Free Republic

WASHINGTON, March 21, 2008 – Al Qaeda terrorists and other Iraqi insurgents are “off balance” in Iraq, an Army counterinsurgency expert said yesterday. In a teleconference with online journalists and “bloggers,” Army Col. Daniel S. Roper, director of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., said he welcomed the opportunity to explain that counterinsurgency isn’t just a military strategy. “It is not just done by soldiers and Marines,” he said. “Counterinsurgency is part of a broader effort and, therefore, we think it’s extremely important to have opportunities like this to discuss counterinsurgency, so maybe we...

A scheme that trades one male status symbol for another has achieved a large rise in the number of men undergoing vasectomies in a bandit-ridden region of central India. Shivpuri district in the state of Madhya Pradesh, an overpopulated area renowned for its machismo culture, has started to offer fast-tracked gun licences for those who agree to be sterilised. “This is a state with a high number of dacoits [bandits], where people like to keep rifles,” Manish Shrivastav, the administrative chief of Shivpuri and originator of the lateral thinking behind the plan, said. “It also has a low level of...

WASHINGTON, March 21, 2008 – After completing four semesters at the University of Alabama, 19-year-old Daniel K. Winnie felt his life lacked discipline and direction. Marine Chief Warrant Officer Daniel K. Winnie is telling his story to audiences around the country as part of the Defense Department's "Why We Serve" public-outreach public-outreach program. Defense Department photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “I was sitting around enjoying college life, which was good, but I wasn’t doing much of anything else,” he recalled. At that point, about halfway through his college career, Winnie made a bold decision. “I thought the...

...If Fox News wants to play clips of the same offensive sound bites every day from now until November, that's their right, but that type of coverage does a disservice to their viewers and to a nation that is facing serious challenges that merit thoughtful and honest reporting.

CAMP STRIKER, Iraq, March 21, 2008 – When Army Chief Warrant Officer Fred White sits down at the controls of a Black Hawk helicopter, he looks just like any other pilot in his battalion. He wears the same flight suit, the same helmet and the same air of confidence – the only difference is that at the end of the day, his wrist might be a bit sore. Army Chief Warrant Officer Fred White, a Black Hawk pilot with 2nd Battalion, 3rd Aviation Regiment, 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, demonstrates the preparations he makes before a flight...

A reader who witnessed yesterday's anti-war protest sent us several photos of the incident so we thought we'd share a couple of them with you. Milwaukee police arrested four people during the late afternoon march, according to Officer Bobby Lindsey, a department spokesman. At least two of the arrests were for disorderly conduct, Lindsey said. The photos show that a number of paper boxes and trash cans were dumped in the street during the afternoon rush hour at N. Water St. and E. Wisconsin Ave. The march later moved south toward the Historic Third Ward. It was unclear whether the...

This is a repost....however, this video hits home and is a must watch for all of you that did not get a chance to see it.....please pass it on, our troops need to know that we care and that they will NEVER be forgotten.

This is really taking their quest to find stories that makes victims out of members of the U.S. military to the farthest degree! The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is apparently now resorting to advertising to dredge up women in the military "whose marriage is ending" for a story they want to write. There is really only one reason they'd want such examples and that is so that they can show that the military is hard on women so as to show the military in a bad light. Reader inquiry: Are you a woman in the military whose marriage has ended? Are you...

My Journey of Faith My Journey of Faith by Marco A. Fallon Greetings in the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ! My name is Marco Fallon. I am a Catholic Christian and member of the Emmaus Roundtable of Cleveland, Ohio which is a Lay Catholic Apologetics and Evangelization group. I wanted to take the time to say Happy New Year to everyone and may God Bless you all. I look forward to sharing our wonderful Catholic Christian Faith. I myself am an amateur Catholic Apologist. Am I saying that I am “sorry” for being a Catholic, not at all, I...

While watching Scarborough's show this morning, Chris Matthews was on, and he made an unbelievable comment. Chrissy said that up until the time he joined the Peace Corps, from grade school through Duke University, he never had one black student in his classes! I simply find this unimaginable, yet it all made sense. He's simply unwilling to call Barack out for throwing his grandmother under the bus, because he feels guilty for living in his lily white world.

BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia's war crimes prosecutor is looking into reports that dozens of Serbs captured by rebels during the war in Kosovo were killed so their organs could be trafficked, the prosecutor's office said Friday. The Serbian prosecutor's office said it received "informal statements" from investigators at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, that dozens of Serbs imprisoned by Kosovo Albanian rebels were taken to neighboring Albania in 1999 and killed so their organs could be harvested and sold to international traffickers. Bruno Vekaric, the Serbian prosecutor's spokesman, said later on B92 radio that Serbian war crimes investigators...

WEST COVINA, Calif. -- A woman was asking a 911 dispatcher for help when her pleas were interrupted by gunshots, then silence. She was shot to death. The woman told the dispatcher someone was trying to break into her home in upscale West Covina, Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Dan Rosenberg said. "Deputies heard gunshots followed by silence and an open phone line," he said. Deputies arrived at the house, 20 miles east of Los Angeles, a few minutes after Wednesday's late morning call. The woman, whose name was not released by police, had been shot several times. Paramedics pronounced...

Where is HD 189733? Image Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Fujii, and Z. Levay (STScI) Explanation: The star cataloged as HD 189733 is a mere 63 light-years away. Its location is indicated in this deep, wide-angle image of the sky centered on the northern constellation of Cygnus. Considering the many bright stars, nebulae, and star clusters in the region more familiar to skygazers, HD 189733 may not seem to be remarkable, but it is known to have at least one hot, jupiter-sized planet orbiting very close, with an impressively short period of 2.2 days. Because the planet regularly eclipses its parent...

SADDAM Hussein's Iraqi regime had an Australian aid worker killed as part of a state-sponsored terror program that also considered a plan to "eliminate" Australian-educated Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel. Top-secret Iraqi documents confirm for the first time that Care Australia worker Stuart Cameron was shot in Iraq in 1993 as part of a government campaign against foreign aid workers helping Kurds in the country's north. On the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, which toppled Saddam's regime, the sweep of his terrorist activities and plotting have been revealed in millions of documents gathered by...

Hubble servicing mission's launch date threatened BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: March 21, 2008 With the shuttle Endeavour's mission entering the home stretch, shuttle Discovery remains on track for blastoff May 25 to ferry a huge Japanese laboratory module to the international space station. But subsequent near-term flights, including a high-profile mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, could be delayed, sources say, because of ongoing external tank production issues. The tank used by Endeavour for its current mission was the last in the inventory of tanks built before the...

THE US opened its war on Iraq with a pre-dawn missile barrage at the Iraqi leadership yesterday but apparently failed to kill Saddam Hussein, whose image later appeared on television to accuse President George W. Bush of a "shameful crime". It was not clear if the less-than-10-minute address broadcast by his son Uday's Youth television was live or pre-recorded. The assassination attacks in Baghdad, targeting Hussein and his sons, Uday and Qusay, signalled the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, described by Mr Bush in a televised address from the Oval Office as a "broad and concerted campaign". As Iraq claimed...

A team of state inspectors strode into the Blue Wave Car Wash in West Los Angeles, past latte-sipping customers in electric massage chairs and into the gritty carwash tunnel. "¿Cuánto gana usted?" the inspectors asked worker after worker, about 20 of them, most Latino immigrants. How much do you make? Each carwashero responded that he earned minimum wage or more -- just as the owner of the Blue Wave, one of the region's busiest carwashes, had told the inspectors. Looking over payroll records, however, the regulators became suspicious. Employees who said they were full time were listed as working just...

At a small VFW hall in Charlotte, NC, today, former president Bill Clinton contemplated a McCain/Clinton general election matchup, saying that it would one between "two people who loved this country" without "all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics." "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country," said the former president. "And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that...

Three FBI agents were finishing a meeting with a female federal prosecutor in the federal courthouse in Boston in 2006 when one of them came up behind her, wrapped his arm around her neck and gave her a Three Stooges-style noogie, according to several law enforcement officials. Now, after a yearlong investigation by the Justice Department into whether the incident was foolish horseplay, bullying, or harassment, the FBI has concluded that all three of the male agents should be fired, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Investigators from the inspector general's office found that FBI Supervisory Agent Robert...

The Vatican yesterday was accused of currying favor with China by "censoring" the Easter reflections for tonight's solemn Good Friday service at the Colosseum that Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun of Hong Kong wrote at the request of Pope Benedict XVI. But many commentators insist the choice of the outspoken Shanghai-born bishop for the task reflects the full support he enjoys from the pontiff. The pope asked Cardinal Zen, 76, to write the reflections, or special prayers, for the Way of the Cross ceremony, which will be beamed on live satellite television to millions of Christians around the world. The prayers...