"Honor Killing"

[Paparock]

'I Was Kicking and Stamping on Her Neck to Get the Soul Out'

The practice of “honor killing” is sickening enough, but this horrifying story sets a new benchmark in depravity: Woman raped before honor killing: court.

LONDON (Reuters) - A Kurdish woman was brutally raped, stamped on and strangled by members of her family and their friends in an “honor killing” carried out at her London home because she had fallen in love with the wrong man.

Banaz Mahmod, 20, was subjected to the 2-1/2 hour ordeal before she was garroted with a bootlace. Her body was stuffed into a suitcase and taken about 100 miles to Birmingham where it was buried in the back garden of a house. Her badly decomposed body was found in April 2006, three months after the killing.

Last month a jury found her father Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and his brother Ari Mahmod, 51, guilty of murder after a three-month trial. Their associate Mohamad Hama, 30, had earlier admitted killing her. On Thursday at a pre-sentence hearing for Hama, the Old Bailey heard details about Banaz’s last moments.

Prosecutors said the three convicted men, along with two other suspects who are still at large, had carried out the killing fearing that the authorities were closing in on them. They believed Banaz had brought shame on the family by leaving her husband, an Iraqi Kurd she had been forced to marry at 17, and falling in love with Rahmat Suleimani, an Iranian Kurd.
Her former unnamed partner had raped her as well as repeatedly beating her, the court heard.

Hama, who prosecutors said had been a ringleader in the murder, was caught by listening devices talking to a friend in prison about the murder.

In the recordings, transcripts of which were relayed to the court, Hama and his friend are hearing laughing as he described how she was killed with Banaz’s uncle “supervising”.
“I was kicking and stamping on her neck to get the soul out. I saw her stark naked, only wearing pants or underwear,” Hama is recorded as saying.

Special Focus: Islam




Honor Killings, Illicit Sex, and Islamic Law

Intimate violence against women is a worldwide crisis. From “crimes of passion” to “dowry deaths,” not to mention domestic violence, many types of aggression against women occur at the hands of family members. The so-called “honor killing” of women and girls in some Muslim nations is one horrifying manifestation of this global phenomenon.

These killings, which occur with shocking regularity in certain parts of the Middle East and South Asia, target women whose actions – actual or suspected – violate the honor of their family, an honor which is thought to depend on the sexual purity of its female members. Anything from speaking with an unrelated man, to rumored pre-marital loss of virginity, to an extra-marital affair can be cause for an attack, often carried out by a father or brother. In some especially tragic instances, even women and girls who have been raped are slain to remove the stain from the family honor. As with other forms of intimate violence against women, perpetrators are seldom punished.

Some have viewed honor killings as a logical extension of traditional Islamic gender practices, the natural consequence of system that enforces sex-segregation through veiling and female seclusion and harshly punishes violations of these boundaries. Others have argued that honor killings are the antithesis of Islamic morality. This latter view is essentially correct from the perspective of Qur’an, prophetic traditions (hadith), and Islamic legal thought, as a careful analysis of the relevant texts shows. (CLICK HERE TO READ “The Treatment of Honor Killings in Traditional Texts.”) However, certain elements of traditional sexual ethics do contribute to the climate of intense scrutiny of female conduct that finds one extreme expression in honor crimes.

In Qur’an, prophetic tradition, and law, one finds a very strong presumption of women’s chastity along with numerous safeguards to prevent any imputation of unchastity. Within such a context, honor killings are utterly criminal. Numerous prophetic traditions report that when asked about a husband finding his wife with another man, the Prophet agreed that the husband must procure three additional witnesses to her act before the public authority can judge her offense; otherwise he would be liable to lashing for publicly accusing her or to being killed if he killed. If a woman discovered in flagrante cannot be even publicly accused unless there are four witnesses to her act, then mere suspicion can never justify slaying a woman. Questioned by another man who claimed that his honor (ghira) would require him to immediately slay his wife’s lover in such a case, the Prophet reportedly declared that God’s honor was greater than any human’s. (See Hadith page.) The implication is that God’s revealed procedures for dealing with illicit sex must take precedence over human ego and emotion. This does not mean, of course, that human honor is unimportant. The stress placed on safeguarding women’s reputations and punishing slander demonstrates an awareness that such accusations can have devastating consequences for those accused.

