ABC News, 5 Feb 10: President Obama today honored the “sacrifice” of seven CIA officers who lost their lifein the Khost, Afghanistan suicide bombing late last year, and called for their legacy to be a summons to carry on and win the war.
“There are no words that can ease the ache in your hearts,” Obama said at the memorial service at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “But to their colleagues and all who served with them — those here today, those still recovering, those watching around the world — I say: Let their sacrifice be a summons. To carry on their work. To complete this mission. To win this war, and to keep our country safe.”
Family members of the seven CIA officers killed in eastern Afghanistan on December 30th as well as more than a thousand Agency officers, senior officials from the Intelligence Community, the White House and the Pentagon, as well as members of Congress gathered today to pay their respects at the private memorial to their service.
“At the remote outpost, they were bound by a common spirit. They heard their country’s call and answered it. They served in the shadows and took pride in it. They were doing their job and they loved it. They saw the danger and accepted it. They knew that the price of freedom is high and, in an awful instant, they paid that price.”
The President said that while they served in secrecy – their legacy is all around. “It’s written in the extremists who no longer threaten our country — because you eliminated them. It’s written in the attacks that never occurred — because you thwarted them. And it’s written in the Americans, across this country and around the world, who are alive today — because you saved them.”
Speaking directly to the families of those lost, the president said that it is “against the natural order of life” for parents to lay their children to rest. “Yet these weeks of solemn tribute have revealed for all to see — that you raised remarkable sons and daughters. Everything you instilled in them — the virtues of service and decency and duty — were on display that December day. That is what you gave them. That is what you gave to America. And our nation will be forever in your debt.”
As is tradition each of the fallen will be represented with a star on the Memorial Wall at the CIA headwaters – honoring employees who have died in the line of service.
Obama honors 7 slain CIA employees as patriots (AP, 5 Feb 10)
NewsMax, 5 Feb 10: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatens U.S. security through his relationship with the terrorist group Hezbollah, says Luis Fleischman a professor at Florida Atlantic University. “Chavez promotes a relationship with Hezbollah,” Fleischman told Newsmax.TV’s Ashley Martella. “Drug trafficking is going on across all of Central America. Chavez promotes this activity to destabilize countries friendly to the U.S.”
The more anarchy that Chavez creates, the more difficulty he poses to U.S. security, says the professor of political science and sociology.
“Hezbollah has relationships with drug trafficking cartels. The cartels know exactly how to bring the drugs into the southern border of the U.S. These routes have been used not only by Hezbollah, but also by Al Qaeda to penetrate the U.S.” So the threat is imminent, Fleischman says. “If this situation doesn’t stop, the northern part of Latin America is going to end up in a situation similar to Afghanistan, where you don’t have state control over the territory.” That means warlords connected to the drug business will be in control, he says. “Islamic groups can use those routes that drug cartels paved to enter the U.S. and do a lot of harm.” . . . .
As for the Chavez regime, it’s clearly illegitimate, having violated human rights, repressed freedom of the press and taken power in possibly corrupt elections. “It’s a totalitarian state,” Fleischman said. “There is chaos in the street. Politics is corrupt. People live in fear.”. . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 158–Venezuela: An Introduction to Myriad National Security Threats to America
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 267–An Introduction to Hezbollah: A Worldwide Terrorist Organization
The hole where Medine Memi was buried by her relatives in the courtyard of their house in Adiyaman, southeastern Turkey Photo: REUTERS
“Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient, that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain the others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him.” –E. Renan (1823-1892)
Daily Telegraph, 5 Feb 10: A 16-year-old girl has been buried alive by her relatives in Turkey as punishment for talking to boys, police have said. Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.
Her father and grandfather have since been arrested and are due to face trial over her death. Her mother was also charged but has since been released. Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on its website.
Medine had first been reported missing 40 days earlier. The informant told the police she had been killed following a family “council” meeting. Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex.
A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. “The report is blood curdling. According to our findings the girl who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood was alive and fully conscious when she was buried,” one official involved in the case told the Times.
It also emerged that Medine had repeatedly tried to report to police that she had been beaten by her father and grandfather days before she was killed. “She tried to take refuge at the police station three times, and she was sent home three times,” her mother, Immihan, said after the body was discovered in December.
Medine’s father is reported as saying at the time: “She has male friends. We are uneasy about that.” . . . . . .
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From Jihad Watch/Robert Spencer:
Syria recently scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’” That’s right: two years for murder! You can serve more time than that for serial double parking. In 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”
And a manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (‘Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Umdat Al-Salik
In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law. That’s why these honor killings keep happening — because they are broadly tolerated, even encouraged, by Islamic teachings and attitudes. Yet no authorities are calling Islamic leaders to account for this.
Either way, another US soldier is going to die at the hands of Jihadists motivated by Islamic doctrine.
PakTribune, 5 Feb 10: The Afghan Taliban on Thursday demanded the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who has been convicted by the US court on charges of her alleged attempt to murder US soldiers in Afghanistan, and threatened to execute an American soldier they were holding currently.
“Being Muslims, it becomes our religious and moral obligation to help the distressed Pakistani woman convicted by the US court on false charges,” said a senior Afghan Taliban commander. The commander, whose militant network is holding the US soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, called our sources from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan and threatened to execute the American trooper if their demand was not met. He claimed Aafia Siddiqui’s family had approached the Taliban network through a Jirga of notables, seeking their assistance to put pressure on the US to provide her justice. . . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine
Fox News, 5 Feb 10: An American born Islamic scholar who once gave religious instruction to the accused underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, is coming under fire for videotaped remarks denouncing western courts and democracy despite his reputation as a moderate.
Following the arrest of Abdulmuttalab last December in Detroit, Yasir Qadhi expressed surprise at his former pupil’s alleged bomb plot. In an last December with CNN, Qadhi described Abdulmuttalab “as a quiet individual, tight lipped and shy.” The two met in 2008, during a 16 day religious seminar organized by the Al Maghrib Insititute, in Houston Texas. Qadhi said the event was a way to teach the “nuts and bolts” of Islam, adding “it’s ironic that he came to us.”
A videotape provided to FOX News by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, reveals what some experts consider Qadhi’s more radical agenda. In the undated recording made for the UK’s Islam Channel, Qadhi is speaking to a group of Muslim men. He is advising them to ignore western laws and democratic institutions in favor of Sharia or Islamic law.
Walid Phares: Yasir Qadhi's speeches are consistent with Jihadist ideology.
He tells the group, “it is not my right to legislate or your right to legislate. No Supreme court, no system of government no democracy where they vote. Can you believe it, a group of people coming together and voting and the majority vote will then be the law of the land?” The other men on the panel listen intently as Qadhi concludes, “Allah, is our judge, he knows what is best for us.” Calls and an email to Qadhi were not returned.
Terrorism Expert Walid Phares, author of The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy
Phares also criticized the US National Counter Terrorism Center for inviting Gadhi to attend a 2008 symposium on Islamic radicalization. Sources say Gadhi did not speak during the event, but also in attendance was then Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff. According to Phares, the US government is “dropping the ball” by inviting “jihadi ideologues” to participate in anti terror programs. The center said in a statement “participants in these sessions represents a wide array of perspective and viewpoints thereby enabling a more thorough understanding of the extremist radicalization process that can spawn acts of terrorism.”
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine
