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Local officials in Taji work with the Iraqi National Police to inspect relief food intended for needy families, May 16. Soldiers with the Pennsylvania National Guard’s 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team coordinated with the Iraqi National Police to release 12 pallets of United Nations relief food discovered in a warehouse to Iraqi widows. U.S. Army photo by Capt. Maggie White. CAMP TAJI — Iraqi National Police, working with Pennsylvania National Guardsmen, distributed more than five truckloads of food and household supplies to needy women here, May 16.Women lined up with their children to receive food donated by the United Nations...

Widows from Arab Jabour smile as they sort through boxes of children’s clothes and toys during a humanitarian aid event hosted by the Iraqi Army in coordination with U.S. troops, March 13. Photo by Sgt. Daniel Nichols, 1st Armored Division Public Affairs. BAGHDAD — Iraqi and U.S. Soldiers delivered toys and cloths to more than 50 widows and their children in the village of Arab Jabour, March 13. Arab Jabour was once an al-Qaida in Iraq stronghold known for suicide bombers and roads heavily mined with improvised explosive devices; its farmlands once the badlands of insurgents.In the past year, violence...

Atlal Karim, Riyadh Jasim Kadham and Sheik Muhammad Adel hand out food to Iraqi widows in the Wazariyah neighborhood of Baghdad's Adhamiyah district Nov. 19, 2008. Photo by 2nd Lt. Brendan McNichol, 4th Infantry Division. WAZERIYAH — The Neighborhood Advisory Council (NAC) of Wazeriyah provided food assistance to 60 Iraqi widows in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah district Nov. 19 while Multi-National Division –Baghdad Soldiers secured the area. The widows arrived early in the morning and sat in the auditorium waiting for the NAC members to arrive. Atlal Karim, the women’s representative for Wazeriyah, addressed the assembled widows.“Thank you all for coming. The...

CAMP KOREAN VILLAGE — Reserve U.S. Marines delivered food supplies for economically disadvantaged families in Rutbah, a town of about 17,000 residents in western al-Anbar province, Sept. 24. According to Navy chaplain Lt. Ray Rivers, these Marines created “Operation Widow” in June to provide non-perishable food items, fresh fruit, milk and juice to widows and their families in Rutbah. “This has definitely improved relations between the Coalition forces and the Iraqis,” said Rivers, a native of Sumter, S.C., who was a Marine Corps infantry officer for seven years before going back to school for a master’s degree in divinity in...

RUTBAH — A man of faith gave blessings to more than 10 families without fathers recently. Navy Lt. Raymond Rivers, a chaplain with 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Regimental Combat Team 5, and Marines with Security Platoon, 2nd LAR packed up and delivered food and supplies to widows, July 16. “I’m very happy with this project and helping the widows of this city,” said Rivers, 43, from Anderson, S.C. “It’s an outstanding opportunity to help them establish themselves.” During the mission, the Marines loaded a group of Iraqi Police trucks with supplies for transportation to the city council building here....

Baghdad, 21 March (AKI) - Al-Qaeda has decided to enlist widows to carry out suicide bombings in Iraq, according to a study by the Voices of Iraq news agency. During the last three months, six suicide attacks were carried out by women. A total 10 women have carried out suicide attacks in Iraq since April 2003 , according to statistics from the United States army. As recently as Wednesday, a woman blew herself up in volatile Diyala province, killing five people. On Monday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up among a group of civilians in the holy Shia city...

Dell today revealed that it will restore the option to use Windows XP on some of its home systems, marking a potentially damaging blow to Microsoft's hopes for the newer Windows Vista. The Dimension E520 and E521 as well as virtually all of the company's Inspiron notebooks can immediately be custom-ordered with XP in Home or Professional editions, giving cautious buyers the opportunity to use the earlier OS. The change in policy was the result of user feedback, Dell claims. While a popular request through the company's IdeaStorm website, the choice was substantially outnumbered by requests for pre-installed Linux, US-based...

Thomas Craughwell  Other Articles by Thomas CraughwellPrinter Friendly Version   A Patron Saint for Widows January 25, 2007 St. Paula (347-404) is one of those neglected saints who deserves a revival. In her own day as a descendant of Scipio Africanus and the Gracchi — heroes of the old Roman Republic who would be on a par with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — she was famous in Rome, even a celebrity. Paula's parents actually tried to elevate their family tree a bit higher by claiming the mythical heroes Aeneas and Agamemnon were their ancestors, too.Paula and her family were...