From the perspective of Qur’an, prophetic traditions, and law, sex outside of a legally binding tie is considered zina, and is punishable for both women and men. Though there is a double standard in that men are, under certain circumstances, permitted to have several lawful sexual partners while women must always remain monogamous, when it comes to punishment for illicit intercourse men and women are treated exactly alike. In this sense, the traditional framework for dealing with illicit sexual behavior is balanced – unlike in the case of honor killings for actual or suspected sexual misconduct, in which only women are targets.

Still, while honor killings find no sanction whatsoever in Qur’an, prophetic traditions, or law, these sources cannot be absolved of all responsibility for placing a greater share of the burden of maintaining societal chastity on women. Though the Qur’an commands both men (24.30) and women (24.31) to “cast down their gazes” and to “protect their chastity,” it specifically regulates only women’s dress (Q. 24.31; 33.59). Yet it is a long stretch from these commands, which have the declared intention of protecting women from harassment (Q. 33.59), to the legal rules that allow men, especially husbands, to impose seclusion on women, forbid them from leaving the home, and limit their access even to other relatives. These rules for seclusion were never strictly observed by more than an elite minority, and are not generally enforced today. But the basic perspective they embody – that the separation of men and women is to be enforced by keeping women apart from men, and that women who violate these boundaries are suspect – remains influential.

Some have suggested that the best means of combating honor killings is to insist on a strict application of traditional law, under which only the public authority is empowered to punish illicit sexual intercourse, and then only with incontrovertible proof of wrongdoing. The evidentiary requirements for conviction in cases of zina (four eyewitnesses to the actual act of penetration or confession by the offenders) ensure that punishment will virtually never be carried out. By claiming the Islamic “high ground” such a move could be influential in shaping Muslim ideas about honor and punishment. The danger to this approach, though, is that by enshrining traditional texts as literally applicable to the contemporary world, one leaves unchallenged those elements of traditional sexual ethics that create a climate of hyper-attention to women’s bodies and behavior. So-called honor killings are indeed one extreme outgrowth of this climate. A Muslim feminist sexual ethics must help create the conditions for the Qur’anic and traditional values of modesty and chastity to be lived by Muslim women and men in ways that are faithfully chosen and equitably maintained.

[Takeshi]

There are some people who delude themselves into thinking that all cultures are equal, but they're not. This is further proof.

Women to them are slaves, nothing less than an animal to do as they wish.

All mullahs need to have their twig and berries removed .

[PILMAN]

what a bunch of animals.

[Will_Goyam]

I suggest to all my Military brothers... Read up on Islam & see how they treat thier women & others who live in thier countries.

And then ask yourselves do you want them in your Local Governments?

**** NO!

[Mini14]

Yet another example of why Islam needs to be destroyed ASAP.

[Ultra Requete]

Originally Posted by Mini14

Yet another example of why Islam needs to be destroyed ASAP.

Amen to that.

[Amsterdam]

i have heard about that kurdish sect, from north iraq, south iran.
they have a really sick religion which is a mixture from christianity, shia-islam. they really are a 100 yeas behind civilization.

it is stupid mossad sponsered them for decades, but back then Saddam Hussain was the bigger evil...

even now some of these religious sects are sponsored by US army, to terrorize Iran...

[Paparock]

Originally Posted by Amsterdam

i have heard about that kurdish sect, from north iraq, south iran.
they have a really sick religion which is a mixture from christianity, shia-islam. they really are a 100 yeas behind civilization.

it is stupid mossad sponsered them for decades, but back then Saddam Hussain was the bigger evil...

even now some of these religious sects are sponsored by US army, to terrorize Iran...

"Even now some of these religious sects are sponsored by US army, to terrorize Iran..." Where are you getting your facts????

Kurds flee homes as Iran shells villages in Iraq

Iraqi Kurdish officials expressed deepening concern yesterday at an upsurge in fierce clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces in the remote border area of north-east Iraq, where Tehran has recently deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guards.

Jabar Yawar, a deputy minister in the Kurdistan regional government, said four days of intermittent shelling by Iranian forces had hit mountain villages high up on the Iraqi side of the border, wounding two women, destroying livestock and property, and displacing about 1,000 people from their homes. Mr Yawer said there had also been intense fighting on the Iraqi border between Iranian forces and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an armed Iranian Kurdish group that is stepping up its campaign for Kurdish rights against the theocratic regime in Tehran.


