Maliki for sectarian policies and Maliki accusing Turkey of becoming a “hostile state”.

Well, as it turns out, rather amazingly, the Norwegian judiciary has upset Krekar’s plans.

Here’s the story.  Back in June 2010, Krekar – who at the time was facing possible expulsion to Iraq, where he insisted he was in danger of execution –issued the following warning: “My death will cost Norwegian society.  If, for example, Erna Solberg tossing me out of the country leads to my death, she will suffer the same fate.”  Solberg is head of the Norwegian Conservative Party.

So it was that on Monday of last week, to the surprise of many, an Oslo court actually took action against Krekar – not only for his threat against Solberg, but also for similar threats against other, less high-profile individuals.  Sentenced to five years in prison, he was released pending appeal.  His lawyer, Brynjar Meling, admitted that the court’s decision took him and his client aback.  And understandably so – after all, Krekar has been a clear and present danger in Norway for years and yet has been allowed to reside in Oslo, living proof of the fecklessness of European governments in the face of the enemy within.  Why start taking this peril seriously now?

In court last Monday, Krekar insisted, in his defense, that his singling out of Solberg was mere happenstance.  “Solberg was just a name that popped into my head,” he said.  “It’s as if I’m talking about German philosophy and mention Schopenhauer or Hegel – it’s just a name.  She was just a symbol for me.”  In other words, he isn’t particularly set on killing Solberg – there’s a whole bunch of other Norwegian officials whom he could just as happily kill instead.  (Great defense: if I’m willing to blow just anyone to bits, you must acquit!)

Krekar went on to say something that came off (such is his wont) as yet another threat: “Muslims must provide security to the country that has given them security.  As long as I received security and safety here, Norwegians were able to enjoy the same thing.”  And now that Norwegians were threatening to lock him up?  The mullah’s point is clear: if Norway makes war on him, he’ll make war on Norway.

Following his court appearance, Krekar headed for the studios of Norway’s TV2 to be interviewed by Al-Jazeera.  When a TV2 reporter asked for a comment on the way out, Krekar got a tad violent (video here).  Two, um, journalists from Al-Jazeera restrained him, whereupon one of them asked TV2′s cameraman to hand over the video of Krekar’s outburst.  His request was, admirably, denied.  One of the two Al-Jazeera boys then complained that TV2 had been wrong to videotape Krekar: it was, he said, a simple matter of “respect.”  Among other things, this encounter tidily demonstrated – old news, of course – that for many Muslims, “respect” between themselves and infidels is a one-way street.

The next day, Tuesday, Krekar was arrested in his home for having issued yet more death threats.  This time, his defense was that the latest threats were merely “hypothetical.”  What had happened, apparently, was this: after his TV2 adventure, he went home and logged into a jihadist chat room where he’d said something to the effect that “if anyone were to kidnap and keep Norwegians imprisoned in a basement just as long as he [Krekar] remained in prison, whether it was five or ten years, it wouldn’t hurt his case.”  Asked by his online interlocutors about the use of knives or grenades, he is said to have replied that these were “teenage methods.”

The bombings occurred on the ninth anniversary of the American invasion — an anniversary also marked by the Shiite firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr and his followers as more than a million of them poured into the streets of Basra in a massive show of force.

The attacks also appeared to be linked to preparations for an Arab League summit to be held in Baghdad on March 29 and it is thought by some experts that al-Qaeda was trying to embarrass the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in advance of the meeting. Maliki’s government has invested a nearly $500 million in security and hospitality arrangements and sees the summit as crucial to the future of Iraq.

The chaos sown by the attacks appeared to be designed to further inflame sectarian tensions and hasten the fracture of the Iraqi government. That process seemed to be well underway as the leader of the Kurdish bloc, Kurdish Regional Government President Massoud Barzani, accused Baghdad of “ideological terrorism” and stopped just short of declaring independence for the three northern provinces where Kurds have set up an autonomous, self-governing enclave.

The bombings targeted cities and provinces across the length and breadth of Iraq. Many of the bombings bore the unmistakable earmarks of al-Qaeda. In Karbala, where loss of life was the greatest, a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint for Shiite pilgrims entering the holy city. When police and emergency services showed up to treat the injured from the first blast, another car bomb exploded that caused even more casualties. All told, authorities say that 13 people were killed and another 48 were wounded.

There was also a twin bomb attack in the northern city of Kirkuk near police headquarters that killed 9 and injured more than 40. Another single car bomb targeted the provincial government building killing 4 more.

The roll call of cities and provinces that suffered the attacks would be familiar to many Americans who remember the sectarian strife during the civil war. In Fallujah, a pregnant woman was killed and her 6-year-old child wounded by bombs terrorists planted around a house belonging to a police officer. In Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, a car bombing outside of a school wounded 4 teachers. In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in front of the Foreign Ministry building, and in the Monsour district, three policemen were killed by gunmen as they stood guard outside of a Christian church. The governor of Anbar province narrowly escaped when a car bomb went off as his motorcade passed. A bodyguard was killed.

The Telegraph reports that diplomats have noticed a pattern of serious attacks every 5 or 6 weeks, indicating that AQ does not have sufficient manpower or resources to sustain daily attacks.

“We strongly condemn the attacks on innocent civilians in Iraq,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, adding that violence in the country was at historic lows and that the Iraqis were up to maintaining security.

That may be so. But the timing of the attacks have not been lost on the Iraqi government, nor the international community. Prime Minister Maliki is determined that the Arab League summit will go off as planned and without incident. To that end, Iraq will deploy a medium-sized army of police, army, and special forces in Bagdhad for the summit. More than 26,000 security personnel will man barricades and checkpoints, and patrol the streets. The airport will be closed beginning March 26 and remain shuttered until after the summit is over. A curfew is likely to be announced for the duration of the meeting.

The following article was originally published by the Stonegate Institute.

What is the alternative to Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria? A simple if indirect way to find out is to consider which groups in Syria are especially for or against Assad—and why.

