Free Republic

FORWARD OPERATING BASE UNION III, Iraq, April 3, 2007 — Since arriving in Iraq, the soldiers of 3rd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, have demonstrated their wide-ranging abilities by taking on missions atypical for field artillery. Until recently, the majority of the battalion’s soldiers have been responsible for providing VIP escorts for officials around Baghdad. Now the battalion is taking on a new mission and their own area-of-operations -- an area of Baghdad known as Qadisiyh. “We’re just going to try to give them some of the things that we sometimes take for...

NOORDWIJK, Netherlands - Scientists said Friday they have discovered possible evidence of frozen seas and volcanic activity on Mars and called for a follow-up mission to find if there is life on the red planet. The recommendations came at the end of a weeklong meeting in the Netherlands held to analyze results from the European Space Agency's Mars probe. A straw poll conducted among 250 participants of the conference showed that 75 percent believe that life in the form of bacteria once existed on Mars. Twenty-five percent thought there might still be life on the planet. Scientists have long theorized...