On Saturday the Iranian news agency Mehr said an Iranian army helicopter which crashed killing six Republican Guard members had been engaged in a military operation against PJAK. Iranian officials said the helicopter had crashed into the side of a mountain during bad weather in northern Iraq. PJAK sources said the helicopter had been destroyed after it attempted to land in a clearing mined by guerrillas. The PJAK sources claimed its guerrillas had also killed at least five other Iranian soldiers, and a local pro-regime chief, Hussein Bapir.

"If this escalates it could pose a real threat to the Kurdistan region, which is Iraq's most stable area," said Mr Yawar, who said he expected the Iraqi government and US officials in Iraq to make a formal protest to Tehran about the "blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty".

The escalation of tensions in northern Iraq came as a senior US army officer renewed allegations of Iranian support for Shia militias in the south. Major-General Rick Lynch told reporters in the capital that up to 50 members of the elite Revolutionary Guard corps had crossed into Iraq and were training Shia militia members.

Analysts believe PJAK is the fastest growing armed resistance group in Iran. As well as the 3,000 or so members under arms in the mountains, it also claims tens of thousands of followers in secret cells in Iranian Kurdistan. Its campaigning on women's rights has struck a chord with young Iranian Kurdish women. The group says 45% of its fighters are female. Iranian authorities regard the group as a terrorist outfit being sponsored and armed by the US to increase pressure on Iran.
On a recent visit to PJAK camps in the Qandil mountains the Guardian saw no evidence of American weaponry. The majority of its fighters toted Soviet-era Kalashnikovs. In an interview Biryar Gabar, a member of the leadership committee, said the group had no relations with the Americans, but was "open to any group that shares our ideals of a free federal democratic and secular Iran."
__________________
Leaflets said to warn of Iran move into north Iraq

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Kurdish authorities in northeastern Iraq said on Tuesday they were investigating the authenticity of leaflets warning villagers to evacuate ahead of an Iranian military offensive against Kurdish rebels.

Hundreds of villagers have fled their homes in Iraq's mountainous northeast while others hid in caves after what local authorities said was days of intermittent shelling by Iran across the border.

So far there has been no official comment from either Tehran or Baghdad about the shelling.

Cross-border skirmishes occasionally occur as Iraq's neighbours Turkey and Iran combat Kurdish separatist rebels operating from bases in Iraq's mountainous and remote north and northeast.

The government of Iraq's largely autonomous region of Kurdistan said it was investigating after villagers said they had seen the leaflets thrown from helicopters on Monday.

Residents said there were no identifying marks on the leaflets, written in Kurdish, apart from the words "The Islamic Republic of Iran" across the top and bottom.

The leaflets said villagers had 48 hours to evacuate before an Iranian offensive began.

"They do not carry an official stamp of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards or the Iranian Defence Ministry," said Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the Kurdish government.

"These leaflets made many people leave their homes."

The leaflets said the offensive would be around the villages of Qandoul, Haj Omran and Isaw and the town of Qal'at Dizah, 325 km north of Baghdad.

Two women have been wounded, livestock killed, farms and orchards set ablaze and homes damaged in the shelling near small villages across a front of about 50 km, local officials have said in the past three days.
On Saturday, the Iranian news agency Mehr said an Iranian army helicopter which crashed near the border of northern Iraq had been engaged in an operation against the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Turkey blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since 1984, when it launched its struggle for an ethnic homeland in Turkey's southeast

High Stakes Game in Northern Iraq

By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com

Over the past week, with Iranian shells raining down on Iraqi villages in Kurdish areas along the border zone in the north, Iran’s leaders have engaged the United States in a high stakes game that has gone virtually unreported in the elite media.

Iran has massed thousands of troops along its northwestern border in preparation for a ground assault against Iranian Kurdish fighters who have sought refuge in the rugged Qanbil mountains in northwestern Iraq.

On Tuesday, villagers found leaflets bearing the official Islamic Republic of Iran logo, ordering them to leave the area or face the consequences.

“Our enemies, mainly the Americans, are trying to plant security hurdles in our country (Iran),” the leaflets said. “They achieve this through using agents in the areas of Qandil and Khanira inside the Kurdish region. 'The authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran will work on cleansing this area.”

Hundreds of Iraqis from the villages of Qandoul and Qal’at Diza, close to the Iranian border in the province of Sulaymanyah, fled as a result of the Iranian shelling, according to wire service accounts.

Should Iran be allowed to carry out its planned attack, it would amount to an overt aggression against its neighbor. But the potential damage is far worse, because of the deep U.S. engagement in Iraq.