Christian minorities, who, at 10% of the Syrian population, have the most to gain from a secular government and the most to suffer from a Sharia-state, have no choice but to prefer Assad. They are already seeing aspects of the alternative. A recent Barnabas Fund report titled “Christians in Syria Targeted in Series of Kidnappings and Killings; 100 Dead,” tells of how “children were being especially targeted by the kidnappers, who, if they do not receive the ransom demanded, kill the victim.” In one instance, kidnappers videotaped a Christian boy as they murdered him in an attempt to frame the government; one man “was cut into pieces and thrown in a river” and another “was found hanged with numerous injuries.”

Accordingly, it is understandable that, as an earlier report put it, “Christians have mostly stayed away from the protests in Syria, having been well treated and afforded a considerable amount of religious freedom under President Assad’s regime.” After all, “Should Assad fall, it is feared that Syria could go the way of Iraq post-Saddam Hussein. Saddam, like Assad, restrained the influence of militant Islamists, but after his fall they were free to wreak havoc on the Christian community; hundreds of thousands of Christians were consequently forced to flee the violence. Many of them went to Syria.”

In short, should “rebels” get their way and topple the Assad regime, the same brutal pattern experienced by Iraq’s Christian minorities—who have been liked to, and killed off like, dogs, to the point of nearing extinction—will come to Syria, where a preacher recently urged Muslims to “tear apart, chop up and feed” Christians who support Assad “to the dogs.” From last week alone, some 70 additional Christian homes were invaded and pillaged, and “for the first time in the history of the conflict in Syria, an armed attack has been made on a Catholic monastery,” partially in search of money.

Three distinguished guests recently joined The Glazov Gang, Frontpage’s television program, to discuss breaking ranks with the Left. Our guests were Andrew Klavan, a critically-acclaimed and world-renowned adult thriller writer, Eric Allen Bell, a writer and filmmaker who was recently fired from the “Daily Kos” for telling the truth about Islam, and Evan Sayet, America’s #1 conservative comedian. Below are all three parts of a three part series. Part I dealt with leaving the progressive faith, Part II addressed Scott Ritter, Underage Girls and Iraq and Part III focused on Koran burnings in Afghanistan.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.  

Three distinguished guests recently joined The Glazov Gang, Frontpage’s television program, to discuss Scott Ritter, Underage Girls and Iraq. Our guests were Andrew Klavan, a critically-acclaimed and world-renowned adult thriller writer, Eric Allen Bell, a writer and filmmaker who was recently fired from the “Daily Kos” for telling the truth about Islam, and Evan Sayet, America’s #1 conservative comedian. Below are all three parts of a three part series:

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.  

In 2007, Israeli Air Force jets crossed into Syria and destroyed an Iranian-backed nuclear reactor. The operation had the backing of the United States and employed intelligence derived from an Iranian defector. There was no regional war afterward. Not even an exchange of fire at the Israeli-Syrian border.

In 1981, Israel struck deep inside Iraq, destroying Saddam’s Osirak reactor. The attack was universally condemned at the United Nations and even by Israel’s allies. Had Saddam used it as the basis for a war, Israel would have had no international support at all. But again no war followed.

Today, Iran and opponents of any attack on its nuclear program hold up the specter of a regional war that will drag in the United States, devastate the region and drive up oil prices. This is the only card in their deck until the mullahs have their own bomb, and it’s an effective card to play. But is any of that a serious risk?

Let’s start by looking at the current state of the Iranian regime. The regime is wildly unpopular at home. It had to use its Revolutionary Guard corps to violently suppress protests against the regime, it does not trust its own military and without troops loyal to it close to home, the regime would be gone faster than you can say Nicolai Ceausescu. (If you have trouble saying that, substitute the fallen dictator of your choice.)

Iran has repeatedly attacked American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; its terrorists have attacked Israel and Jews around the world, but those attacks amount to terrorism and guerrilla warfare mostly carried out by secondary actors. It’s quite different from committing to a major conflict, which will give the regime a choice between either keeping its loyalist Revolutionary Guard at home and sending unreliable conventional troops off to fight and possibly turn on it, or sending off its trusted troops and leaving its leaders naked to the people’s wrath.

Another option is more terrorist attacks, which are already being carried out anyway. And as their recent attacks showed, Shiite terrorists aren’t all that much better than the Sunni kind. Their latest round of attacks mostly ended with dead terrorists killed by their own bombs. And it is only common sense that a regime this violent and stupid can no more be allowed to have nuclear weapons than Corcoran State Prison should allow Charles Manson to build his own flamethrower.

The only card in the Iranian deck is a naval conflict. The last time it tried one of those, the result was a decisive defeat for Iran, but that was back in the late ’80s. The Persian Gulf is vital to Iran’s assertion of power over the region. It has invested in developing its navy and a strategy that will allow it to take on greater powers.

This scenario is only plausible if we assume that Iran will begin a conflict that it is bound to lose in order to avenge the loss of a nuclear program that it no longer has.

There are two possible attack scenarios. First, Israel carries out a unilateral attack on Iran’s nuclear program. This is the most likely scenario under the Obama administration, which has made it clear that it wants a conflict with Syria, but will not back any Israeli attack on Iran. Second, in a very unlikely scenario the administration, for some reason, changes its mind and decides to take out Iran’s nuclear program.

In the first and likeliest scenario, Iran would have to begin a war with the United States over an attack carried out by Israel. A war that it’s bound to lose. Like the lunatic with the lug nuts, the folks in Tehran are crazy, but they’re not stupid. If they were going to begin a war with the United States over something Israel did, they had plenty of opportunities with Stuxnet and the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Three distinguished guests recently joined The Glazov Gang, Frontpage’s television program, to discuss Scott Ritter, Underage Girls and Iraq.  Our guests were Andrew Klavan, a critically-acclaimed and world-renowned adult thriller writer, Eric Allen Bell, a writer and filmmaker who was recently fired from the “Daily Kos” for telling the truth about Islam, and Evan Sayet, America’s #1 conservative comedian. Below is Part II of a three-part series. To see Part I, click here. To see Part III, click here.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.  

