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cheekyTopic: Yahoo Chat Stuff
Sgt. Nicholas Hake-Jordan, 23, of 1st Battalion, 68th Armor, from Springfield, Ore., holds a new sniper rifle seized during a patrol that also yielded one dead insurgent thanks to a sly interpreter. >>>>>
Wrong number: Interpreter answers cell phone, dupes insurgentsBy Jeff Schogol IBRAHIM AL MARKHUR, Iraq -
One misplaced cell phone and one savvy interpreter equaled one dead insurgent, several pieces of intelligence and a whole lot of captured weapons.
On a routine patrol, U.S. troops with 1st Battalion, 68th Armor came upon a house in the midst of dense greenery and at the end of a dusty country road.
Staff Sgt. Matthew Nicodemus, 33, said he immediately noticed that no Iraqi men were around.
Suddenly, a cell phone inside the home rang, said Nicodemus, of Altoona, Pa.
"The interpreter went in and answered the phone, and on the other end of the phone the person said, in Arabic, 'Hey, coalition forces are here, go ahead and run away,' and he specifically said, 'Go and run into the palm groves all around here,'" Nicodemus said.
The troops then fanned out into the palm groves and found several weapons including several rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades, two AK-47s and a new sniper's rifle, Nicodemus said.
They also found a hand-written map of a U.S. military base, diagrams on how to build rockets and a CD-ROM with several thousand files written in Arabic, said Sgt. 1st Class Michael Greer, 35, of San Luis Obispo, Calif.
If that weren't enough, the insurgent kept calling the interpreter back to ask what the Americans were doing.
The interpreter kept the act going.
"He's basically acting like, you know, he's watching us ... making sure everything is fine," Nicodemus said.
The U.S. troops knew the insurgents were coming back and decided to lie in wait for them.
Many troops said they were psyched by the prospect of killing the person on the other end of the phone.
"I love this [expletive]," said Sgt. Nicholas Hake-Jordan, 23, of Springfield, Ore.
The troops didn't have to wait long.
Shortly after U.S. troops set up, the insurgents called the interpreter and said they would be by in about 10 minutes to attack the Americans, said Staff Sgt. Art Hoffman, 30
.
When seven insurgents got to the house,they ran into a wall of U.S. fire, said Hoffman, of Baltimore.
"The first guy that came in the door just dropped like a rock. The other two guys behind him got hit pretty hard, too. The rest grabbed their wounded and just ran back off," said Hoffman.
One insurgent was confirmed killed in the fighting and the other two were in bad shape, he said
.
Afterward, the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Thomas Fisher, 42, praised his soldiers' actions.
"The initiative demonstrated at the platoon level is exactly how you win this fight," said Fisher, of Sioux Falls, S.D.
Stars and Stripes ~ Jeff Schogol **Wrong number: Interpreter answers cell phone, dupes insurgents
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 10:53 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, 23 April 2006 11:10 PM EDT
Iraqi Infrastructure Attacks Down 60 Percent in Last Three Months
Decrease due to presence of 250,000 Iraqi security forces, U.S. general says
Washington -- Attacks against Iraq's vital infrastructure have decreased by 60 percent over the past three months, the spokesman for Multi-National Force-Iraq said April 13.
Army Major General Rick Lynch, who briefed reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference from Baghdad, said the decrease is directly due to the presence of 250,000 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces operating all across the country, conducting important missions.
To emphasize the effect of this increased Iraq-wide security presence, Lynch gave examples of recent operations in three different regions.
In the northern city of Tarmia, local officials came to the coalition forces and asked them to get rid of the terrorist insurgents there. On March 25 Iraqi forces, assisted by coalition troops, cordoned off the city, established two checkpoints, and then "worked through the city" to eliminate the terrorists, Lynch said.
On March 27, coalition forces set up a medical clinic, which treated 375 citizens on its first day. City leaders then called for volunteers to join the Iraqi police force to give the city a permanent security presence. Two thousand Iraqis volunteered, Lynch said, and 225 of those were selected to be trained and equipped a police academy in Jordan.
