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11/1/2005 - EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFPN) -- A group of Edwards aircraft maintainers recently joined efforts to restore a historic aircraft for the Air Force Flight Test Center museum. A team of 36 maintainers from the 412th Equipment Maintenance Squadron's corrosion control, armament, structural maintenance, inspection flight and fabrication flight and from the 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron worked weekends and nights for more than three months to restore an F-106 Delta Dart in time for display at the 2005 Edwards Open House and Air Show. Maj. Matt Humes, 412th Equipment Maintenance Squadron commander, said he got the...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2005 – Since soldiers of 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment, took over operations in the Khadamiyah district in western Baghdad Sept. 10, they've been conducting patrols every day, contributing to the security of Iraq. Oct. 15 was not much different from any other day except that these 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, soldiers had an opportunity to witness a historic event - Iraqis voting in a democratic constitutional referendum. "It was great to see the Iraqis get the chance to express their opinions," said Army Pfc. Francesco Borsellino, of B Troop, 1/71 Cav. "The Iraqi...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 9, 2005 – The children of Husseiniya, a town north of here, play among heaps of trash, lakes of standing groundwater and open sewage. Several miles away, in northern Baghdad, U.S. Army Col. David Bishop, commander of 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division; Ayad al-Safee, the deputy minister of technical affairs for the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works; Nanjar Manshed, the Istaklah district advisory council delegate; and representatives of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed a charter Aug. 1 that will ensure the citizens and children of Husseiniya have a brighter and healthier future. Husseiniya is...

Snowfall in Somalia reported Wed. June 01, 2005 10:36 am. The first snowfall on this part of the world has claimed one life and caused extensive damage to properties. Puntland, northeastern part of Somalia has never recorded snowfall before last night when snow storms with high winds destroyed homes in Rako town. The storm left a blanket of snow on the ground, something residents had never seen in their lives before. Aside from this unexplained snowfall on this tropical land, Somalia has experienced very strange weather in the past few months. Floods killed people and forced rivers to overflow banks...

The ACLU, representing an atheist, is threatening five San Diego-area personalities with legal action over the proposed wording of a ballot initiative that will determine the fate of a historic cross on city land. The five behind the Mt. Soledad initiative are KFMB radio talk-show host Rick Roberts; KOGO radio talk-show host Roger Hedgecock; San Diego Padres radio announcer Jerry Coleman, Rep. Randy Cunningham, R-Calif.; and SoledadNational.com Director Phil Thalmeimer. The attorney for atheist Philip Paulson, James McElroy, has told the men he will file the challenge next week. McElroy claims that a number of their statements on the ballot,...

The deal to avert a change in Senate cloture rules is more than just a temporary outbreak of sanity in this highly charged partisan accelerator chamber. It amounts to a transfer of leadership from the polarized, party leaders to the narrow but critical center of the institution. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) still has the corner office, and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) still has the key to the executive washroom, but it is the 14 senators who crafted this deal who now are the people to see in the Senate. Few realized that when the Republicans garnered 55 seats...

Braving bullets and bombs, millions of Iraqis cast their ballots yesterday in Iraq's first free elections in half a century. First reports suggested turnout in excess of 70%. While the Independent Election Commission of Iraq will not announce the official results for another two weeks, the encouragingly high voter turnout undercuts the cynicism of a press corps that questioned the election's legitimacy before the first ballots were even cast. The Associated Press, for example, opined, "If the vast majority of the Sunnis shun the polls--either out of fear or lack of confidence in the process--it would undercut the new government's...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Islamic terrorism may eventually be defeated in its large manifestations, like the one we saw on 9/11, but built into earliest Islam is an ultimate goal of religious world domoination, whether carried out by violent or peaceful means, as seen in the Quran, the Hadith (the record of the deeds and sayings of Muhammad), and the sunna (the example or path of Muhammad). Osama bin Laden and Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who beheads innocent workers in Iraq, are open about this goal, as we see in these fatwas, statements, and interviews before and after 9/11.

Both sides in the presidential contest are eager to declare this election the most momentous event since the discovery of fire, and we won't know how true that is until we see how badly we've been burned. But I think it's already apparent that the campaign will be considered a milestone in the history of the U.S. media. Here's what has changed: The mainstream media no longer play a key role in setting the national news agenda. A robust new conversation conducted on the Internet, talk radio and cable TV has assumed historic prominence. Still, despite an unparalleled richness of...