Recently, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) co-sponsored a non-binding Senate resolution with Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) that called for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria and for the US to back the Syrian opposition by “urg[ing] the President to support an effective transition to democracy in Syria by identifying and providing substantial material and technical support, upon request, to Syrian organizations.” Like other resolutions introduced in Congress over the past year, this one falls short of calling for arming the Syrian rebels. However, even limited and targeted support for the opposition is a very bad idea at this juncture. For a wide variety of reasons, supporting the opposition is sure to be a crap shoot — with a good chance the US and the West would roll snake eyes.

The Rubio resolution was also co-sponsored by several other Democrats, including Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), one of the most liberal members of the Senate, along with Johnny Isakson (R-GA), one of the body’s most conservative senators.  The strange legislative bedfellows underscores the belief in Congress that President Obama simply isn’t doing enough to assist the opposition in Syria and staunch the flow of blood from civilians who are agitating for Assad’s ouster. The resolution also condemns Russia and Iran for their support of Assad’s crackdown, and calls upon the State Department to find ways to “encourage defections” from the Syrian military.

Well meaning but flawed resolutions like Rubio’s fail to take into account many important issues, including the extreme disorganization of the opposition — both political and military — as well as the almost total lack of respect for Syrian exiles. Here are some of the major obstacles to making US aid to the opposition serve American interests, and not the interests of the Islamists and our enemies:

Al-Qaeda in Iraq in Syria

Recent bombings, including those in Syria’s two largest cities of Damascus and Aleppo, are the work of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to the US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Clapper also says that AQ in Iraq has “infiltrated” the Syrian opposition and that some of its fighters have slipped into Syria and joined the forces fighting Assad. He added that the opposition, “in many cases may not be aware they are there.”

This is an extremely troubling development. Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri recently released a video message calling on fighters in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon to mobilize and fight the Assad regime. So far, according to Clapper, there has not been a noticeable influx of fighting men into Syria. But the problem with aiding the Syrian opposition — even non-military aid — is that we can’t be sure that aid wouldn’t also facilitate al-Qaeda’s plans. Nor is it clear at this point who, if anyone, in the Syrian opposition might be in league with the terrorists.

Islamists in the Syrian Opposition

There are two main political opposition groups; the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the National Coordination Committee (NCC). The SNC, according to Randi Slim of Foreign Policy, is the broader based group, and is composed of “the Damascus Declaration Group (Syrian reformist intellectuals), the Muslim Brotherhood, representatives of the Istanbul Gathering (a group made up mainly of Islamists and independent technocrats), youth activists, individual Kurdish activists, and Assyrians.” The NCC is mostly made up of leftists and a smattering of individual activists. Both groups prefer a political solution to the crisis with the SNC only willing to talk to Assad if he agrees to step down. The NCC is willing to negotiate political change once the troops are pulled out of the population centers and the bloodshed is halted.

Both groups are terribly disorganized, and factions within the organizations can’t agree on much of anything at all, including the key issue of foreign intervention. To attempt to bring the opposition under a single umbrella, a new organization has recently come into being: the National Bloc for Change. It is made up of “80 prominent opposition figures, lawyers, clerics and activists” to support the revolution. It claims to “welcome any movement” against the Assad regime, and says it is more representative of Syrian society. A member of the newly formed bloc, Waheed Saqar, who is also a prominent opposition figure, said, “Honestly speaking, we do not think that the coordination committee or the National Council [accurately] represent fabric of Syrian society. Our aim is to be one unified body without discrimination or marginalization of any Syrian.”

This article was first published by the Stonegate Institute.

The beginning of the New Year saw only an increase in the oppression of Christians under Islam, from Nigeria, where an all-out jihad has been declared in an effort to eradicate the Muslim north of all Christians, to Europe, where Muslim converts to Christianity are still hounded and attacked as apostates.  According to the Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year”; in our life time alone, he predicts “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.”

An international report found that Muslim nations make up nine out of the top ten countries where Christians face the “most severe” persecution.  In response to these findings, a Vatican spokesman said that “Among the most serious concerns, the increase in Islamic extremism merits special attention.  Persons and organizations dedicated to extremist Islamic ideology perpetrate terrible acts of violence in many places throughout the world: the Boko Haram sect in Nigeria is but one example. Then there is the climate of insecurity that unfortunately in some countries accompanies the so-called “Arab spring”—a climate that drives many Christians to flee and even to emigrate.”

Categorized by theme, January’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity of anecdote.

APOSTASY

Iran: A Christian convert who was arrested in her home has been sentenced to two years in prison. Previously she endured five months of uncertainty detained in the notorious Evin prison, where the government hoped she would come to her senses and renounce Christianity. She was convicted of “broad anti-Islamic propaganda, deceiving citizens by formation of what is called a house church, insulting sacred figures and action against national security.” Likewise, Iranian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani continues to suffer in prison.  Most recently, he rejected an offer to be released if he publicly acknowledged Islam’s prophet Muhammad as “a messenger sent by God,” which would amount to rejecting Christianity, as Muhammad/Koran reject it.

Kenya: Muslim apostates seeking refuge in Kenya are being tracked and attacked by Muslims from their countries of origin: An Ethiopian who, upon converting to Christianity, was shot by his father, kidnapped and almost killed, is now receiving threatening text messages. Likewise, a Ugandan convert to Christianity is in hiding, his movements severely restricted since “the Muslims are looking to kill me. I need protection and help.”

Kuwait: A royal prince who openly declared that he has converted to Christianity, confirmed the reality that he now might be targeted for killing as an apostate.

Norway: While out for a walk, two Iranian converts to Christianity were stabbed with knives by masked men shouting “infidels!” One of the men stabbed had converted in Iran, was threatened there, and immigrated to Norway, thinking he could escape persecution there.