In the west, insurgent attacks in al-Anbar province have decreased from an average of 27 per day in October 2005 to about 18 a day now. The residents continue to volunteer for police and army service, Lynch said. Since October 28, 2005, weapons caches have been found, he added.
In Baghdad, because the enemy considers it to be the most important target, security force patrols have risen from 12,000 in February to 20,000 in March -- a 45 percent increase, Lynch said.
On March 27, a raid near the Abu Ghraib area resulted in the death of a high-ranking al-Qaida leader in Iraq: Abu Omar al-Kurdi. According to Multi-National Force-Iraq officials, his real name was Rafid Ibrahim Fattah, and his ties to al-Qaida dated to 1999, including personal contact with Osama bin Laden. He was called "ambassador" in al-Qaida circles, and he established liaison between terrorist networks, and also became an operations officer in Iraq, Lynch said.
For additional information, see 
irritated
Apple calls meeting after making little girl cry
When 9-year-old Shea O'Gorman and her third-grade class began learning about writing business and formal letters, she thought who better to write to than the chief executive of the company that makes her iPod nano.
In her letter to Mr. Jobs, little Shea 
To the dismay of Shea and her family, the letter wasn't from Mr. Jobs. It was from Mark Aaker, Senior Council of the company's Law Department, telling the third-grader that Apple doesnt accept unsolicited ideas, so she should not send them her suggestions and if she wants to know why, she could read their 
chatty
Poll: College Students Finding Religion
Politicians take note: religious centrists dominate college campuses, according to a new poll conducted by Harvard University.
More than 70 percent of 1,200 students polled in mid-March said religion was an important part of their lives. Roughly 60 percent said they were concerned with the moral direction of the country. These religious centrists, said the report, are more likely to be optimistic and politically-engaged.
The report accompanying the poll suggests political leaders court these voters.
"This analysis," claims the report, "foreshadows the 2008 general election campaign for president where religious centrists,
nearly a quarter of the student vote, will be the critical swing vote ... and likely the most influential group in American politics for years."
The report advised Democrats not to concede on moral issues, and for Republicans to move beyond the "Big Three" – abortion, stem cell research and gay marriage.
The so-called centrists are ethnically and politically diverse. A majority support universal health care and oppose legalizing abortion. In 2004, they split their votes evenly between Pres. Bush and John Kerry. They maintained their split when asked who they would vote for
in a hypothetical presidential match-up between presumptive candidates Sen. John McCain R-Ariz., and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.
But some internal data from the poll cast doubt on the authors' claims that the religious centrists see morality in every political issue. In fact, the "Big Three" were the only issues which a majority of both self-proclaimed Democrat and Republican students viewed as a "question of morality."
Affirmative action, Iraq, the environment, education, and the government response to Katrina all failed to garner a student majority as a "moral" issue. Just more than half, 52 percent, of Democrats said health care was a moral issue. But only 35 percent of Republicans agreed.
(Excerpt)
By making increasing demands that the U.S. not enforce its immigration laws and, indeed, that it liberalize them, Mexico is throwing stones within its own glass house. This paper, the first of a short series on Mexican immigration double-standards, examines the Mexican constitution's protections against immigrants, and concludes with some questions about U.S. policy.
Summary
♣ Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.
♣ Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.
♣ Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.
♣ Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.
♣ Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities.
♣ Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.
GOP Gains Ground on Immigration Debate
(Excerpt)
In a political season when most of the news has been bad for Republicans, the Congressional debate over immigration has produced a bit of movement in favor of the GOP.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national opinion survey found that 37% of Americans now trust Republicans more than Democrats on the issue of immigration. Just 31% trust the Democrats more.
In late 
don't ask
Iran Hits Milestone in Nuclear Technology
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran has successfully enriched uranium for the first time, a landmark in its quest to develop nuclear fuel, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday. He insisted, however, that his country does not aim to develop nuclear weapons.
In a nationally televised speech, Ahmadinejad called on the West "not to cause an everlasting hatred in the hearts of Iranians" by trying to force Iran to abandon uranium enrichment.
"At this historic moment, with the blessings of God almighty and the efforts made by our scientists, I declare here that the laboratory- scale nuclear fuel cycle has been completed and young scientists produced enriched uranium needed to the degree for nuclear power plants Sunday," Ahmadinejad said.
