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The Army hit a milestone in its continuing efforts to provide a capability to counter the indirect fire threat with the 100th successful intercept of a rocket or mortar round fired at high value Multi-National Corps-Iraq assets in late March. Achieving its first intercept in March 2006 by disabling an inbound mortar round and precluding damage on the ground, the Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar capability has also provided over 1,500 localized warnings of incoming attacks allowing troops time to take protective cover - all since it initial operational capability was declared in July 2005, according to C-RAM Program director,...

McGinnis was no stranger to combat. The Middle East edition of Stars and Stripes for Nov. 30, 2006, has a picture of McGinnis on its cover. His unit had been involved in a fierce firefight on Nov. 5 and had killed 38 attackers. His superiors were quick to recognize the special nature of McGinnis’ actions. He was awarded a posthumous Silver Star, America’s third-highest award for valor in combat, and nominated for the Medal of Honor. Eighteen months later, McGinnis will receive his medal. Speaking anonymously, sources at the Department of Defense have confirmed this with reporters from the Army...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Marine Corps far surpassed its recruiting goal last month and could eventually be more than a year ahead of schedule in its plan to grow the force to 202,000 members. All military services met or exceeded their monthly recruiting goals in April, with the Marine Corps signing 142 percent of the number it was looking for, the Pentagon said. The Army signed 101 percent of its goal, recruiting 5,681 against a goal of 5,650. The Navy and Air Force met their goals — 2,905 sailors and 2,435 airmen. The Marine Corps enlisted 2,233 recruits against a...

Don Swarthout, President of Christians Reviving America's Values (CRAVE) has filed an ethics complaint with the Texas Bar Association against Prosecutor Johnny Sutton. In this complaint Swarthout charges Sutton's office willfully misled the jury in order to convict Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean for simply doing their jobs. Swarthout has asked the Texas Bar Association to investigate Johnny Sutton for actions strikingly similar to Prosecutor Mike Nifong's mishandling of the Duke lacrosse rape case. The evidence suggests Johnny Sutton is just as guilty as Mike Nifong of unethical prosecutorial behavior. Swarthout said, "This whole case stinks to...

The West was poised for bad news from the May 11 parliamentary vote in Serbia, where often shrill nationalist tones dominated the final days of the campaign. Instead it got good news: the pro-European Democratic Party emerged victorious, defeating the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party and their allies. The Democrats, led by President Boris Tadic, won some 37% of the vote, or 103 out of 250 seats, which should enable Tadic to dominate Serbia's policies for the next several years. The Radicals came a distant second, with 77 seats, which works out at 29.1% while the Democratic Party of Serbia, led...

WARSAW (Reuters) - Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War Two by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, died in the Polish capital on Monday after a long illness, local media said. Israel's Holocaust remembrance authority, Yad Vashem, said in a statement that it mourned her death. The web portal of Poland's leading daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, said Sendler, 98, died in Plocka Street hospital early on Monday. The hospital declined to comment on the report. Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said: "Irena Sendler's courageous activities rescuing Jews during the Holocaust serve as...

Iraqi singers, actors and artists are fleeing the country after dozens have been killed by Islamic radicals determined to eradicate all culture associated with the West. Cinemas, art galleries, theatres, and concert halls are being destroyed in grenade and mortar attacks in Basra and Baghdad. According to the Iraqi Artists' Association, at least 115 singers and 65 actors have been killed since the US-led invasion, as well as 60 painters. But the terror campaign has escalated in recent months as both Shia and Sunni extremists grow ever bolder in enforcing religious restrictions on the citizens of Iraq. Those remaining are...

A Jordanian judicial official says the country's state prosecutor has charged a man with premeditated murder who is suspected of drowning his 22-year-old sister for having an extramarital affair. The official says the unidentified woman's brother beat her with the help of his family Saturday and then took her to the Dead Sea, where he drowned her. The official says the state prosecutor also charged the woman's parents and another brother Monday with assisting in the murder by knowing about it and for beating the woman before she died. He says they carried out their suspected actions after seeing an...

