Summary: Six NATO service members, including three Americans, have been killed in Afghanistan, making it the deadliest day for the international force in more than two months. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 11, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that President George W. Bush in 2008 rejected a plea from Israel to help it raid Iran’s main nuclear complex, opting instead to authorize a new U.S. covert action aimed at sabotaging Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, according to the New York Times.

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Summary: Sequence of events in the Dec. 30, 2009 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA personnel and contractors at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. … CIA bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, in a videotape released posthumously by the Pakistani Taliban, called on Muslim jihadists worldwide to avenge the death of former Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud last August in a U.S. missile strike, by attacking U.S. targets. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 10, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that President-elect Barack Obama, in announcing his nomination of Leon Panetta as CIA director and Adm. Dennis Blair as national intelligence director, said his administration would not compromise its ideals to fight terrorism and that he had instructed his nominees to honor the Geneva Conventions.

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Summary: While ramping up the fight against al-Qaida with U.S. help, the Yemeni government has also escalated its own internal conflicts with Shi’ite rebels in the north and Sunni secessionists in the south, threatening to throw the fractured country into greater chaos and nourish the growth of al-Qaida. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 9, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had called on the Iraqi resistance to stage “revenge operations” against American forces to protest Israel’s Gaza offensive.

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Summary: Rudy Giuliani falsely claims no domestic terrorist attacks under George W. Bush — Media Matters for America, a Web-based research and information center dedicated to monitoring, analyzing, and correcting misinformation in the U.S. media has good reporting and analysis of misguided attempts to rewrite history for political gain by erasing the Bush administration’s responsibility for failures leading up to 9/11. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 8, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Iraq remained the deadliest country for journalists in 2008, followed by India and Mexico.

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Summary: Thousands of Afghans shouting “Death to America!” protested the killings of children, the latest in a string of controversial cases in which international forces have been blamed for civilian deaths. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 7, 2009, Aubrey Immelman examined the latest lead in the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling and provided links to reports on the Wetterling and Joshua Guimond missing person cases in St. Joseph and Collegeville, Minnesota.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. One-year retrospective #1: One year ago today, on January 6, 2009, Aubrey Immelman announced the Mass of Christian Burial for Br. Dietrich Reinhart, president emeritus of Saint John’s University, in the Saint John’s Abbey Church, Collegeville, Minn. … One-year retrospective #2: One year ago today, on January 6, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured year-end “honors” for U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann that couldn’t be accommodated in his December 31, 2008 Minnesota 6th Congressional District Year in Review. He also reported that former U.S.-installed prime minister of Iraq Iyad Allawi — comparing the U.S. decision to hasten elections in Iraq with the Bush administration’s support for a vote in the Palestinian territories that was won by U.S. foe Hamas in 2006 — said that despite repeated warnings U.S. officials blindly foisted a Western-style democracy on Iraq, helping plunge it into sectarian bloodshed and a political morass.

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Summary: Intelligence lapse: Dr. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian physician who turned against his Jordanian intelligence recruiters and struck the CIA’s Camp Chapman forward base in Khost province near the Afghan-Pakistan frontier on December 30, 2009 killing seven Central Intelligence Agency employees and his Jordanian recruiter, matched the psychological profile of a suicide bomber. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 5, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Vice President Dick Cheney, in an exit interview on CBS “Face the Nation,” defended the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, of which he was a key proponent and architect.

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Summary: The suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan was carried out by a Jordanian doctor, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who was an al-Qaida double agent. Personality profile of al-Qaida No. 2, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 4, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that a female suicide bomber, in what has become an emerging pattern in Iraq — the mujahidaat — killed at least 38 and wounded 72 in an attack on pilgrims at the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in Kadhimiya, Iraq.

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Summary: White House aide John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, says U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a “smoking gun” that could have prevented the attempt by radical Islamic fundamentalist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 3, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that tensions were mounting between Sunni Arabs and Kurds in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where political violence was increasing ahead of provincial elections.

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Summary: In the latest sign that Yemen — the country where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day airliner bombing recently spent some time — is becoming a focus for both the West and extremists, Britain announced that it and the U.S. have agreed to fund a counterterrorism police unit there. Meanwhile, Somalia’s Islamist rebel group al-Shabab said it was ready to send reinforcements to al-Qaida in Yemen should the U.S. carry out retaliatory strikes, and urged other Muslims to follow suit. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 2, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that South African anti-apartheid icon Helen Suzman, one of the first white lawmakers to fight against the injustices of whites-only rule in that country, died on Thursday, January 1, 2009 at the age of 91.

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