OH NO!!!!! It’s The "I HAVEN’T GOT THE THREAD DONE" Thread. Sigh, yes, dear Abby/Dolly will have to wait yet another week, as a combination of my procrastination, Murphy’s visit, and normal SNAFUs have contributed. And since I only have 3 questions there is STILL time for you to submit your to me via FReepMail. And I REALLY am not trying to hog all the threads. ( even though it SURE looks like it ) So for this weekend, in addition to the normal chit chat, let’s just call this a Favorite Thread. Post your favorites in life Graphics,...

One widow has more than $2 million but walks or rides the bus everywhere, terrified of drawing attention. Another millionaire widow stopped going to 9/11 support groups because she feared that families of police officers and firefighters might betray her. A widower has enough money to start a business building houses, but cannot buy himself a home. All three lost a husband or a wife when the World Trade Center collapsed. Like thousands of others, they were beneficiaries of the federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which awarded millions of dollars to families whose loved ones died in the attacks....

"Match boomers with New Dealers and the benefits flow." CAROL HAS BEEN my political mobilizer for more than 40 years. In college, I marched on the civil rights picket lines she organized. After graduation, her peace group bused me to Washington every few years for another "Get Out of ___ " demonstration. Then she joined the staff of a global-justice organization that got me to that big WTO protest in Seattle. But the last time I dropped in at her office, she pulled me into her cubicle and asked if I could help her..[Always a volunteer activist, now she needed...

House Democrats from Long Island and New York City on Friday joined the chorus of critics slamming Ann Coulter. The lawmakers signed a letter drafted by Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) demanding that the conservative commentator apologize for saying in her new book that widows of some 9/11 victims are "enjoying" their husbands' deaths. The book refers to the four New Jersey women as "the witches of East Brunswick." "Their personal loss should never be minimized, especially in such a cold and callous way as you attack these victims in your book," Israel wrote.

Conservative author Ann Coulter sparked a storm on Wednesday after describing a group of September 11 widows who backed the Democratic Party as millionaire "witches" reveling in their status as celebrities. "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," Coulter writes in her book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," published on Tuesday, referring to four women who headed a campaign that resulted in the creation of the September 11 Commission that investigated the hijacked plane attacks. Coulter wrote that the women were millionaires as a result of compensation settlements and were "reveling in their status as celebrities and...

CUPERTINO, California—April 5, 2006—Apple® today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP. Available as a download beginning today, Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac®, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS® X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in “Leopard,” Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August. “Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support...

It’s so easy to say you support the troops, regardless of which side you come down on in the issue of the War in Iraq itself. Yeah, you can send care packages and put yellow ribbon magnets on your car to make you feel all warm and fuzzy that you’re doing your own small part. You can do as I do and use forums such as this one to expound the viewpoint of the folks we send in harm’s way, hoping that someway, somehow, someone who can make a difference may read your rant and actually do that something that...

Marine Staff Sgt. Aaron White was killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq. Here is an excerpt from his last letter home to his wife. "What keeps me up at night is thinking you may never know what you mean to me. . . . If I don't come home, please tell Brianna that her daddy loves her more than life. . . . Brianna, it breaks my heart to have to miss your first birthday. I hope that you will forgive me. . . . Aaron was killed two days after Brianna turned 1. A just-released study by the...

Five outspoken Sept. 11 widows on Tuesday will publicly endorse John Kerry

But Droz, a key witness in the ongoing debate over Kerry's service record, is missing from it, killed in a rocket attack in Vietnam in April 1969 days after Kerry returned home. While Droz cannot defend Kerry, his widow, Judith Droz Keyes, said she feels she must. She said she is confident that her husband would defend both Kerry's record in Vietnam and his antiwar activism. "John Kerry was a good friend, and a loyal friend to my late husband," she said in a telephone interview from her office in San Francisco. "My husband isn't here to speak, and all...

This morning, a "reporterette" (Jessica Vascellaro) for the DNC media surrogate Boston Globe released a hitpiece on the anti-Kerry Swift Boat veterans. She coordinated her hit with a delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Judith Droz Keyes. Droz Keyes, a San Francisco lawyer and far-left "war hater", was recruited because of her status as "the grieving widow" of one of the Swift Boat veterans. Droz Keyes and Vascellaro put words in the mouth of Keyes' dead husband in order to prop up Senator Kerry's shaky "combat heroism" story. However, the great Ann Coulter's aphorism "Liberals simply can't grasp the...