Three years after Uzbek security troops opened fire on a public square packed with peaceful demonstrators, President Islam Karimov's government maintains that the crackdown thwarted a plot to overthrow the government and establish Islamic rule. His administration continues to reject Western and UN demands for an independent inquiry into the deadly confrontation in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijon on May 13, 2005. But as the anniversary approached, the West stood accused of forgiving the Uzbek government for a massacre of civilians at Andijon and warming to Tashkent for strictly geopolitical reasons. Rights activists have expressed concerned that international attention...

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has hanged five men convicted of raping and murdering a young woman, a state-owned newspaper reported Monday. The men were convicted of kidnapping the woman, raping her and then dousing her with gasoline and burning her alive. The IRAN newspaper reported Monday that the crime was apparently in revenge for the woman's failure to marry one of the men. Her family opposed the union. The convicts, all aged 19 to 24, were executed Sunday in Qom prison some 84 miles south of Tehran.

Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr is known in America for heading the Mahdi Army militia, but his followers also see him as someone who can provide them with things their government can't. BAGHDAD -- When Ali Ateya was killed last month at the age of 23 -- a victim of an American airstrike on a block of concrete tenements in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, according to his family -- there was no money for his burial. Within days, two officials from Sadr City's main humanitarian organization showed up at the family home. Unsolicited, they offered to pay for Ateya's Shiite...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper unveiled a multibillion-dollar plan for the Canadian Forces on Monday, and promised that the "Canada First" defence strategy will give the military the troop numbers and equipment it needs to do its job. Mr. Harper said the strategy is a long-term plan that will cost close to $30-billion over 20 years. "The Canada First defence strategy will strengthen our sovereignty and our security. Our government will ensure the Canadian Forces have the personnel and equipment they need to do their job -- to protect our values and protect our interests, to fulfil Canada's international commitments, to...

You are a infidel if you:Freedom of thought discussedToward the end an elderly gentlemen is arguing for Freedom of Though and says Democracy is a good thing...according to the translation....

The other day the Obama campaign distanced itself from Robert Malley for his dealings with Hamas. Never mind the disingenuousness of a campaign that up until the day before yesterday when he was fired from the campaign said Malley was not with the campaign, even though a New York Times defense in his behalf said he was with the campaign. What is manifestly clear however is that Obama and his banished adviser/non-adviser share the same worldview. Consider this passage from a press release expressing his “support” for Lebanon. "It's time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new...

The healing in Iraq and the deterioration in Lebanon are not unrelated. In fact, Iraq will serve as both cause and effect to Lebanon’s misfortunes. Iran, eclipsed in Sadr City, had decided to allow its sectarian acolytes to put on a show of strength in Beirut. And the jihadists of Al Qaeda’s ilk, soon to be eclipsed in Mosul, will migrate to Beirut to meet Iran’s challenge. Five years ago, there was a hope that held Iraq as a would-be beacon for democracy throughout the Middle East, but that vision had too many determined enemies both inside and outside Iraq....

By Lee Smith Our friend and colleague in Lebanon Elie Fawaz writes in to remind us that The War for Lebanon has not even begun yet in earnest and Hezbollah's “victory” in Beirut is not all it seems: “So, we know that Hezbollah's well-trained fighters are in control of most of west Beirut. The decision taken by Walid Jumblat and Saad al-Hariri not to fight back in Beirut, but rather hand most of their positions to the army ended any illusion regarding the sanctity of the “resistance” – that it would never turn its weapons inward, for now its hands...

AFTER THE war, the US was given an opportunity to actually support democratic, anti-Iranian-Syrian forces in Lebanon by supporting the Saniora government when Hizbullah abruptly bolted the ruling coalition and backed by Iran and Syria attempted to take control of the government by assassination and terror. The US could have taken action against Syria or Iran. But instead it sought to appease Iran and Syria in the hopes that they would temper their support for insurgents in Iraq. The pinnacle of this US abandonment of the March 14 movement was Rice's decision to invite Syria to participate in her peace...