Somalia: A female convert to Christianity was paraded before a cheering crowd and publicly flogged as punishment for embracing a “foreign religion.” Imprisoned since November, “the public whipping was meant to mark her release.” She received 40 lashes as hundreds of Muslim spectators jeered. An eyewitness said: “I saw her faint. I thought she had died, but soon she regained consciousness and her family took her away.” Likewise, “Somali Islamists arrested a Muslim father after two of his children converted to Christianity” and fled.  He is accused of “failing to raise his sons as good Muslims,” because “good Muslims cannot convert to Christianity.”

Zanzibar: After being robbed, a Muslim convert to Christianity called police to his house; they discovered a Bible during their inspection. The course of inquiry immediately changed from searching for the thieves to asking why he “was practicing a forbidden faith.” He was imprisoned for eight months without trial, and, since being released, has been rejected by his family and is now homeless and diseased.

CHURCH ATTACKS

Azerbaijan: A pastor has been threatened with criminal proceedings following a raid on his church during Sunday service. Earlier, he was told that “a criminal case had been launched over religious literature arousing incitement over other faiths,” and was pressured by authorities to leave the area, which he did, traveling great distances each week to lead church services.

Egypt: Before a bishop was going to inaugurate the incomplete Abu Makka church and celebrate the Epiphany mass, a large number of Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood members entered the building, asserting that the church had no license and so no one should pray in it. One Muslim remarked that the building would be suitable for a mosque and a hospital.

Indonesia: A sticker on the back of the car of a member of the beleaguered Yasmin church saying “We need a friendly Islam, not an angry Islam,” distributed by the family of the late Muslim president, prompted another Islamic attack on the church: scores of Muslims “terrorized the congregation and attacked several church members.” Since 2008, the congregation has been forced to hold Sunday services on the sidewalk outside the church and then later in the home of parishioners. Not satisfied, hundreds of Muslims later searched and found the private home where members were congregating and holding service and prevented them from worshiping there as well: “It crosses the line now. The protesters now come to the residential area, which is not a public place.” A new report notes that anti-Christian attacks have nearly doubled in the last year.

Nigeria: Soon after jihadis issued an ultimatum giving Christians three days to evacuate the region or die, armed Muslims stormed a church and “opened fire on worshippers as their eyes were closed in prayer,” killing six, including the pastor’s wife. Then, as friends and relatives gathered to mourn the deaths of those slain, “Allahu Akbar” screaming Muslims appeared and opened fire again, killing another 20 Christians. Several other churches were bombed, and seven more killed.

It was officially called the State of the Union Address, but what President Obama actually delivered on Tuesday night was a campaign speech targeted directly at his base. The message went something like this: “Unions, environmentalists, teachers, Hispanic immigrants, women, I’m your president…I’m your candidate.”

Consider the code words and messages sprinkled throughout the speech.

The president began with a shameless signal to the Code Pink crowd and anti-war left—the folks who fueled his rise and run for the White House. “For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq,” he declared, sidestepping the unraveling situation that has emerged as a result. And he went on: “We’ve begun to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Ten thousand of our troops have come home. Twenty-three thousand more will leave by the end of this summer.” Again, never mind what is left behind.

For Big Labor, he boasted about his efforts to get “workers and automakers to settle their differences” and get a government-owned, union-run General Motors “back on top as the world’s number one automaker.”

He gratuitously mentioned a “unionized plant in Milwaukee” and cited key union cities in key states for good measure: “Detroit and Toledo and Chicago…Cleveland and Pittsburgh.”

For the teachers’ unions, he lamented how “tight budgets have forced states to lay off thousands of teachers” and called on Congress to give states “the resources to keep good teachers on the job.” Drifting into meaningless platitudes, he promised that in exchange he would support programs to “replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.”

While on the subject of meaningless platitudes, the president boasted that “there are fewer illegal crossings than when I took office.” The reason for that, of course, is that he’s presiding over the worst economy in four decades. In other words, there are no jobs to entice immigrants to cross America’s southern border—legally or illegally. (See Mitch Daniels’ sparkling rebuttal for more on why.)

But the president’s main message on immigration was for the amnesty lobby: “Hundreds of thousands of talented, hardworking students in this country face another challenge: The fact that they aren’t yet American citizens. Many were brought here as small children, are American through and through, yet they live every day with the threat of deportation,” he chided. “Let’s at least agree to stop expelling responsible young people,” who, it pays to recall, are not responsible enough to legalize their status.

The government of Iraq has temporarily detained hundreds of private US contractors in recent weeks, mostly for paperwork violations related to weapons registrations and visas.  The detentions — which can last from 24-96 hours or more — are the result of bureaucratic infighting between Iraqi government agencies who seek to control the movement of foreign contractors.

The result is mass confusion. A trade group representing the contractors in Washington has written a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begging the State Department to intervene, but there is apparently little that can be done to solve the bureaucratic turf wars that have resulted in what one Iraqi businessman who works with the contractors called “a state of chaos.”

The detentions of American citizens are taking place against the backdrop of the strong re-emergence of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the nation’s continuing slide into sectarian conflict, and accusations of a power grab by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki by his coalition partners who are being frozen out by the Shiite majority.

The New York Times reports that another reason for the detentions is that Iraq is “asserting its sovereignty” by developing its own set of rules to deal with the foreigners. Such may be the case, but the result of the crackdown has been what one blogger who follows the industry says is “controlled harassment.” Indeed, the Times reports that more than a hundred private contractors were detained at the Baghdad airport for a week wrestling with visa issues. Evidently, no 2011 visas have been renewed and no 2012 visas have been issued.

The embassy in Baghdad is overwhelmed. They issued a statement saying, in part, “The Embassy’s ability to respond to situations in which U.S. citizens are arrested or otherwise detained throughout Iraq is limited, including in and around Baghdad.” Last Thursday, 4 embassy employees were stopped and detained for two hours by Iraqi security forces.

The letter to Secretary Clinton, signed by Doug Brooks, president of the International Stability Operations Association, said that they wanted “to ensure that you [Clinton] are aware of the seriousness of this issue,” and “the impact it is having on our members’ ability to support the transition and government programs in Iraq and ask your assistance in working with the Government of Iraq to reach a prompt solution.” The “impact” is that it has brought much of the transition and reconstruction work to a standstill. Brooks told the Washington Post that it is becoming impossible for his members to move in Iraq. “It’s been a nightmare,” he told the Post.