A successful Iranian attack against opposition Kurds from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (known as PJAK) based in Iraq, will strike a triple blow against America.

Not only will the Iranians have violated Iraq’s sovereignty, guaranteed until now by the United States; they will have shown that despite the presence of 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the United States “can do nothing” against Iran, as the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, liked to say.

Even worse: if the United States sits this one out, we will send a terrible message to Iranian opponents of the regime in Tehran that despite all our calls for “freedom” and “democracy” in Iran, we will not intervene to prevent them from being massacred, even when we have the opportunity and the forces in place to save them from certain death.

And yet, unless Congress and the White House react immediately, that is precisely what is going to happen.

An Iranian victory in northern Iraq will have far-reaching consequences, and will further embolden president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is engaged in political, military, and intelligence hardball with the United States on multiple fronts, including inside Iraq.

Just last week, U.S. forces arrested another “high-priority” Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer in Baghdad, and accused him of funneling aid to Iraqi insurgents.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver announced the arrest on August 15, and said that coalition forces “will continue their focused operations against unhelpful Iranian influence interfering in Iraq.”

An unnamed U.S. official said that the Iranian Guardsman was responsible for smuggling explosively-formed penetrators, Katyusha rockets and other weapons into Iraq, and “had direct ties to senior militant leaders and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.”

Another U.S. military spokesman. Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, told reporters in Iraq on Aug. 14 that Iran had recently provided 240 mm long-range rockets to insurgents in Iraq for attacks on U.S. forces.

"The 240 mm rocket is a large-caliber projectile that has been provided to militia extremists groups in the past along with a range of other weapons from Iranian sources," Bergner said.

Similar Iranian-made rockets I examined last summer in Haifa and in other northern Israel towns and cities had been fired against Israeli civilian targets by Hezbollah with warheads containing thousands of miniature ball-bearings, designed to kill and maim.

On May 25, PKK guerillas in Turkey derailed a train bound for Syria for Iran, ostensibly carrying construction materials. When prosecutors went through the wreckage they found an Iranian-made rocket launcher and 300 rockets bound for Hezbollah in Syria, according to Turkish press reports.

There is no way those weapons could have transited Turkey on the Turkish national railroad without someone in the Turkish government knowing what was going on.

Iran is banking on its secret “entente” with Turkey – to supply Hezbollah through Syria, and to smash the bases of each other’s opposition Kurds in Iraq - to deter the United States from any military intervention in northern Iraq.

The Turks have been threatening for months to go after the PKK, who have tens of thousands of fighters training in camps inside Iraq, along the Turkish border.

And so the Iranians have spread the rumor, which until now has been accepted at face value, that its own Kurdish dissidents (PJAK) are actually the Iranian branch of the PKK, which the U.S. has designated as an international terrorist organization.

The State Department took Turkey’s insistence that PJAK was allied with the PKK seriously enough that it refused to meet earlier this month with visiting PJAK leader, Rahman Haj Ahmadi, despite his open support for the U.S. military presence in Iraq and his identification with U.S. goals in the region.

Both the PKK and PJAK have training camps in the Qanbil mountain range in northern Iraq. But because of the difficult geography, and their different needs, they inhabit “different sides of the mountains,” Rahman Ahmadi told me in Washington.

“The PKK doesn’t need us,” he said. “They have tens of thousands of fighters, and hundreds of thousands of sympathizers.”

But Ahmadi acknowledges that PJAK and the PKK cooperate to a certain degree, if only to prevent clashes between their own fighters.

“The president of the Iraqi Kurdish Regional government, Massoud Barzani, also has an agreement with the PKK,” he told me. “Does that make Barzani a supporter of the PKK?”

This is not the first time the Turks have played us in Iraq. In 2003, on a flimsy pretext of domestic opposition, they successfully prevented the 4th Infantry Division from crossing Turkey to join coalition forces that liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein.

We can sit by and allow Iran to violate Iraq’s sovereignty, defy the U.S. military, and smash a significant Iranian opposition group on the slim pretext that Iran is “merely” seeking to punish its own rebels, just as Turkey.

Or we can extend protection to the Iranian Kurds who have established training camps in the rugged mountains of northeastern Iraq, and inflict a double blow on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Clearly, the Iranians believe they can thumb their noses at the U.S. military. For more than a week, they have conducted intermittent shelling of Iraqi Kurdish villages in the general vicinity of suspected PJAK bases.

