Gingrich warns of role of 'secular left'

CUMMING, Ga. (AP) — Newt Gingrich warned members of a Georgia church Sunday that the "secular left" is trying to undermine American principles established by the Founding Fathers as he sought to rejuvenate his presidential bid in his home state.

The former House speaker is bypassing Tuesday's Republican presidential primaries in Michigan and Arizona and spending most of the week in Georgia, which he represented in Congress for 20 years. Gingrich said at a church north of Atlanta that Americans have faced a "50-year assault" by those trying to alienate people of faith.

"The forces of the secular left believe passionately and deeply, and with frankly a religious fervor, in their world view and they will regard what I am saying as a horrifying assault on what they think is the truth," Gingrich said. "Because their version of the truth is to have a totally neutral government that has no meaning."

Gingrich's campaign has struggled since winning South Carolina's GOP primary on Jan. 21, watching as Rick Santorum has emerged as Mitt Romney's chief rival. Gingrich is trying to regain traction in Georgia, Tennessee and a group of Super Tuesday states voting March 6, hoping to amass delegates to the national nominating convention.

At First Redeemer Church, Gingrich said the nation's founding was supported by people of faith, saying those principles were under attack by the Obama administration.

"You loan power to the government, the government does not loan power to you," Gingrich said.

The former speaker also criticized President Barack Obama's decision to apologize for the burning of Qurans at a military base in Afghanistan. The incident has led to violent riots in Afghanistan, in which four U.S. soldiers have been killed.

Gingrich said George Washington would not have apologized for an incident that led to the killing of young Americans. "We are supposed to apologize to those who are killing us? I don't think so," Gingrich said to applause.

At the outset, the thrice-married Gingrich told a few thousand congregants that he was not speaking to them "as a religious leader, and I don't come here as a saint," referencing the attention that his previous marriages gained earlier in the campaign.

"I come here as a citizen who has had a life that at times has fallen short of the glory of God, who has had to seek God's forgiveness and had to seek reconciliation," Gingrich said.

Gingrich travels Monday to Tennessee, where he will attend campaign events in Nashville, and then return to Georgia for a bus tour around the state. He has said a win in Georgia is critical to his presidential bid but has stopped short of saying it would end his campaign, stating the Republican contests are likely to extend deep into the spring.

Army IDs remains of last missing soldier in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S military announced Sunday that it has recovered the remains of the last American service member who was unaccounted for in  Iraq, an Army interpreter seized by gunmen after sneaking off base to visit his Iraqi wife in Baghdad during the height of the insurgency.

The remains of Staff Sgt. Ahmed al-Taie, who was 41 when militiamen seized him on Oct. 23, 2006, were positively identified at the military's mortuary in Dover, Del., the Army said in a statement released Sunday. Army officials said they had no further details about the circumstances surrounding his death or the discovery of his remains.

Al-Taie's brother, Hathal Al-Taie, told The Associated Press the military officer who visited the family's home to inform them about the remains said they are still in Dover, but that he didn't know the circumstances surrounding his brother's death.

"We have no information right now, not even how the body looks like or when they're going to release him," Hathal Al-Taie said by phone from Ann Arbor, Mich., where the family settled after leaving Iraq for the U.S. when his brother was still a teenager.

Their uncle, Entifadh Qanbar, said he was told by the Army major who informed the family in Ann Arbor that the remains were received at Dover on Feb. 22.

"I asked if it was an accident or if he was killed, and he said they didn't know, that they are investigating," Qanbar said by phone from Beirut, where he lives. "He said he had the same questions that I have."

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad did not respond to a request for comment late Sunday.

Family members say that like many Iraqi exiles, Ahmed al-Taie was eager to help his native land rebuild after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and ouster of Saddam Hussein.

He met his wife during a trip to Iraq shortly after Saddam fell, while he was still a civilian, and in December 2004 he joined an Army reserve program for native speakers of Arabic and other strategic languages. He was deployed to Iraq in November 2005 and was assigned to a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Baghdad until he was kidnapped the following year.