While the West is busy living its daily life, a beast is busy killing the freedom of a small community on the East Mediterranean: Lebanon. Indeed, as of last week, the mighty Hezbollah, armed to the teeth with 30,000 rockets and missiles and aligning thousands of self described “Divine soldiers” has been marching across the capital, terrorizing its population, shutting down media, taking its politicians and the Prime Minister as hostages, and looting at will. The hordes of Lebanon’s “Khomeinist Janjaweeds” have conquered already half of the Middle East’s cultural capital, Beirut. As I have reported before, Hezbollah has occupied...

Strategy for Victory in Iraq Bolster Troops on the Ground A greater military commitment now is necessary if we are to achieve long-term success in Iraq. John McCain agrees with retired Army General Jack Keane that there are simply not enough American forces in Iraq. More troops are necessary to clear and hold insurgent strongholds; to provide security for rebuilding local institutions and economies; to halt sectarian violence in Baghdad and disarm Sunni and Shia militias; to dismantle al Qaeda; to train the Iraqi Army; and to embed American personnel in Iraqi police units. Accomplishing each of these goals...

Like everything in life the surrender of the Mahdi Army to the Iraq rule of law, as defined and imposed by the duly elected government under Prime Minister Maliki, is not cut and dry - or instant. It seems the final form of the agreement was just signed by representatives from each Shiite camp - which means any side that violates the agreement will be shown to be inept, at best. The deal was officially signed Monday between five representatives of firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and four member of the main Shiite political bloc.Khalid al-Attiyah, the deputy parliamentary speaker, says...

WARSAW, Poland - Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who helped save some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and giving them false identities, has died. She was 98.

An earthquake registering 7.8 on the Richter Scale knocked out mobile phone service in the western Chinese city of Chengdu, although fixed-line networks remained in service, Chinese state television reported Monday afternoon.About 2,300 base stations were affected by power outages or transmission problems, China Mobile's Sichuan office told the state-run Xinhua News Agency, adding that repairs were under way. China is the nation's and world's largest mobile service provider. Service was affected in both southwestern Sichuan province, and in northwestern Shaanxi province, Xinhua reported, although those two areas do not abut. China Mobile also said that call volume had increased...

Published: 05.12.08, 18:58 / Israel News The woman who was severely wounded by a Qassam rocket that hit her home in Yesha community, Eshkol Regional Council, died of her wounds. The paramedics that arrived on the scene tried to resuscitate her, but were forced to declare her death. (Yonat Atlas)

Excerpted below: ... On May 6, Jeff Poor wrote for the Business & Media Institute (BMI) a story entitled, "Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming," which was subsequently linked on the Drudge Report. Poor claims: "Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming." Poor wrote that Gore said in an interview on National Public Radio, "The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit...

“We don’t mind–actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance,� Yousef said in response to a question about the group’s willingness to meet with either of the Democratic presidential candidates. [http://cameron.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/04/16/a-hamas-problem-for-obama/]

PHOENIX - Republican John McCain, reaching out to both independents and green-minded social conservatives, argues that global warming is undeniable and the country must take steps to bring it under control while adhering to free-market principles. In remarks prepared for delivery Monday at a Portland, Ore., wind turbine manufacturer, the presidential contender says expanded nuclear power must be considered to reduce carbon-fuel emissions. He also sets a goal that by 2050, the country will reduce carbon emissions to a level 60 percent below that emitted in 1990. "For all of the last century, the profit motive basically led in one...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Pro-government Sunni Muslim gunmen and militiamen loyal to Lebanon's Iranian-backed Shi'ite Hezbollah battled with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the northern city of Tripoli on Monday. The violence, which broke out when Hezbollah gunmen fought pro-government forces in Beirut last week, is the worst since the end of the 1975-90 civil war in 1990. Security sources said six people were wounded when Sunni government supporters in Tripoli's Bab Tebbaneh district exchanged machine gun and grenade fire with Alawite militiamen allied to Hezbollah in the nearby Jebel Mohsen area. The fighting later gave way to the occasional...