My Iranian sources tell me that the Iranians are hoping to expel PJAK from the area and replace them with Ansar al-Islam, the precursor group to al Qaeda in Iraq,

“They want to send Saad Bin Laden, who is currently in Iran under Iranian government protection, into a new base inside Iraq,” one source told me.

Saad Bin Laden is Osama Bin Laden’s eldest son, who is widely viewed as the heir to his terrorist empire, should his father die. He was given refuge in Iran shortly after al Qaeda evacuated its bases in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks.

PJAK is a natural ally of the United States. They seek to unite Iranians to overthrow the dictatorship of the clergy in Iran, and to work together to build a future secular democracy.

We don’t have to provide them weapons, or money, or training. But if we allow Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops to attack PJAK inside Iraq with impunity, we may as well pack up and leave – not just Iraq, but the entire region. Because we will have no credibility left.

If instead, if we seize this opportunity to smash an Iranian Revolutionary Guards offensive with massive force, we could send a message that will make Iran’s leaders think twice before messing with us again.

It’s about time we made Iran’s leaders pay a price for killing Americans and undermining America’s allies. Here is a terrific opportunity to get that job done.
__________________

[Mini14]

Originally Posted by Paparock

"Even now some of these religious sects are sponsored by US army, to terrorize Iran..." Where are you getting your facts????

Kurds flee homes as Iran shells villages in Iraq

Iraqi Kurdish officials expressed deepening concern yesterday at an upsurge in fierce clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces in the remote border area of north-east Iraq, where Tehran has recently deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guards.

Jabar Yawar, a deputy minister in the Kurdistan regional government, said four days of intermittent shelling by Iranian forces had hit mountain villages high up on the Iraqi side of the border, wounding two women, destroying livestock and property, and displacing about 1,000 people from their homes. Mr Yawer said there had also been intense fighting on the Iraqi border between Iranian forces and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an armed Iranian Kurdish group that is stepping up its campaign for Kurdish rights against the theocratic regime in Tehran.


On Saturday the Iranian news agency Mehr said an Iranian army helicopter which crashed killing six Republican Guard members had been engaged in a military operation against PJAK. Iranian officials said the helicopter had crashed into the side of a mountain during bad weather in northern Iraq. PJAK sources said the helicopter had been destroyed after it attempted to land in a clearing mined by guerrillas. The PJAK sources claimed its guerrillas had also killed at least five other Iranian soldiers, and a local pro-regime chief, Hussein Bapir.

"If this escalates it could pose a real threat to the Kurdistan region, which is Iraq's most stable area," said Mr Yawar, who said he expected the Iraqi government and US officials in Iraq to make a formal protest to Tehran about the "blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty".

The escalation of tensions in northern Iraq came as a senior US army officer renewed allegations of Iranian support for Shia militias in the south. Major-General Rick Lynch told reporters in the capital that up to 50 members of the elite Revolutionary Guard corps had crossed into Iraq and were training Shia militia members.

Analysts believe PJAK is the fastest growing armed resistance group in Iran. As well as the 3,000 or so members under arms in the mountains, it also claims tens of thousands of followers in secret cells in Iranian Kurdistan. Its campaigning on women's rights has struck a chord with young Iranian Kurdish women. The group says 45% of its fighters are female. Iranian authorities regard the group as a terrorist outfit being sponsored and armed by the US to increase pressure on Iran.
On a recent visit to PJAK camps in the Qandil mountains the Guardian saw no evidence of American weaponry. The majority of its fighters toted Soviet-era Kalashnikovs. In an interview Biryar Gabar, a member of the leadership committee, said the group had no relations with the Americans, but was "open to any group that shares our ideals of a free federal democratic and secular Iran."
__________________
Leaflets said to warn of Iran move into north Iraq

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Kurdish authorities in northeastern Iraq said on Tuesday they were investigating the authenticity of leaflets warning villagers to evacuate ahead of an Iranian military offensive against Kurdish rebels.

Hundreds of villagers have fled their homes in Iraq's mountainous northeast while others hid in caves after what local authorities said was days of intermittent shelling by Iran across the border.

So far there has been no official comment from either Tehran or Baghdad about the shelling.

Cross-border skirmishes occasionally occur as Iraq's neighbours Turkey and Iran combat Kurdish separatist rebels operating from bases in Iraq's mountainous and remote north and northeast.

The government of Iraq's largely autonomous region of Kurdistan said it was investigating after villagers said they had seen the leaflets thrown from helicopters on Monday.

Residents said there were no identifying marks on the leaflets, written in Kurdish, apart from the words "The Islamic Republic of Iran" across the top and bottom.

The leaflets said villagers had 48 hours to evacuate before an Iranian offensive began.

"They do not carry an official stamp of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards or the Iranian Defence Ministry," said Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the Kurdish government.

"These leaflets made many people leave their homes."

The leaflets said the offensive would be around the villages of Qandoul, Haj Omran and Isaw and the town of Qal'at Dizah, 325 km north of Baghdad.

Two women have been wounded, livestock killed, farms and orchards set ablaze and homes damaged in the shelling near small villages across a front of about 50 km, local officials have said in the past three days.
On Saturday, the Iranian news agency Mehr said an Iranian army helicopter which crashed near the border of northern Iraq had been engaged in an operation against the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Turkey blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since 1984, when it launched its struggle for an ethnic homeland in Turkey's southeast

High Stakes Game in Northern Iraq

By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com

Over the past week, with Iranian shells raining down on Iraqi villages in Kurdish areas along the border zone in the north, Iran’s leaders have engaged the United States in a high stakes game that has gone virtually unreported in the elite media.

Iran has massed thousands of troops along its northwestern border in preparation for a ground assault against Iranian Kurdish fighters who have sought refuge in the rugged Qanbil mountains in northwestern Iraq.

On Tuesday, villagers found leaflets bearing the official Islamic Republic of Iran logo, ordering them to leave the area or face the consequences.

“Our enemies, mainly the Americans, are trying to plant security hurdles in our country (Iran),” the leaflets said. “They achieve this through using agents in the areas of Qandil and Khanira inside the Kurdish region. 'The authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran will work on cleansing this area.”

Hundreds of Iraqis from the villages of Qandoul and Qal’at Diza, close to the Iranian border in the province of Sulaymanyah, fled as a result of the Iranian shelling, according to wire service accounts.

Should Iran be allowed to carry out its planned attack, it would amount to an overt aggression against its neighbor. But the potential damage is far worse, because of the deep U.S. engagement in Iraq.

A successful Iranian attack against opposition Kurds from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (known as PJAK) based in Iraq, will strike a triple blow against America.

Not only will the Iranians have violated Iraq’s sovereignty, guaranteed until now by the United States; they will have shown that despite the presence of 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the United States “can do nothing” against Iran, as the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, liked to say.

Even worse: if the United States sits this one out, we will send a terrible message to Iranian opponents of the regime in Tehran that despite all our calls for “freedom” and “democracy” in Iran, we will not intervene to prevent them from being massacred, even when we have the opportunity and the forces in place to save them from certain death.

And yet, unless Congress and the White House react immediately, that is precisely what is going to happen.

An Iranian victory in northern Iraq will have far-reaching consequences, and will further embolden president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is engaged in political, military, and intelligence hardball with the United States on multiple fronts, including inside Iraq.

Just last week, U.S. forces arrested another “high-priority” Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer in Baghdad, and accused him of funneling aid to Iraqi insurgents.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver announced the arrest on August 15, and said that coalition forces “will continue their focused operations against unhelpful Iranian influence interfering in Iraq.”

An unnamed U.S. official said that the Iranian Guardsman was responsible for smuggling explosively-formed penetrators, Katyusha rockets and other weapons into Iraq, and “had direct ties to senior militant leaders and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.”

Another U.S. military spokesman. Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, told reporters in Iraq on Aug. 14 that Iran had recently provided 240 mm long-range rockets to insurgents in Iraq for attacks on U.S. forces.

"The 240 mm rocket is a large-caliber projectile that has been provided to militia extremists groups in the past along with a range of other weapons from Iranian sources," Bergner said.

Similar Iranian-made rockets I examined last summer in Haifa and in other northern Israel towns and cities had been fired against Israeli civilian targets by Hezbollah with warheads containing thousands of miniature ball-bearings, designed to kill and maim.

On May 25, PKK guerillas in Turkey derailed a train bound for Syria for Iran, ostensibly carrying construction materials. When prosecutors went through the wreckage they found an Iranian-made rocket launcher and 300 rockets bound for Hezbollah in Syria, according to Turkish press reports.

There is no way those weapons could have transited Turkey on the Turkish national railroad without someone in the Turkish government knowing what was going on.