At the time he was seized, kidnappings for ransom or political motives, mostly of Iraqis but also many foreigners, were common. The February 2006 bombing of a Shiite mosque by Sunni insurgents caused retaliatory bloodshed to spiral, and death squads roamed the streets.

Al-Taie's in-laws say he often met secretly with his wife at her family's home despite warnings that he was in danger of being kidnapped.

It was during one of those visits that al-Taie disappeared. Masked gunmen hiding in an abandoned Saddam-era army building seized him as he went to find his wife at her uncle's house, less than two blocks away in the Karradah.

"A neighbor saw the gunmen and went to my family and informed them. My parents, brothers and sisters all came at once and pleaded with them to let him go," al-Taie's sister-in-law Shaimaa Abdul-Sattar, who witnessed the abduction, told the AP during an interview in 2010 at her Baghdad apartment.

Al-Taie remained calm as he was led into a waiting car and whisked away.

As an American soldier and a Sunni Muslim, al-Taie faced a double risk when he left the protection of his base inside the Green Zone, a well-guarded area that houses the U.S. Embassy, Iraqi government offices and the parliament.

American commanders immediately launched a massive manhunt, locking down Karradah and Sadr City, a Shiite enclave in eastern Baghdad.

Within days, the military arrested four of the kidnappers. But by then, al-Taie had already been handed off to another group and transported to the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq, according to people familiar with the case.

About a week after his abduction, a family member received a ransom demand, the U.S. military previously told the AP.

The relative then met with members of the group behind the kidnapping. They showed him a grainy video on a handheld device of a man they claimed was al-Taie but he demanded solid evidence that al-Taie, who was 41 at the time, was alive and well.

Qanbar, al-Taie's uncle, denied during a previous interview that any ransom demand had been made, but he described for the AP a web of negotiations with a number of intermediaries as he continued to pursue leads through the years. Al-Taie was last seen four months after his abduction in a video posted on the Internet by a Shiite militant faction called Ahl al-Bayt Brigades.

Al-Taie was the last American service member unaccounted for, but several civilians, including Americans who were participating in the efforts to rebuild Iraq, are still missing.

Pakistan completes demolition of bin Laden compound

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - The Pakistani home of al Qaedachief Osama bin Laden, the place where he was killed after the biggest manhunt in history, is no more.

Pakistan security forces completed the demolition of bin Laden's compound on Sunday, erasing a symbol of humiliation forPakistan's military that has marked one of the most difficult periods in U.S.-Pakistan ties.

Bin Laden was killed in the house in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 by U.S. commandos in a daring night raid that left the Pakistani military angry it had not been consulted. While much of the world cheered the death, Pakistan fumed over what it called a violation of its sovereignty.

"The process of demolishing the compound on Saturday evening has been completed on Sunday night," a senior security official said in Abbottabad, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

"The whole structure of the building has been razed to the ground. It actually took some time as the process of demolition and removing the wreckage was going on simultaneously."

Why Pakistani authorities decided to demolish the structure now is unclear.

During the demolition, security forces cordoned off the compound and restricted nearby residents' movements. Life in the rest of the military town continued as normal, with children playing cricket and flying kites, and couples strolling or shopping.

The Pakistani military and local security forces had begun moving heavy machinery into the area on Saturday evening.

Residents had complained of problems due to security measures since the killing of bin Laden, with many saying it was better to remove the building and let people live their lives.

On the moonless night of May 2, Navy SEALs swooped in on specially modified Blackhawk choppers, forced their way to the top floor of the house and killed bin Laden with shots to the head and the chest.

One helicopter was damaged and forced to land, leaving the SEAL team to pile into a remaining chopper along with the al Qaeda chief's body. The Pakistani army says it knew nothing of the operation until it was over.

The United States has said it kept the raid secret because it feared elements within Pakistan - possibly connected with its spy agency or military - could tip off bin Laden.

The relationship has never recovered. It deteriorated further after an attack by NATO helicopters on a Pakistan border post in November left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead.

Pakistan has closed off NATO supply routes to troops in Afghanistan. A Pakistani doctor who helped the United States verify bin Laden's location in Abbottabad is in a military prison facing possible treason charges for working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency."