Iranian militias Cartoons

AP Explains: Who are Iraq’s Iran-backed militias?

Iran emerged as a major power broker in Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, supporting Shiite Islamist parties and militias that have dominated the country ever since.

Worries are increasing that the militias could drag Iraq into the growing proxy war between the U.S. and Iran in the Middle East. The United States and its ally, Israel, are targeting pro-Iranian militias across Lebanon, Syria and Iraq with economic sanctions and airstrikes hitting their bases and other infrastructure.

Iran also supports many of the militias that mobilized in 2014 to battle the Islamic State group, gaining outsized influence as militiamen joined security forces and U.S. troops to defeat the extremists. Those state-sanctioned, mainly Shiite militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, have grown into a powerful political faction estimated to have the most seats in the Iraqi parliament.

Iraq has long struggled to balance its ties with the U.S. and Iran, both allies of the Iraqi government but regional archenemies. The Iraqi government angrily condemned the U.S. airstrikes this week against an Iran-backed militia, Kataeb Hezbollah, which is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces. The U.S. blames Kataeb for a string of unclaimed attacks targeting U.S. bases in Iraq, including one that killed an American contractor this week. The apparent decision by Iraqi security forces not to prevent supporters of the militia from breaking into the U.S. Embassy compound in retaliation signaled a sharp deterioration of U.S.-Iraq relations.

The Popular Mobilization Forces is an umbrella group for a number of Iran-backed militias that include the Imam Ali Brigades and Sayed al-Shuhada. The PMF is practically run by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a military commander who has been designated a terrorist by Washington.

The Badr Organization is one of the largest groups within the PMF. Its chief, Hadi al-Amiri, also leads the the powerful Fatah bloc in parliament. The other main parliamentary bloc is led by populist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has aimed to realign himself with recent anti-government protests opposing Iranian influence in Iraq.

Qais al-Khizali, who is on a U.S. terror list, heads the Iranian-backed Shiite militia, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous. He rose to prominence as a leader in the Shiite insurgency after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. He has called for U.S. troops to leave Iraq now that the Islamic State group has been largely defeated.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which owns its own TV station, made significant gains in last year’s elections, and al-Khazali is now represented by a 15-member bloc in parliament. Al-Khazali’s forces fought in Syria alongside President Bashar Assad’s troops.

The Iran-backed groups have also become the target of popular anger in Iraq. Anti-government protests that began in October have swept the country’s largely Shiite south, with demonstrators demanding an end to Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs.

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Attack on US Embassy in Iraq shows stark choices for Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — The attack on the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad by Iran-supported militiamen Tuesday is a stark demonstration that Iran can still strike at American interests despite President Donald Trump’s economic pressure campaign. Trump said Iran would be held “fully responsible” for the attack, but it was unclear whether that meant military retaliation.

“They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!” Trump tweeted later in the afternoon. He also thanked top Iraqi government leaders for their “rapid response upon request.”

Defense Secretary Mark Esper later announced that “in response to recent events” in Iraq, and at Trump’s direction, he authorized the immediate deployment of an infantry battalion of about 750 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to the Middle East. He did not specify their destination, but a U.S. official familiar with the decision said they will go to Kuwait.

Esper said additional soldiers from the 82nd Airborne’s quick-deployment brigade, known officially as its Immediate Response Force, are prepared to deploy over the next several days. The U.S. official, who provided unreleased details on condition of anonymity, said the full brigade of about 4,000 soldiers may deploy.

“This deployment is an appropriate and precautionary action taken in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities, such as we witnessed in Baghdad today,” Esper said in a written statement.

The 750 soldiers deploying immediately are in addition to 14,000 U.S. troops who have deployed to the Gulf region since May in response to concerns about Iranian aggression, including its alleged sabotage of commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf.

Tuesday’s breach of the embassy compound in Baghdad, which caused no known U.S. casualties or evacuations, revealed growing strains between Washington and Baghdad, raising questions about the future of the U.S. military mission there. The U.S. has about 5,200 troops in Iraq, mainly to train Iraqi forces and help them combat Islamic State extremists.

The breach followed American airstrikes Sunday that killed 25 fighters of an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The U.S. said those strikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor and the wounding of American and Iraqi troops in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that the U.S. blamed on the militia. The American strikes angered the Iraqi government, which called them an unjustified violation of its sovereignty.

Trump blamed Iran for the embassy breach and called on Iraq to protect the diplomatic mission even as the U.S. reinforced the compound with Marines from Kuwait.

“Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many,” he tweeted from his estate in Florida. “We strongly responded, and always will. Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible. In addition, we expect Iraq to use its forces to protect the Embassy, and so notified!”

Even as Trump has argued for removing U.S. troops from Mideast conflicts, he also has singled out Iran as a malign influence in the region. After withdrawing the U.S. in 2018 from an international agreement that exchanged an easing of sanctions for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, Trump ratcheted up sanctions.

Those economic penalties, including a virtual shut-off of Iranian oil exports, are aimed at forcing Iran to negotiate a broader nuclear deal. But critics say that pressure has pushed Iranian leaders into countering with a variety of military attacks in the Gulf.

Until Sunday’s U.S. airstrikes, Trump had been measured in his response to Iranian provocations. In June, he abruptly called off U.S. military strikes on Iranian targets in retaliation for the downing of an American drone.

Robert Ford, a retired U.S. diplomat who served five years in Baghdad and then became ambassador in Syria, said Iran’s allies in the Iraqi parliament may be able to harness any surge in anger among Iraqis toward the United States to force U.S. troops to leave the country. Ford said Trump miscalculated by approving Sunday’s airstrikes on Kataeb Hezbollah positions in Iraq and Syria — strikes that drew a public rebuke from the Iraqi government and seem to have triggered Tuesday’s embassy attack.

“The Americans fell into the Iranian trap,” Ford said, with airstrikes that turned some Iraqi anger toward the U.S. and away from Iran and the increasingly unpopular Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

The tense situation in Baghdad appeared to upset Trump’s vacation routine in Florida, where he is spending the holidays.

Trump spent just under an hour at his private golf club in West Palm Beach before returning to his Mar-a-Lago resort in nearby Palm Beach. He had spent nearly six hours at his golf club on each of the previous two days. Trump spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and emphasized the need for Iraq to protect Americans and their facilities in the country, said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.

Trump is under pressure from some in Congress to take a hard-line approach to Iranian aggression, which the United States says included an unprecedented drone and missile attack on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in September. More recently, Iran-backed militias in Iraq have conducted numerous rocket attacks on bases hosting U.S. forces.

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and supporter of Trump’s Iran policy, called the embassy breach “yet another reckless escalation” by Iran.

Tuesday’s attack was carried out by members of the Iran-supported Kataeb Hezbollah militia. Dozens of militiamen and their supporters smashed a main door to the compound and set fire to a reception area, but they did not enter the main buildings.

Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blamed Iran for the episode and faulted Trump for his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

“The results so far have been more threats against international commerce, emboldened and more violent proxy attacks across the Middle East, and now, the death of an American citizen in Iraq,” Menendez said, referring to the rocket attack last week.

By early evening Tuesday, the mob had retreated from the compound but set up several tents outside for an intended sit-in. Dozens of yellow flags belonging to Iran-backed Shiite militias fluttered atop the reception area and were plastered along the embassy’s concrete wall along with anti-U.S. graffiti. American Apache helicopters flew overhead and dropped flares over the area in what the U.S. military called a “show of force.”

The U.S. also was sending 100 or more additional Marines to the embassy compound to support its defenses.

The embassy breach was seen by some analysts as affirming their view that it is folly for the U.S. to keep forces in Iraq after having eliminated the Islamic State group’s territorial hold in the country.

A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is also a long-term hope of Iran, noted Paul Salem, president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

And it’s always possible Trump would “wake up one morning and make that decision” to pull U.S. forces out of Iraq, as he announced earlier with the U.S. military presence in neighboring Syria, Salem said. Trump’s Syria decision triggered the resignation of his first defense secretary, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, but the president later amended his decision and about 1,200 U.S. troops remain in Syria.

Trump’s best weapon with Iran is the one he’s already using — the sanctions, said Salem. He and Ford said Trump would do best to keep resisting Iran’s attempt to turn the Iran-U.S. conflict into a full-blown military one. The administration should also make a point of working with the Iraqi government to deal with the militias, Ford said.

For the president, Iran’s attacks — directly and now through proxies in Iraq — have “been working that nerve,” Salem said. “Now they really have Trump’s attention.”

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Darlene Superville and Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.

Trump deploys more troops to Mideast after US embassy attack

WASHINGTON (AP) — Charging that Iran was “fully responsible” for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, President Donald Trump ordered about 750 U.S. soldiers deployed to the Middle East as about 3,000 more prepared for possible deployment in the next several days.

No U.S. casualties or evacuations were reported after the attack Tuesday by dozens of Iran-supported militiamen. U.S. Marines were sent from Kuwait to reinforce the compound.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday night that “in response to recent events” in Iraq, and at Trump’s direction, he authorized the immediate deployment of the infantry battalion from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He did not specify the soldiers’ destination, but a U.S. official familiar with the decision said they will go to Kuwait.

“This deployment is an appropriate and precautionary action taken in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities, such as we witnessed in Baghdad today,” Esper said in a written statement.

Additional soldiers from the 82nd Airborne’s quick-deployment brigade, known officially as its Immediate Response Force, were prepared to deploy, Esper said. The U.S. official, who provided unreleased details on condition of anonymity, said the full brigade of about 4,000 soldiers may deploy.

The 750 soldiers deploying immediately were in addition to 14,000 U.S. troops who had deployed to the Gulf region since May in response to concerns about Iranian aggression, including its alleged sabotage of commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf. At the time of the attack the U.S. had about 5,200 troops in Iraq, mainly to train Iraqi forces and help them combat Islamic State extremists.

The breach of the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday was a stark demonstration that Iran can still strike at American interests despite Trump’s economic pressure campaign. It also revealed growing strains between Washington and Baghdad, raising questions about the future of the U.S. military mission there.

“They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!” Trump tweeted Tuesday afternoon, though it was unclear whether his “threat” meant military retaliation. He thanked top Iraqi government leaders for their “rapid response upon request.”

American airstrikes on Sunday killed 25 fighters of an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The U.S. said those strikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor and the wounding of American and Iraqi troops in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that the U.S. blamed on the militia. The American strikes angered the Iraqi government, which called them an unjustified violation of its sovereignty.

While blaming Iran for the embassy breach, Trump also called on Iraq to protect the diplomatic mission.

“Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many,” he tweeted from his estate in Florida. “We strongly responded, and always will. Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible. In addition, we expect Iraq to use its forces to protect the Embassy, and so notified!”

Even as Trump has argued for removing U.S. troops from Mideast conflicts, he also has singled out Iran as a malign influence in the region. After withdrawing the U.S. in 2018 from an international agreement that exchanged an easing of sanctions for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, Trump ratcheted up sanctions.

Those economic penalties, including a virtual shut-off of Iranian oil exports, are aimed at forcing Iran to negotiate a broader nuclear deal. But critics say that pressure has pushed Iranian leaders into countering with a variety of military attacks in the Gulf.

Until Sunday’s U.S. airstrikes, Trump had been measured in his response to Iranian provocations. In June, he abruptly called off U.S. military strikes on Iranian targets in retaliation for the downing of an American drone.

Robert Ford, a retired U.S. diplomat who served five years in Baghdad and then became ambassador in Syria, said Iran’s allies in the Iraqi parliament may be able to harness any surge in anger among Iraqis toward the United States to force U.S. troops to leave the country. Ford said Trump miscalculated by approving Sunday’s airstrikes on Kataeb Hezbollah positions in Iraq and Syria — strikes that drew a public rebuke from the Iraqi government and seem to have triggered Tuesday’s embassy attack.

“The Americans fell into the Iranian trap,” Ford said, with airstrikes that turned some Iraqi anger toward the U.S. and away from Iran and the increasingly unpopular Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

The tense situation in Baghdad appeared to upset Trump’s vacation routine in Florida, where he is spending the holidays.

Trump spent just under an hour at his private golf club in West Palm Beach before returning to his Mar-a-Lago resort in nearby Palm Beach. He had spent nearly six hours at his golf club on each of the previous two days. Trump spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and emphasized the need for Iraq to protect Americans and their facilities in the country, said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.

Trump is under pressure from some in Congress to take a hard-line approach to Iranian aggression, which the United States says included an unprecedented drone and missile attack on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in September. More recently, Iran-backed militias in Iraq have conducted numerous rocket attacks on bases hosting U.S. forces.

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and supporter of Trump’s Iran policy, called the embassy breach “yet another reckless escalation” by Iran.

Tuesday’s attack was carried out by members of the Iran-supported Kataeb Hezbollah militia. Dozens of militiamen and their supporters smashed a main door to the compound and set fire to a reception area, but they did not enter the main buildings.

Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blamed Iran for the episode and faulted Trump for his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

“The results so far have been more threats against international commerce, emboldened and more violent proxy attacks across the Middle East, and now, the death of an American citizen in Iraq,” Menendez said, referring to the rocket attack last week.

By early evening Tuesday, the mob had retreated from the compound but set up several tents outside for an intended sit-in. Dozens of yellow flags belonging to Iran-backed Shiite militias fluttered atop the reception area and were plastered along the embassy’s concrete wall along with anti-U.S. graffiti. American Apache helicopters flew overhead and dropped flares over the area in what the U.S. military called a “show of force.”

The embassy breach was seen by some analysts as affirming their view that it is folly for the U.S. to keep forces in Iraq after having eliminated the Islamic State group’s territorial hold in the country.

A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is also a long-term hope of Iran, noted Paul Salem, president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

And it’s always possible Trump would “wake up one morning and make that decision” to pull U.S. forces out of Iraq, as he announced earlier with the U.S. military presence in neighboring Syria, Salem said. Trump’s Syria decision triggered the resignation of his first defense secretary, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, but the president later amended his decision and about 1,200 U.S. troops remain in Syria.

Trump’s best weapon with Iran is the one he’s already using — the sanctions, said Salem. He and Ford said Trump would do best to keep resisting Iran’s attempt to turn the Iran-U.S. conflict into a full-blown military one. The administration should also make a point of working with the Iraqi government to deal with the militias, Ford said.

For the president, Iran’s attacks — directly and now through proxies in Iraq — have “been working that nerve,” Salem said. “Now they really have Trump’s attention.”

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Darlene Superville and Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.

Toxic impeachment fight leaves unfinished business for Congress in 2020

Congress faces a lengthy to-do list in the new year, as an already divided Washington heats up amid a potential Senate impeachment trial and the upcoming presidential primary races.
House Democrats went into the holiday break touting a long list of legislative achievements they passed in their first year as majority, while Republicans complained the toxic impeachment fight halted important legislation.
What's clear is that much work still remains. Once back in Washington, the top policy issue for Republicans is finalizing the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in the Senate. After House Democrats spent months securing greater enforcement of labor standards in Mexico and earning the support of the influential AFL-CIO union federation, the new pact passed the House 385-41 in December — a day after Democrats impeached Trump.
The first hearing in the Senate is expected on Jan. 7.
Republicans accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi of dragging her feet for a year on the NAFTA replacement.
“It should have been passed months ago and it’s had a toll on our economy,” said Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. “It sat on a shelf in the House because Pelosi was fixated with impeachment. So those jobs didn’t get created.”
President Trump initially announced the new trade deal with Mexico and Canada on Nov. 30, 2018, but it has yet to be ratified because of the prolonged negotiations with Congress that Pelosi defended as necessary to improve the pact.
Meanwhile, Democrats touted the more than 400 bills they passed despite impeachment and panned the Senate “graveyard” for failing to take up any of their priorities. In 2020, they want Senate action on their bills, including expanding gun background checks, adding LGBTQ protections, reforming the government, lowering health care costs and addressing the gender pay gap.
“This has been the most productive House of Representatives in my memory,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “Unfortunately, everything we pass sits on Mitch McConnell's desk and goes to the graveyard we call the Senate.”
In a letter to Democratic colleagues in December, Pelosi said, "When we return in the New Year, House Democrats will continue to accelerate a drumbeat to make our legislation 'too hot to handle' until Senator McConnell, the Grim Reaper, takes up our bills, which are alive and well with the American people." 
Several House Democrats interviewed by Fox News said in the new year they'd like a bipartisan spending bill with the White House to fix the country’s crumbling roads and bridges.
“I’m really hopeful next year we start out with a good infrastructure package," said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J.
Rep. Max Rose, a freshman Democrat from the Staten Island, N.Y. district that Trump won, wants to overturn Trump’s controversial executive order banning travel from several countries, including several that are majority Muslim.
"The fact that we have not yet taken a vote to overturn the Muslim ban is a f--king disgrace,” Rose said. “To go home for the holidays without showing the American people that this wrong enough for us to vote to overturn it is disgraceful, and despicable and disgusting. We should take a vote on that.”
After USMCA, House Republicans point to bipartisan health care legislation that passed unanimously out of the Energy and Commerce Committee to help lower prescription drug costs, but has yet to get a vote on the House floor.
Instead, the House successfully passed a different prescription drug bill – the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act – that the GOP panned as too partisan and having no chance of becoming law. Some lawmakers remain hopeful there's a chance for bipartisan drug reforms despite the bitter impeachment divide.
“I think the biggest issue – even bigger than USMCA – is prescription drug prices,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.
Here’s a look at what did, and did not, get done in 2019.
All told, the new Democratic-led House passed 434 bills and joint resolutions this year, but 349 of them, or 80 percent, saw no Senate action.
Despite impeachment, the amount of legislation the House passed its first year was high.
In the last 20 years, there’s only been two other times when the House topped 400 measures in its first year — in 2017, when the House GOP passed 461 bills and joint resolutions just after Republicans won a clean sweep of the White House, the Senate and the House; and in 2007 when Pelosi last held the gavel and passed 524 bills and joint resolutions in her first year, records show.
Some pieces of legislation the House passed include raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act.
The GOP-led Senate passed 131 Senate bills and joint resolutions this year and 95 of them, almost 73 percent, sit waiting in the House.
A huge accomplishment for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was his steady pace of judicial confirmations, billed as a “historic transformation of the courts.”
Just this year alone, the Senate confirmed 20 of Trump’s circuit court nominees and 80 of his district court nominees. Since Trump’s presidency, McConnell has ushered through 187 of his GOP-backed court nominees, including two Supreme Court justices.
As of Dec. 24, 101 pieces of legislation have passed both chambers and have been signed into law by the president.
Among the marquee laws are the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund to help first responders and other victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks, and the National Defense Authorization Act that gave federal workers 12 weeks of paid parental leave, boosted the pay for troops 3.1 percent and created Trump’s Space Force as a new branch of the military.
Trump also signed into law the SECURE Act, which strengthens retirement savings, and legislation that raised the age to buy tobacco and e-cigarettes to 21.
The House and Senate passed spending bills to avoid another government shutdown. They also found common ground on legislation to crack down on annoying robocalls, which Trump is also expected to sign.

Liberal Gun Law Cartoons

Firearms instructor took out gunman at Texas church service

WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas (AP) — Alarms went off in Jack Wilson’s head the moment a man wearing a fake beard, a wig, a hat and a long coat walked into a Texas church for Sunday services.

By the time the man approached a communion server and pulled out a shotgun, Wilson and another security volunteer were already reaching for their own guns.

The attacker shot the other volunteer, Richard White, and then the server, Anton “Tony” Wallace, sending congregants scrambling for cover. The gunman was heading toward the front of the sanctuary as Wilson searched for a clear line of fire.

“I didn’t have a clear window,” he said, referring to church members who “were jumping, going chaotic.” Wilson, a 71-year-old firearms instructor who has also been a reserve sheriff’s deputy, said: “They were standing up. I had to wait about half a second, or a second, to get my shot. I fired one round. The subject went down.”

Wilson’s single shot quickly ended the attack that killed Wallace, 64, and White, 67, at the West Freeway Church of Christ in the Fort Worth-area town of White Settlement. He said the entire confrontation was over in no more than six seconds. More than 240 congregants were in the church at the time.

“The only clear shot I had was his head because I still had people in the pews that were not all the way down as low as they could. That was my one shot,” Wilson said Monday from his home in nearby Granbury.

As Wilson approached the fallen attacker, he noticed five or six other members of the volunteer security team he had trained with their guns drawn. Wilson said they had their eyes on the man since he arrived. During the service, White and Wilson had stationed themselves at the back of the church, watching him.

The Texas Department of Public Safety on Monday identified the attacker as Keith Thomas Kinnunen, 43. His motive is under investigation.

Speaking outside the church Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said authorities “can’t prevent mental illness from occurring, and we can’t prevent every crazy person from pulling a gun. But we can be prepared like this church was.”

Britt Farmer, senior minister of the church, said Sunday, “We lost two great men today, but it could have been a lot worse.”

Wilson described the attacker’s gun as a short-barreled 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip. Shotguns with barrels less than 18 inches long are restricted under federal law and can be legally owned in Texas only if they are registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

After the shooting, Texas officials hailed the state’s gun laws, including a measure enacted this year that affirmed the right of licensed handgun holders to carry a weapon in places of worship, unless the facility bans them.

That law was passed in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history, which was also at a church. In the 2017 massacre at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, a man who opened fire on a Sunday morning congregation killed more than two dozen people. He later killed himself.