“While private organizations are often able to resolve low-level disputes and irregularities, this issue is beyond our ability to resolve and we need the assistance of the Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Iraq,” Brooks wrote in his letter to Clinton. Specifically, Brooks pointed to the movement of private security guards protecting the hundreds of businesses and their employees who are regularly stopped and detained at checkpoints by Iraqi security personnel. When the armed guards can’t travel, the businesses are paralyzed as well.

An Iraqi businessman was quoted in the Post as saying, “We are, on one side, trying to promote Iraq to get foreign investors, but from the other side, the government is creating all kinds of difficulties…They just create rules overnight,” he said.

The harassment of the contractors is partly the result of the conflicts over incidents that occurred during the occupation where the Iraqi government believed that some of the security personnel were trigger-happy and were careless in firing where civilians congregated. One such incident in 2007 resulted in the deaths of 17 civilians, although all charges against the Blackwater personnel involved were eventually dismissed, mostly because of technicalities. The US military determined that the guards opened fire “without provocation” and used “excessive force.

How time flies!  It seems only yesterday that we folks in Norway first heard the name Mullah Krekar.  The sometime leader of Ansar al-Islam – which narrow-minded individuals insist on calling a terrorist organization, but which I prefer to think of as a heavily armed, Koran-toting Iraqi version of Rotary or the Knights of Columbus – the charismatic Krekar has long since become every (well, not quite every) Norwegian’s lovable grandpa.  Now, after many years in Norway, he has announced that he will soon be leaving us and returning to Iraq, where he will continue to pursue the task to which he has consecrated his life: that of serving his God.

And oh, how many ways there are to serve God!  Ansar al-Islam, according to the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, has “burned down girls’ schools and beaten and killed women for not wearing the burqa.” Human Rights Watch notes that under its previous name, Jund al-Islam, Krekar’s industrious associates took over villages in which they required, among other things, “the obligatory closure of offices and businesses during prayer time and enforced attendance by workers and proprietors at the mosque during those times; the veiling of women by wearing the traditional ‘abaya; obligatory beards for men; segregation of the sexes; barring women from education and employment; the removal of any photographs of women on packaged goods brought into the region; the confiscation of musical instruments and the banning of music both in public and private; and the banning of satellite receivers and televisions.”  The Lord’s work never ends!

Krekar first came to Norway in 1991 as an asylum seeker – although, as is true of many Muslim asylum seekers, his professional obligations obliged him to travel frequently between his new nation and the country from which he had fled.  But not till after 9/11 did his name become widely known here.  Arrested in the Netherlands in 2002 on his way back to Norway from Iraq, he was released after four months and allowed to proceed to Norway, where he was again arrested and released – a series of torments which, as the discerning reader will readily notice, are not unlike those visited upon Jesus by the Romans and the Sanhedrin.  Krekar has lived in Oslo ever since, in apartments which (in newspaper photographs) look quite pleasant, with fine bookcases full of handsomely bound volumes in Arabic.  A great man deserves no less.

Over the years Krekar has provided Norway with invaluable spiritual lessons of a sort that a few stubborn Norwegian officials have failed to appreciate, simply because Krekar’s brand of evangelism involves guns, explosives, and the removal of limbs without anesthesia.  Consequently they have persisted in attempts to take him away from us – and have thus caused him no little amount of distress.  Meanwhile those of us who appreciate Krekar can only be grateful for his long-term presence in our midst – and cherish the memories.

Ah, the memories!  Here’s just a sampling:

2003:

Perhaps the key event in Krekar’s emergence as a contemporary Norwegian folk hero was a speaking engagement at a popular Oslo café.  Krekar was the guest of the Liberal Party’s youth organization, which had invited him to give his political views.  The place was packed to overflowing – mostly, according to Morgenbladet, with “students in their twenties and thirties.” They greeted the Man of the Hour with spontaneous applause.  Morgenbladet quite aptly described Krekar’s response – a hand movement indicating that they should stop clapping – as one of “humility.”  After offering a twenty-minute analysis of international affairs, the humble homme de guerre took questions and graciously accepted his fans’ declarations of support.  The event was the greatest success in the cafe’s history.  Morgenbladet called Krekar “Norway’s beloved fundamentalist.”

In March, in a demonstration of the petty abuses that unfeeling authorities can visit upon their betters, VG reported that the police had confiscated Krekar’s wife’s cookbook, and that the mullah had been forced to eat the same kind of cake – apple! – fifty days in a row.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Krekar again showed his humility by offering unstinting praise for a colleague: “Osama bin Laden is a good man.  He is the jewel in Islam’s crown.” Krekar confirmed that he had trained suicide bombers and – in a sign of his generous readiness to share the delights of Islamic law with unbelievers – declared his intention to help turn Norway into a sharia state.  In August, apparently appreciative of the contribution Krekar was making to Norwegian society and culture, William Nygaard, head of the venerable Aschehoug publishing house, invited him to the company’s annual garden party.

2004:

In January – would the torments never cease? – Norwegian police ransacked Krekar’s apartment.  Aftenposten provided a heartbreaking picture of the mullah’s wife and daughters, those innocent victims of official harassment.  “Daddy opened the door when the police buzzed,” said one of the girls. “We had to sit still in the living room and were not allowed to go outside or use the phone while they were there.” Krekar’s lawyer, Brynjar Meling, announced that his client planned to sue the Norwegian government for unwarranted prosecution, and to call Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik as a witness.  Bondevik said Krekar would be deported.  In June, a Jordanian court convicted the poor, put-upon mullah in absentia of conspiracy to commit (that ugly word!) terrorism.