Iran is banking on its secret “entente” with Turkey – to supply Hezbollah through Syria, and to smash the bases of each other’s opposition Kurds in Iraq - to deter the United States from any military intervention in northern Iraq.

The Turks have been threatening for months to go after the PKK, who have tens of thousands of fighters training in camps inside Iraq, along the Turkish border.

And so the Iranians have spread the rumor, which until now has been accepted at face value, that its own Kurdish dissidents (PJAK) are actually the Iranian branch of the PKK, which the U.S. has designated as an international terrorist organization.

The State Department took Turkey’s insistence that PJAK was allied with the PKK seriously enough that it refused to meet earlier this month with visiting PJAK leader, Rahman Haj Ahmadi, despite his open support for the U.S. military presence in Iraq and his identification with U.S. goals in the region.

Both the PKK and PJAK have training camps in the Qanbil mountain range in northern Iraq. But because of the difficult geography, and their different needs, they inhabit “different sides of the mountains,” Rahman Ahmadi told me in Washington.

“The PKK doesn’t need us,” he said. “They have tens of thousands of fighters, and hundreds of thousands of sympathizers.”

But Ahmadi acknowledges that PJAK and the PKK cooperate to a certain degree, if only to prevent clashes between their own fighters.

“The president of the Iraqi Kurdish Regional government, Massoud Barzani, also has an agreement with the PKK,” he told me. “Does that make Barzani a supporter of the PKK?”

This is not the first time the Turks have played us in Iraq. In 2003, on a flimsy pretext of domestic opposition, they successfully prevented the 4th Infantry Division from crossing Turkey to join coalition forces that liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein.

We can sit by and allow Iran to violate Iraq’s sovereignty, defy the U.S. military, and smash a significant Iranian opposition group on the slim pretext that Iran is “merely” seeking to punish its own rebels, just as Turkey.

Or we can extend protection to the Iranian Kurds who have established training camps in the rugged mountains of northeastern Iraq, and inflict a double blow on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Clearly, the Iranians believe they can thumb their noses at the U.S. military. For more than a week, they have conducted intermittent shelling of Iraqi Kurdish villages in the general vicinity of suspected PJAK bases.

My Iranian sources tell me that the Iranians are hoping to expel PJAK from the area and replace them with Ansar al-Islam, the precursor group to al Qaeda in Iraq,

“They want to send Saad Bin Laden, who is currently in Iran under Iranian government protection, into a new base inside Iraq,” one source told me.

Saad Bin Laden is Osama Bin Laden’s eldest son, who is widely viewed as the heir to his terrorist empire, should his father die. He was given refuge in Iran shortly after al Qaeda evacuated its bases in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks.

PJAK is a natural ally of the United States. They seek to unite Iranians to overthrow the dictatorship of the clergy in Iran, and to work together to build a future secular democracy.

We don’t have to provide them weapons, or money, or training. But if we allow Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops to attack PJAK inside Iraq with impunity, we may as well pack up and leave – not just Iraq, but the entire region. Because we will have no credibility left.

If instead, if we seize this opportunity to smash an Iranian Revolutionary Guards offensive with massive force, we could send a message that will make Iran’s leaders think twice before messing with us again.

It’s about time we made Iran’s leaders pay a price for killing Americans and undermining America’s allies. Here is a terrific opportunity to get that job done.
__________________

If we use mass, indiscriminate airstrikes(not surgical ones)we can obliteratethe Revolutionary Guard with few (if any) American losses. Think the Tokyo Fire Raid or Dresden. It's why napalm and cluster bombs should be put back into service.

[Paparock]

22 Year Old Jordanian Bride Victim of Honor Killing

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Brutal murder for the sake of honor. Women continue to be butchered at the hand of family members.

"Six charged in ‘honour’ crime" from AFP:

AMMAN: A Jordanian prosecutor has charged six men with murder over the ‘honour’ killing of a female relative suspected of having a pre-marriage affair with her husband, a local newspaper reported yesterday.

The 22-year-old woman was allegedly shot dead just two weeks after her wedding by her uncle, who claimed he was “cleansing the family honour”, according to the English-language Jordan Times

.

She was the ninth woman reportedly murdered in a so-called honour crime since the beginning of the year, it said.

The 38-year-old uncle was charged with premeditated murder and five others, including the woman’s father, were charged with complicity, the paper said, quoting an unnamed official source.