YANGON, Myanmar - The United States delivered its first relief supplies to Myanmar on Monday, as the U.N. urged the reclusive nation to open its doors to foreign experts who can help up to 2 million cyclone victims facing disease and starvation. Snip Britain's opposition leader called for air-dropping aid if Myanmar's military government remains adamant. Snip The U.S. military C-130 cargo plane, packed with 14 tons of supplies, flew out of the Thai air force base of Utapao and landed in Yangon, capping prolonged negotiations to persuade Myanmar's military government to accept U.S. help. Snip Though international assistance has...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Heavy fighting broke out Monday between government supporters and opponents in Lebanon's second-largest city, where the two sides battled with rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and mortars, security officials and residents said. Residents said they heard strong explosions reverberating through Tripoli. At least six people were wounded, security officials said. The fighting had stopped Sunday morning after Lebanese troops deployed between the two sides, then flared again Monday after soldiers pulled back when the situation calmed. The fresh clashes erupted when pro-government forces thought opponents gathering for a funeral in a nearby neighborhood were preparing a new...

As immigrants, we're proud of America and the strength it derives from being uniquely open to trade, to investment, and to ideas and people. Recently, prominent voices in punditry and politics have questioned the benefits of America's openness and called for an isolationist U-turn that would choke off our innovation and prosperity. In every state of the union, such a retreat would be disastrous for jobs, economic growth and consumer choice. Nowhere is this more clear than here in Torrance, Calif., where today we are visiting a Hitachi plant that remanufactures auto parts. This "foreign" company employs 16,000 Americans --...

Eight months from now America will have its first president in nearly five decades with zero executive branch experience at the federal or state level. The shock to the new occupant of the Oval Office will be profound. Within a matter of weeks he will have to fill about 1,500 jobs and propose a legislative agenda all the while dealing with foreign adversaries who will seek advantage in a period of transition between administrations. Then, after a brief honeymoon--six weeks for McCain, six months for Obama--the press will turn relentlessly hostile. Neither man is prepared, indeed no one can be...

The German government has shrugged off a verbal attack on Chancellor Angela Merkel by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez who called her a political descendant of Adolf Hitler and stopped just short of telling her to go to hell. The two leaders might meet at an upcoming summit in Peru. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has joined a long list of government leaders to receive a verbal savaging from Venezuela's outspoken President Hugo Chavez, but she appears to be intent on ignoring the abuse. Chavez, speaking on Sunday in his weekly TV and radio program, said of Merkel: "She is from the...

Chinese state media say 3,000 to 5,000 people have died in one county in Sichuan province alone from a massive earthquake. The official Xinhua News Agency said Monday that another 10,000 people were believed hurt in Beichuan county after the 7.8-magnitude quake. Nearly 900 students were trapped after their school collapsed about 60 miles from the epicenter. Photos showed heavy cranes trying to remove rubble from the ruined school.

Some readers resented The Washington Post for publishing an Associated Press photograph of a critically wounded Iraqi child being lifted from the rubble of his home in Baghdad’s Sadr City “after a U.S. airstrike.” Two-year-old Ali Hussein later died in a hospital. As the saying goes, the picture was worth a thousand words because it showed the true horrors of this war. Neither side is immune from the killing of Iraqi civilians. But Americans should be aware of their own responsibility for inflicting death and pain on the innocent. The Post’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, said about 20 readers complained about...