But not all the news was bleak.  The same year saw the publication by Aschehoug of Krekar’s In My Own Words.  A publisher’s representative characterized it as a “personal and political biography” in which the “Islamic and Kurdish activist [bless him for not using the “t” word!] examines the events in Iraqi Kurdistan and the case against him in Norway from his own perspective.”  At the book launch, Krekar declared his “great respect for the Norwegian people, for the king, the people, the culture, and the civilization.  And I say to you that I am proud of you.”

In April, in a small gesture toward the justice due him, the Dutch government awarded Krekar 45,000 euros in damages for wrongful imprisonment.  In August, Krekar sued Norway for millions of kroner in damages for all the trouble they had caused him.  In December, it was reported that Krekar, in a speech at an Iraqi mosque, had praised bin Laden for 9/11.  Once again, Krekar’s exemplary willingness to praise other laborers in the fields of the Lord testified to his remarkable lack of ego.

Yesterday, Iraq was hit with another wave of bombings as sectarian strife continues to dramatically increase following the withdrawal of U.S. forces. At least 70 Shiites were killed, presumably by Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Across the Middle East, tension and bloodshed between the region’s various communities is increasing, prompting Turkey to warn of a new Cold War.

Three of the explosions took place in Sadr City, the Shiite stronghold in Baghdad of Moqatada al-Sadr. Another two explosions happened in Kadhimiyah district and near Nasiriyah, targeting Shiites celebrating the holiday of Arbaeen by traveling to Karbala. On December 22, 60 Iraqis were killed in terrorist attacks in Baghdad.

The attacks come as the Shiite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is locked in an intense political struggle with his Sunni rivals. Al-Maliki issued an arrest warrant for Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, accusing him of being involved in terrorism. He also called for the sacking of Deputy Prime Minister Saleh el-Mutlaq, another Sunni, after he accused al-Maliki of acting like a dictator worse than Saddam Hussein. Al-Hashimi is now avoiding arrest in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The al-Iraqiya bloc, led by secular Shiite Iyad Allawi, is allied with the Sunnis and is boycotting parliament. Al-Maliki is threatening to replace its representatives in the parliament. Some of al-Maliki’s opponents are calling for his replacement. Moqtada al-Sadr’s bloc, which supports al-Maliki, wants parliament to be dissolved and new elections to be held.

One concern is that Moqtada al-Sadr will make good on his threat to reassemble his Mehdi Army militia, which would prompt the Sunnis to act in a similar fashion. The Iranian-backed cleric has threatened to target any American personnel remaining in Iraq this year, including contractors. In an interesting twist, he is criticizing another militia, Asaib al-Haq (League of the Righteous), accusing it of killing Iraqis and being an Iranian puppet. The group just agreed to give up violence and pursue its aims solely through political means.

Sectarian tension is increasing in Syria at the same as it is in Iraq. The Bashar Assad regime draws its top officials from the Allawite minority, generally estimated to be about 13% of the entire population. This minority is sticking by the regime, likely fearing that it will be massacred if it falls. The Christian minority, about 10% of the population, is doing the same. The failure of the Allawites to turn on the regime is enraging the rest of the population that supports the revolution. An opposition figure named Mamoun al-Homsi angrily stated on December 20, “If the Allawites do not renounce Bashar Assad, we will turn Syria into their graveyard.”

The city of Homs is experiencing tremendous sectarian violence. Last month, 36 bodies were found dumped along the border of the Sunni and Allawite areas of the city. Some of them were decapitated and appeared to have been tortured. Opposition activists are reporting a cycle of murders and kidnappings. On December 20, five Iranian “engineers and technicians” were kidnapped in Homs, as were two more the following day. It is widely reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are playing a direct role on the ground in fighting the uprising.

Ten years on from the invasion of Afghanistan, America has grown weary of war. President Obama, having realized his long-held target of withdrawing from Iraq, is trying to wind down the war in Afghanistan with the aim of ending American involvement by 2014. As Washington has lost faith in the war effort, so too has the broader public. Skeptical of success and encouraged in their doubts by the political establishment, Americans increasingly want the war, like a tiresome, too-long movie, to end at last. This national resignation is fraught with peril – for America’s counterterrorism objectives, for our strategic allies – but perhaps most of all for the soldiers who did the fighting. The U.S. military has a policy of leaving no man behind.  But as the country turns its attention away from the warfront, it risks forgetting the servicemen who fought so valiantly on its behalf, and who have returned home bearing the wars’ indelible marks.

The official end of the Iraq war this month is an occasion to reflect that, for many of America’s wounded veterans, the war will never be over, that they will always carry its scars. Over 32,000 servicemen have been wounded post-9/11, spanning all branches of the military. In the sands of Iraq, and in the mountains of Afghanistan, they have suffered horrific injuries, of which the most painful often left no outward mark. Limbs lost, lives turned upside down, futures permanently altered. For those of us safe in the comforts of civilian life, the enormity of their sacrifice is utterly beyond comprehension.

Just as awe-inspiring, though, is their resilience, their relentless determination not to surrender to the hardships imposed by their injuries, mental or physical. Where lesser spirits might have yielded, they have worked to embrace life, going to school, finding jobs, raising families. While others their age were playing at rebellion on the streets of New York and Oakland, they, who have so many reasons to complain, refused to turn their personal struggles into a public spectacle. They’re not the protesting kind. For these daily acts of heroism, no less than for the heroism they showed in battle, America’s wounded warriors are Front Page Magazine’s “Man of the Year.”

They are men like Army Sergeant First Class, Leroy Petry. The product of a military family, Petry enlisted in the Army Rangers in 1999, at the age of 20, inspired by their motto: “Rangers Lead the Way.” Petry did just that in May 2008, when he and his platoon found themselves in the midst of a deadly firefight while attempting a raid on a Taliban compound in Afghanistan’s remote Paktia province. Inside the compound’s courtyard, Petry and a fellow Ranger, Private First Class Lucas Robinson, were pinned down by heavy fire from Taliban fighters when a bullet round pierced both of Petry’s legs. As the Rangers battled back, a live enemy grenade landed just a few feet away. Acting on instinct, Petry lunged at the grenade to throw it back, but could not release it fast enough. The blast blew off his right hand at the wrist. Undaunted, Petry placed a tourniquet on his arm and called in by radio that he and two other Rangers had been wounded. Then he added, “And I also lost one of my hands.” Not until the Taliban fighters were killed would Petry allow himself to be evacuated. During his recovery, Petry received a prosthetic hand and arm. To his new arm, author Peter Collier recounts, Petry added a plaque listing the names of the fallen Rangers in his unit.  For his bravery, Petry this July was awarded the Medal of Honor, becoming only the second living recipient of the medal for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The medal did not mark the end of Petry’s military career. He recently re-enlisted for another eight years of service in the Army.