President Donald Trump also tweeted his appreciation for state’s gun legislation Monday night, saying, “Lives were saved by these heroes, and Texas laws allowing them to carry arms!”

Isabel Arreola told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that she sat near the gunman in White Settlement and that she had never seen him before. She said he was wearing what appeared to be a disguise and made her uncomfortable.

“I was so surprised because I did not know that so many in the church were armed,” she said.

Sunday’s shooting was the second attack on a religious gathering in the U.S. in less than 24 hours. On Saturday night, a man stabbed five people as they celebrated Hanukkah in an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City.

Wallace’s daughter, Tiffany Wallace, told Dallas TV station KXAS that her father was a deacon at the church.

“I ran toward my dad, and the last thing I remember is him asking for oxygen. And I was just holding him, telling him I loved him and that he was going to make it,” Wallace said.

“You just wonder why? How can someone so evil, the devil, step into the church and do this,” she said.

White’s daughter-in-law, Misty York White, called him a hero on Facebook: “You stood up against evil and sacrificed your life. Many lives were saved because of your actions. You have always been a hero to us but the whole world is seeing you as a hero now. We love you, we miss you, we are heartbroken.”

Matthew DeSarno, the agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas office, said the assailant was “relatively transient” but had roots in the area.

Paxton said Monday that the shooter appeared to be “more of a loner.” “I don’t think he had a lot of connections to very many people,” he said.

Investigators searched Kinnunen’s home in nearby River Oaks, a small city where police said his department’s only contact with the gunman was a couple of traffic citations. But Kinnunen appeared to have more serious brushes in other jurisdictions. He was arrested in 2009 on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Fort Worth and in 2013 for theft, according to Tarrant County court records.

He was arrested in 2016 in New Jersey after police found him with 12-gauge shotgun and rounds wrapped in plastic in the area of an oil refinery, according to the Herald News Tribune in East Brunswick. It was not immediately clear how those charges were resolved.

In a 2009 affidavit requesting a court-appointed attorney, Kinnunen listed having a wife and said he was living with four children, according to court records. He told the court he was self-employed in landscaping and irrigation work.

Kinnunen’s extensive criminal record also included assault charges in Oklahoma and Arizona.

Court records from Grady County, Oklahoma, obtained by Dallas television station KXAS, show that Kinnunen’s ex-wife sought a protective order in 2012 in which Cindy Glasgow-Voegel described her husband as a “violent, paranoid person with a long line of assault and batteries with and without firearms. He is a religious fanatic, says he’s battling a demon.”

Church officials held a closed meeting and prayer vigil just for church members Monday evening. Farmer told the crowd that he had encountered Kinnunen in the past.

“I had seen him. I had visited with him. I had given him food,” Farmer said.

White Settlement’s website says it was named by local Native Americans in the 1800s for white families then settling in the area. City leaders who worried that the name detracted from the city’s image proposed renaming it in 2005, but voters overwhelmingly rejected the idea.

Wilson said the church started the security team about 18 months ago after moving to a new building and becoming concerned about crime in the area. Wilson has been a firearms instructor since 1995, spent six years in the Army National Guard and was a Hood County reserve deputy. He said some of the security team members he trained were at first afraid to touch a gun.

“I don’t feel like I killed a human, I killed an evil,” Wilson said. “That’s how I’m coping with the situation.”

___

Associated Press writers Paul J. Weber in Austin, Jamie Stengle in Dallas, Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, and news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

Crowd shouting 'down USA' attempts to storm US Embassy in Baghdad, report says

Hundreds of Iraqis attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday after holding funerals for the 25 fighters from an Iran-backed Shiite militia killed in U.S. airstrikes earlier this week, the Associated Press reported.
Reporters for the AP described a chaotic scene on the ground and reported that the crowd shouted,  “Down, down USA!”
Security guards were seen retreating to the inside of the embassy as the protesters hurled water bottles and smashed security cameras outside the embassies, the report said.
The U.S. military carried out airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Sunday — days after a U.S. defense contractor was killed in a rocket attack.
Military jet fighters conducted "precision defensive strikes" on five sites of Kataeb Hezbollah, Jonathan Hoffman, a spokesperson for the Pentagon told Fox News. Two defense officials added that Air Force F-15 jet fighters carried out the strikes.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strikes send the message that the U.S. will not tolerate actions by Iran that jeopardize American lives.
Fox News'  Nicole Darrah and the Associated Press contributed to this report