(IsraelNN.com) Defense Minster Ehud Barak warned Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman Monday morning that time is running out before Israel orders a full-scale counterterrorist operation in Gaza in the wake of escalating terrorist attacks. He met with Suleiman in Tel Aviv before the Egyptian official sat down for talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. The two are meeting at this hour, and Suleiman is scheduled to talk with Foreign Minster Tzipi Livni afterwards. Defense Minister Barak has declared several times during the past year that "it is only a matter of time" before Israel conducts a large ground...

Yaakov Borovsky, who headed state comptroller's anti-corruption unit, says that current inquiry against Olmert indicates he will eventually be charged with taking bribes Ahiya Raved Published: 05.12.08, 13:31 / Israel News The current police investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "will eventually lead to an indictment," former senior police officer Yaakov Borovsky said Monday. Major-General (ret.) Borovsky, who headed the anti-corruption department at the State Comptroller's Office, is familiar with details of the probes against Olmert. At a press conference in Haifa to present his candidacy for the city's mayorship, Borovsky noted that the prime minister had already been suspected...

Would you take an offer if you knew that by refusing it you'd get a better one? Tehran's answer to the latest "generous package" offered to end its uranium-enrichment program is an emphatic "No." The offer comes from the Six Powers, the UN Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany; it was shaped in London in days of hard bargaining between the United States and the European Union on one side and Russia and China on the other. Yet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is already ignoring three Security Council resolutions and swallowing the bitter medicine of sanctions. And he has reason...

Peace efforts with Palestine are at odds with the raids and arrests credited with keeping bombings down. NETANYA, ISRAEL Suicide bombings in Israel have dropped off so significantly that the nation's security officials now dare to speak openly of success. But the very steps they are taking to thwart bombers appear to collide head-on with the government's agenda of achieving peace with the Palestinians. It is a classic military-political dilemma. The progress in stopping suicide bombers, the vast majority of whom cross into Israel from the West Bank, has brought enough quiet for Israel to resume peace talks with the...

BEIJING - A powerful earthquake buried 900 students in central China on Monday and killed at least 107 people, as several schools and a water tower collapsed in the tremor, state media reported. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck central China, but sent thousands of people rushing out of buildings and into the streets hundreds of miles away in Beijing and Shanghai. The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand. The official Xinhua News Agency reported 107 people had died and 34 people were injured. Four children died when two elementary schools in Chongqing municipality collapsed. One person...

Dahaf poll: 59% Olmert should resign, Kadima largest party if headed byLivniDr. Aaron Lerner 12 May 2008The result that Kadima remains the largest party if headed by Livni cutsboth ways:- on the one hand it makes it more tempting to dump Olmert.- on the other hand, if one thinks that this support for Livni is stable,there is no reason for Kadima to rush to do anything since the disgust ofthe Israeli public is apparently for Olmert rather than Kadima.This may explain why Livni has opted to distance herself from Olmert for thetime being so that should and when he has...

While America's secretary of state devotes her time to doomed Israel-Palestinian talks and America goes ga-ga over a candidate whose entire foreign policy strategy is to talk to dictators, yet another crisis is empowering radical Islamists and undercutting Western friends and interests. The Lebanese logjam has broken at last as Hizbullah seized Beirut and inflicted a major defeat on the government. Hizbullah is pulling a more limited version of Hamas's Gaza strategy in Lebanon as the world stands by. Iran and Syria back their friends with weapons and help; the West responds with words backed by nothing. Who can blame...

Oil prices may hang above $100 a barrel for the rest of this year but will fall as low as $80 next year as world demand slackens and Saudi Arabia tries to buy influence with the incoming president by pumping more crude oil, an influential Lehman Brothers analyst said in a report issued today. Saudi engineers have been working on several big projects that could boost the nation's output by 1.3 million barrels a day--more than the expected increase in global demand next year--but the secretive nation is "likely to keep its political tool, excess production capacity, close to its...