Marine Staff Sergeant Chad Brumpton was serving in Iraq when an improvised explosive device blew up the tank he commanded in 2005. “Both my legs from the knee down were shattered to little pieces,” Brumpton recalls. “My left hand, thumb, and wrist were shredded up and broken. I received four compression fractures in my lower back.” For two years, Brumpton went from one surgery to the next, undergoing 19 in all. He required heavy dosages of medication just to get out of bed. In the end, his legs could not be saved. Yet, Brumpton is anything but a broken man. Newly mobile on prosthetic legs, including a pair for running, he continues to defy his physical constraints. As he puts it: “I won’t let anything hold me down, especially my disability. After the explosion, doctors told me I’d never walk again, but on the day I was discharged from the hospital, I walked out. There was no way I was going to let anything stop me.”

Army Spc. Brent Whitten exhibits the same single-mindedness as he tries to move on with his life. Whitten was 20 years old when his Humvee was struck by a suicide bomber in eastern Baghdad in 2006. Flames engulfed the Humvee, but Whitten couldn’t move his legs to escape. Eventually, he managed to roll out of the Humvee’s roof and onto the street, where a rescue unit picked him up. Whitten’s pelvis was fractured and he suffered second-degree burns to his arms and face, but he still mustered the strength to call his wife back in Kansas and tell her not to worry. Now a broadcasting student at the University of Kansas, he urges other wounded veterans to look upon their injuries as a new battle to be won. “When I think of my recovery, my message to other wounded warriors is this: Your recovery is your new mission. You have to get victory. You’re still a soldier, so you have an obligation not to surrender. Your family is counting on you.”

Marine and machine gunner Mike Heller knows how difficult that recovery can be. When his Humvee hit a landmine in Iraq in 2005, Heller was violently ejected, seriously injuring his spine. But his immediate concern was not for himself but for his unit’s team leader, Cpl. Joseph Tremblay, who was badly injured in the explosion. For the next three hours, as they made their way to the hospital, Heller tried to keep Tremblay calm and divert his attention from his bleeding wounds. Tremblay did not make it to the hospital. Heller survived, but today he suffers from chronic back pain and the awful thought that he failed to keep his comrade alive. It has taken time and treatment for Heller to realize that he could not have changed what happened, that he could not have done more to save his friend. He is still working to come to terms with his memories. But he is also getting on with his life, raising his daughter, working as a stock analyst, and pursuing a business degree.

Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, a deep thinker and close colleague of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, claimed to a Jerusalem audience this week that Israel has talked some sense to President Barack Obama about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We convinced the American administration,” Yaalon said, “that there is no way to solve the conflict in one or two years…. The US is trying to manage the conflict now, rather than solve it.”

Reporter Gil Hoffman notes that “there has been no public indication that the Americans have given up their hope of solving the conflict, and the US helped draft the Quartet position that aims to solve the conflict by the end of 2012.”

And just a few weeks ago Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sounded as sure as ever that the conflict could be solved if the parties would just “get to the damn table” and Israel would “reach out” to its neighbors and be more pliable.

Yaalon, for his part, gave Obama less credit on Iran, saying that “France and Great Britain are leading the West now in calling for crippling sanctions on the Iranian central bank and preventing Iran from exporting oil, while the US is unfortunately leading from behind.”

Still, as Hoffman points out, Yaalon’s words regarding the Palestinian issue constitute “the first time a high-ranking Netanyahu administration official has indicated that the US had shifted from conflict resolution to management.”

If Yaalon is right, one would expect an easing of the administration’s pressure on Israel regarding this issue—pressure that has been obsessive and often brutal.

Upon taking office the administration proclaimed all Jewish life over the 1967 lines—including in parts of Jerusalem that it saw as off limits to Jews—illegitimate and the main obstacle to peace. Obama pursued the theme in his June 2009 Cairo speech, in which he sang the praises—often with invented “facts”—of Islam as a civilization while portraying “the settlements” as the hub of evil and equating self-imposed Palestinian displacement with the Holocaust.

The pattern of Israel-abuse reached another high point with the administration’s tantrum over Israeli building plans in Jerusalem in March 2010 and Obama’s notorious snub of Netanyahu at the White House. Also around that time Obama signed onto Arab attempts to divest Israel of its nuclear deterrent—that is, its fundamental guarantee of survival in the region.

Even more grave, though, was the president’s explicit call in May this year for an Israeli return to those 1967 death-trap borders, a violation of solemn American commitments dating back forty years to uphold Israel’s right to defensible boundaries.

Naturally, even if the pressure lets up at this stage, one can attribute it to the upcoming US elections unless the administration shows some explicit sign of actually having learned something on the Palestinian issue.

Seemingly, though, it would be hard for Washington not to learn something about the difficulty of achieving amity in the Middle East. One would think a headline like last week’s “Deadly Blasts Rock Baghdad…” would leave an impression, coming so soon after the U.S. pullout and tolling over 60 dead and over 200 wounded.

Seven long years after he allegedly committed “premeditated murder,” Iraq war veteran Ilario Pantano, who gave up a comfortable life on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to fight for his country following the September 11th attacks, has been thoroughly vindicated. Thus ends a saga highlighted by an unconscionable rush to judgement by the military, and the subsequent trashing of Mr. Pantano’s reputation by leftists who never miss an opportunity to denigrate American soldiers based on nothing more than unproven allegations.