The victim had filed a complaint against the suspects after they threatened to kill her, but she later dropped the charges on her father’s request, the official said.

“Before entering the mayor’s office to drop the charges, her father lured her to a side road... one of her uncles drew a gun and shot her repeatedly until he made sure she was dead,” according to the source.

Ah, the Honor, Compassion and Understanding of those that say they believe in and practice Islam it really does show why they are known as the Religion of Peace or in this case perhaps “Pieces” as in carrying and using one on a helpless victim.

Christian Seeks Asylum in Italy to Avoid Stoning



Will the UN actually do something useful and save a man's life?

"Italy: Nigerian Christian facing stoning prays he can stay" from AKI:

Turin, 24 August (AKI) - A young Nigerian Christian man, Felix Eugenne is anxiously awaiting a decision on 3 September from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) on whether he can remain in Italy. He is facing deportation to Nigeria and death by stoning for having sex outside wedlock with a Muslim woman.

Magistrates in Nigeria sentenced Eugenne, 27, to death by stoning preceded by public flogging. His crime was to have had sex with his girlfriend Fatimah, who is a Muslim: a double offence in Niger state, where Islamic law is in force.

Eugenne's family property was torched by his girlfriend's relatives when they found out Fatimah was pregnant, and Eugenne and his father were thrown into jail.

Eugenne was imprisoned and given 21 public lashes for several days. He had been sentenced to 21 public lashes for 21 days before death by stoning, but says he managed to escape when his mullah-jailer left his cell unlocked one day.

The mullah had his throat slit in a public square as an "exemplary" punishment, Eugenne said. He managed to flee Nigeria and reach Italy aboard a container ship in April 1994.

Islam…a religion for the entire family.

I wonder what will happen when Muslims start demanding that Muslim Islamic belief be followed in Belgium? OUCH! That is going to leave a mark!!!

[Amsterdam]

yes, i agree the situation is complex.
your additions show the thruth is not so black and white as many ppl think it is.
There are many terrorists group activities from PUK and PKK coordinated with other kurdish groups, some are freedom fighting activities, however many are facists terror acts, even islamic facism.
In their kurdish culture it is known that there are many abuses, killings of women.

[Uriah]

How about Indian, Asian, Jew and aborigin genocide by Christian ?


Christian are more savage than Islam

[Demoralizer]

I find myself replying to the same **** Uriah keeps bringing up. This moron really has nothing better to say and offers no compelling arguments. Just the same recycled crap coming from his dirty mouth.

[Ultra Requete]

Originally Posted by Demoralizer

I find myself replying to the same **** Uriah keeps bringing up. This moron really has nothing better to say and offers no compelling arguments. Just the same recycled crap coming from his dirty mouth.

Yes that true but; he so far didn't do enough to get banned; I gave him a week to change his sig or I will bann him and give the resident idiot jester troll job back to YOYO, he atleast is funny.

[Demoralizer]

Haha true that, where's yoyo when you need him.

[Abu Jahal]

But is a fact that crusade martyrdom kills Jews more than moslems does. In Rhine Valley, the crusade kills thousands of Jews. While in Cordoba, Andalucia, Jews and moslems gain a Golden Era of enlightment, when science is developed, so that jews now gain nobel more often.


History can't lie !

Remember of those day !


Speaking of trolls i warned you about using religius Kitamn - the hipocrisy and halftruth about islam; history don't lie but muslims do.

[desertscout]

Originally Posted by Abu Jahal

....
History can't lie !

Now let's enter the current century. What religion is responsible for firing rockets into a sovereign nation on an almost daily basis??? I'll give you a hint. It is the same religion that has adherents that are calling for the extermination of Jews on an almost daily basis!!! All the people who were alive back in the day that you refer to have already assumed ambient temperature, and none of the past events relate to what a certain religion is attempting to do to Jews and the sovereign nation of Israel this very day. I don't really think that you need a hint. It is the same pagan cult that has adapted the pagan structure called the Kaaba and the black meteor stone into its current religious dogma and iconography. It is the same religion that erroneously claims that its prophet is more important than all preceding Hebrew prophets. When you think of contemporary agents of bigotry, death, destruction, and crimes against humanity in today's world; what religion comes to mind? Come on now, it only has five letters. I'm sure that the answer will come to you soon. One last hint; they eat (kill, maim, and destroy) their own all in the name and will of an Arabian demon. What is the name of that ME religion again???