The open-borders media has been AWOL on John McCain’s decision to speak to the radical racialist group, La Raza/The Race in July. He has been allowed to skate on the issue in several recent sit-down interviews. Many of the same pundits who blasted Barack Obama for his ties to the radical racialist Jeremiah Wright have nothing to say about McCain’s longtime association with the shamnesty-pushing, sovereignty-undermining, publicly-subsidized shakedown artists of La Raza/The Race. Not everyone’s looking the other way. Editorial page editor Colin McNickle at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review warned today: “McCain had made significant progress in reaching out to conservatives...

The latest outrage is a father's video of a U.S. Army barracks at Fort Bragg, N.C., the home of the 82nd Airborne Division. It shows the quarters where his soldier son and other soldier sons were sent to live upon their return from combat. Mold and mildew and peeling paint are bad enough, but what about a big barracks bathroom ankle-deep in raw sewage? Scandals like this latest one and an earlier eruption of public outrage over the miserably maintained quarters where wounded soldiers were warehoused at Walter Reed Army Hospital are an indictment of the core competency of our...

NEW DELHI: For a government struggling to make sense of an Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline that is more loaded with political baggage than it is comfortable with, there now appears an attractive alternative. For the past couple of months, a project for a deepwater pipeline has been presented to key ministries in the government which has been greeted with relief and excitement. Senior officials of MEA, ministry of oil and gas, power and fertiliser have been introduced to this private sector project that goes something like this. It’s a deepwater pipeline from the Middle East (which has the greatest concentration of...

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- Israel was born not only into war, carnage and controversy but also into shortage. Shorn of cash and goods, it had to ration meat, eggs and cooking oil through a coupon system that soon generated undernourishment, bread lines and a thriving black market. Worse, lacking allies, trade partners and natural resources while swamped by poor immigrants, the Israeli economy was also burdened by its leaders' rigorous socialism. Central planning initially generated growth, but Israel's protectionist duties, sclerotic financial system, high labor costs, bloated public sector and exorbitant defense spending soon proved untenable. By the 1980s the...

The Human Shield Movement has announced it reached its 10,000th pledge member. The lucky guy to sign on as a Human Shield Volunteer number ten thousand is Steven Morris from Birmingham UK. Morris has pledged to use his body as a “human shield” against an “attack on Iran” from “neo-con” President Bush. Volunteers from 22 countries not from Iran have pledged to travel to the Middle Eastern country at a moment’s notice to place their “human shields” or in simpler terms, their bodies in front of civilian infrastructure in Iran in order to “prevent what they believe would be...

You do not really know what arrogance is until you have seen tanks come snarling down your street. The sight does something to the heart and the mind that nothing else has the power to do. I know this because tanks did come down my Moscow street with evil intent one bright August morning in 1991, the spearhead of a KGB putsch that nobody then knew would fail. We - my Russian neighbours and I - stood unspeaking in helpless knots at the side of the road as the monsters, barrels slanting romantically in the sun, tore up the road...

BEIRUT: Hezbollah on Saturday began withdrawing gunmen from Beirut and handed control of the streets to the Lebanese army, after days of gunbattles with supporters of the US-backed government. Hezbollah, a political group backed by Iran and Syria with a guerrilla army, said it was ending its armed presence in Beirut after the army overturned government measures against the group. Hezbollah seized control of much of the city on Friday after fighters loyal to the group routed gunmen loyal to the anti-Damascus governing coalition. The Hezbollah-led opposition said it would maintain a "civil disobedience" campaign until its demands were met,...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel, comparing her to Adolf Hitler in response to her criticism of the South American leader's policies. Merkel belongs to the political right, "the same right that supported Hitler, fascism," Chavez said on his television programme, Alo Presidente. Chavez's remarks came after Merkel said that the left-wing leader is not the voice of the region. Merkel, speaking in an interview to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa ahead of the European Union-Latin American summit, indicated that leftist polices pursued by leaders like Chavez were not the solution. Pointing to the emergence of "left-wing...