By any reasonable measure, Mr. Pantano is an American patriot. A man born to poverty in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, Pantano managed to win a partial scholarship to Horace Mann, one of the top private schools in the nation. Students from Horace Mann routinely qualify to attend some of the best colleges in the nation and Pantano was no exception. Yet he made himself an exception, putting off college to join the Marines to fight in the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein.

After that tour of duty he returned home, finished college at nights, and ended up working for Goldman Sachs. Thus we have someone who had served his country, re-entered civilian life and made himself successful. For most men, a tour of duty in a combat zone followed by the procurement of a good job and a promising future would have been more than enough reason to let “someone else” fight for this nation following the 9/11 atrocity. Ilario Pantano is made of sterner stuff. At age 31 he persuaded the Marines to take him back so he could once again take the fight to Islamic terrorists.

It was a fateful decision. In 2004, Lieutenant Pantano was leading his squad through an area known as the “Triangle of Death,” a Sunni-insurgent dominated region where some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraq war was taking place. It was there that Pantano stopped two Iraqis who were driving a car away from what was discovered to be a terrorist ammo dump. When he ordered them to search their own car in case it was booby-trapped, the two men rushed Pantano. He opened fire, killing both. He reloaded his magazine and fired again, after which he hung a sign on the dead bodies saying “no better friend, no worse enemy.” It was intended as a message for other terrorists–according to both the prosecutor and Pantano who admitted to it. The sign was removed after one of his men told Pantano it was inappropriate.

Daniel Coburn, a disgruntled sergeant who had been disciplined by Pantano and subsequently demoted within the platoon, accused Pantano of shooting the men in the back. Despite the fact that all other testimony contradicted that claim, the Judge Advocate General’s investigating officer chose to believe Coburn and charge Pantano with premeditated murder.

On May 12, 2005, the case began to fall apart. A Marine hearing officer, Lt. Col. Mark E. Win, recommended to Maj. Gen. Richard Huck that the charges be dropped and not proceed to court-martial. This decision was largely based on the fact that Coburn had made several contradictory statements. Win still recommended punishment for the sign, but Huck rejected it.

Incredibly, despite the conflicting versions of the incident related during the Article 32 hearing (the military version of a preliminary hearing in civilian law), no autopsy reports were ever submitted into evidence. According to Pantano’s civilian lawyer, Charles Gittens, it was too dangerous for Navy investigators to try to exhume the bodies. Yet after the hearing, an “embarrassed” high command got permission from the dead men’s wives and local villagers to dig up the remains.

Forensic anthropologist William C. Rodriguez was brought in on May 24, 2005 to examine the bodies. “When the remains arrived, I didn’t expect the large crowds of people to [be] present at the mortuary” said Rodriguez. “Most were NCIS agents and various representatives of the Marines. Prior to the exams, there was much discussion concerning the case, talk of court-martial, prosecution and being guilty. The image that came to my mind…was that of a lynch mob: ‘Let’s make an example of [Pantano].’”

A coordinated wave of bomb attacks has rocked the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. At least 69 people have been killed and more than 185 injured in a series of 14 explosions, consisting of four car-bombs and 10 improvised explosive devices (IEDs). This is the worst violence to besiege Iraq in months, and it puts an exclamation point on the daunting reality that America may have prematurely left a nation whose government remains ruptured by sectarian divisions. Divisions that may ultimately undermine the enormous sacrifices made by American troops, and plunge the country into sectarian turmoil.

Although it was not immediately clear who was behind the attacks, analysts speculate that the level of coordination reflects a capability only available to al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is primarily a Sunni-dominated organization. Furthermore, the bombings were aimed at “soft targets,” another al-Qaeda trademark. “They targeted children’s schools, day workers and the anti-corruption agency,” said security spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta. “The children were scared and crying,” said Raghad Khalid, a kindergarten teacher at a school in Karrada. “Some parts of the car bomb are inside our building.” The car bomb was actually an ambulance driven by a suicide bomber, who killed 18 people when he detonated the vehicle.

Most of the districts targeted were Shi’ite neighborhoods, and the attacks were apparently timed to coincide with the morning’s rush hour. They may also be the first reprisals directed at Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose move to sideline two Sunni rivals has caused turmoil within the fragile coalition that forms the current government. Earlier this week, Maliki demanded the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, claiming he organized assassinations and bombings. Hashemi denies the accusations, and has taken refuge in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, where he is being given protection by the regional government. The Kurds, who represent Iraq’s third major political faction, are unlikely to hand him over to Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad.

Adding to the tension is another demand by Maliki, who asked parliament to fire his Sunni deputy, Saleh al-Mutlaq, for comparing Maliki to Saddam Hussein. On Wednesday al-Mutlaq was granted leave until the Iraqi House of Representatives can make a decision regarding his fate. Yet al-Mutlaq was not alone in making such a comparison. Sunni tribesman Ali Hatem Suleiman, the leader of powerful Dulaimi tribe, also told the BBC Maliki was becoming like Hussein. “Maliki will drive Iraq towards separation and will create a new dictatorship and take on Saddam’s mantle,” he contended. “Unfortunately this was all agreed upon by America–to hand over Iraq to a new dictator, and so Iraq will implode again.”

Suleiman joins a growing list of disaffected Sunnis, all convinced Iraq is disintegrating into sectarian factions. This disaffection is highlighted by a government boycott precipitated by the al-Iraqiyya group, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament. They are protesting the warrant for Hashemi’s arrest, and accuse Maliki of trying to monopolize power. Al-Iraqiyya’s disaffection may be critical. They are led by secular Shi’ite Muslim Ayad Allawi, who had convinced many of the same Sunni tribes responsible for driving the bloody insurgency from 2004-2007 that he would help them reclaim some of the power they’ve lost in a post-Saddam Iraq. Yet those hopes have now been dashed. “That’s all finished,” said an unnamed senior diplomat in Baghdad. “The office they created for Allawi [a strategic policy ministry] isn’t even functioning anymore. No one turns up for work.”