It's a Historic Drought Sat Oct 16, 7:55 AM ET Top Stories - Los Angeles Times By Scott Gold Times Staff Writer OVERTON, Nev. — Early last year, fishermen searching for bass and bluegill on a northern finger of Lake Mead saw a curious cluster of concrete blocks jutting out of the water. It turned out to be the chimney of what had been, 65 years prior, an ice cream parlor. Within months, other ruins began to emerge from the lake: The steps of a nearby schoolhouse. The foundation of the old Gentry Hotel, where President Hoover once bunked for...

Soldiers safeguard historic Afghan vote By Terry Boyd, Stars and Stripes Friday, October 8, 2004 European edition, Thursday, October 7, 2004 FIREBASE ASADABAD, Afghanistan — The 82nd Airborne Division has not made it into the history books by coasting through easy missions. In the new anti-insurgency age, look for its rapidly deployable, light infantry units in the worst parts of bad neighborhoods anywhere from Fallujah to Asadabad. A battalion-sized force of 1,100 paratroopers, mostly from the 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment is in Afghanistan to provide security for the historic national elections Oct. 9. Between 18,000 and 20,000 U.S....

A Bend-area developer who demolished a local landmark before getting the necessary permit will have to pay a $100,000 penalty, a De-schutes County Circuit judge has ruled. Judge Michael Adler found that Crown Investment LLC skirted the legal process when it leveled a well-loved 67-year-old mill without the permission of the city or the court. Adler said the $100,000 award must be used by the city to construct a memorial to the crane shed. excerpt

By Edward L. Daley On September 23, 2004, Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Below are some excerpts from that speech, and the hurried and predictably pessimistic response to it by John F. Kerry from a firehouse in Columbus Ohio. I am also including a few other recent statements by Senator Kerry concerning the Iraq War, the alternative positions of President Bush, and my own comments (preceded by the * symbol) regarding the issues raised. Furthermore, flecked throughout this article are quotes from several historical figures, added for the purpose of sharpening...

Sprinting is not only the most natural form of movement, but also an individual sport that allows comparing the performance of differente athletes over different periods of time. Today sprinting became the first and ONLY truly global individual sport. Jeromy Wariner became today the first white american (and the second white ever, after the greek Kenteris in 2002) to enter the top ten "all time" performer list of an olympic sprint contest (100, 200 and 400 m).

Lightning may never strike twice. But in the wake of the Democratic National Convention, both President Bush and John Kerry should take counsel from another '04 campaign -- the 1904 battle between Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, and Judge Alton B. Parker, a Democrat. Striking similarities, many of them downright eerie, abound between the two '04's in realms foreign and domestic, beginning with the event that launched Roosevelt's presidency. Then, as now, the nation reacted with shock and horror when a monstrous act of murder took place in New York in September of '01 -- the fatal shooting of President William...

From The Archives...An Elephant Never Forgets! IN 1992, AL GORE ATTACKED PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH FOR IGNORING IRAQ'S TIES TO TERRORISM. SEN. AL GORE: "[W]hen George Bush took office, he should have reevaluated what our relationship was with Iraq ..." CNN'S LARRY KING: "Well ..." GORE: "Let me finish, just briefly. Instead, he stepped up the foreign aid to Iraq, and he looked the other way when there were repeated incidents of terrorism in which Iraq had a part, terrorists operating openly in Baghdad, and repeated warnings from our national security people telling the Bush administration that Saddam was on...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire accused by the United States of plotting bomb attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa, has left Afghanistan, Afghan sources said Saturday. Bin Laden's whereabouts were not known, said the sources who declined to be identified. Taliban authorities in the militia's southern stronghold of Kandahar refused to either confirm or deny reports that bin Laden had left the country. The Taliban have called bin Laden their honored guest, a friend who helped the Afghan resistance fight invading Soviet soldiers in the 1980s. The Taliban's ambassador in Islamabad, Saeed-ur-Rehman Haqqani, said...

IN THE NO-FLY ZONES OF northern and southern Iraq, Saddam Hussein's gunners blindly fired surface-to-air missiles at patrolling American and British warplanes. In Yemen, terrorists seized a group of British Commonwealth and American tourists, and four of the hostages died in a shootout. In Tel Aviv, the U.S. Embassy abruptly closed down after receiving a terrorist threat. Perhaps it was just a typical week in the Middle East. But in a region where no one puts much faith in blind coincidence, last week's conjunction of Iraqi antiaircraft fire and terrorism aimed at the countries that had just bombed Iraq convinced...

One hundred one academics who support the Presidential candidacy of Walter F. Mondale bought a quarter page advertisement in today's issue of the New York Times to say Mr. Reagan's suggestion "that his record was in the tradition of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy" was "a flagrant distortion of reality to serve his own political purpose." The group, which includes five Nobel prize winners, comes from 22 colleges, universities and other institutions.