"I formally declare that Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries," he told an audience that included top military commanders and clerics in the northwestern holy city of Mashhad. The crowd broke into cheers of "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!" Some stood and thrust their fists in the air.
The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all uranium enrichment activity by April 28. Iran has rejected the demand, saying it has a right to develop the process. The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is due in Iran this week for talks to try to resolve the standoff.
The White House denounced the latest comments from Iranian officials, with spokesman Scott McClellan saying they "continue to show that Iran is moving in the wrong direction."
Ahmadinejad said Iran "relies on the sublime beliefs that lie within the Iranian and Islamic culture. Our nation does not get its strength from nuclear arsenals."
He said Iran wanted to operate its nuclear program under supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency and within its rights and regulations under the regulations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
celebratory
Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer - official
The world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect.
The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks. The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report.
Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week. At its International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, which coordinated the study, a spokesman would say only that the full report had been submitted to a science journal and no publication date had been set.
The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups.
Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that passive smoking caused lung cancer. The research compared 650 lung cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and those who grew up with smokers.
The results are consistent with their being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer. The summary, seen by The Telegraph, also states: "There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood."
A spokesman for Action on Smoking and Health said the findings "seem rather surprising given the evidence from other major reviews on the subject which have shown a clear association between passive smoking and a number of diseases." Roy Castle, the jazz musician and television presenter who died from lung cancer in 1994, claimed that he contracted the disease from years of inhaling smoke while performing in pubs and clubs.
A report published in the British Medical Journal last October was hailed by the anti-tobacco lobby as definitive proof when it claimed that non-smokers living with smokers had a 25 per cent risk of developing lung cancer. But yesterday, Dr Chris Proctor, head of science for BAT Industries, the tobacco group, said the findings had to be taken seriously. "If this study cannot find any statistically valid risk you have to ask if there can be any risk at all.
"It confirms what we and many other scientists have long believed, that while smoking in public may be annoying to some non-smokers, the science does not show that being around a smoker is a lung-cancer risk." The WHO study results come at a time when the British Government has made clear its 
.
Liberals suck the brains out of unborn babies in the third trimester becuase their heads are too large to easily extract them. So a tube attached to a suction machine is inserted in the hole in an infant's head made by stabbing its skull with sharp scissors. Sucking out the brains allows the head to collapse so it can be pulled out of the "mother" with less difficulty.
Liberals suck whole fetuses out of the birth canal in the first trimester using a suction device which is nearly 30 times more powerful than the motor in a home vacuum cleaner. The force of the suction tears the fetal body apart, and it is then sucked out the tube and "disposed of." I've seen a photograh of what the remains look like, and it's the most horrible, gruesome and saddest thing I've ever laid my eyes on.
Liberals suck the joy out of discovery and learning for those schoolchildren they didn't manage to kill in the womb by brainwashing them in the the classroom with leftist propaganda. Despite all their blather about free speech, tolerance and inclusiveness, they bombard students with leftist politics instead of the geography, math or English they should be imparting to these kids to prepare them for a real world in which they must learn how to stand on their own.
Liberals suck the innocence out of our very young children by indoctrinating them with concepts about sex and gender at an age when they cannot even begin to comprehend what is being forced upon them.
Liberals suck the honesty of thought and freedom of expression out of our culture by imposing an ever narrowing political correctness upon it. PC is also known as cultural Marxism, but it now seems to have closer ties to Stalin than Marx.
Liberals suck the magic out of Christmas and blow a blizzard of hollow Winter festiveness over everything to white it out and leave it bland. There's no Santa Claus, kids; go to bed and forget about it. Yeah, there was a Jesus, but he was just a field hippie, not the son of God. And. by the way, God is dead. Happy holidaze!
Liberals suck the competitveness out of playground sports so that our young don't learn how to be manganimous winners and gracious losers- but losers who can learn from their losses how to become winners.
Liberals suck the joy out of life and the life out of humanity.
Liberals suck the majesty out of the American dream by distorting our history and attacking our heritage.
mischievious