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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
don't ask
America's Red Army
and providing guests for talk shows. A featured speaker of the IPIP is former ambassador Joe Wilson, one of the Bush administration's most vocal enemies.
Like Moveon.org and Win Without War, the contact for the Iraq Policy Information Program is Fenton Communications. Win Without War also collects tax-deductible donations through CIP.
So Dana Priest's husband runs an operation that gets Joe Wilson speaking gigs.
Don't you just love our one party media?
(Mucho gracias to Lucianne Goldberg for the Priest-Goodfellow-CIP connection.)
Update!
More news on this from the inimitable Lucianne.
Dana Priest and Mel Goodman shared a stage behind the CIP banner in October 2003. From the first page of their 
From the DNC's 
WASHINGTON - Invoking the name of a Pentagon whistle-blower, a small group of retired, anti-war CIA officers are accusing the Bush administration of manipulating evidence against Iraq in order to push war while burying evidence that could show Iraq's compliance with U.N demands for disarmament.
The 25-member group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, composed mostly of former CIA analysts along with a few operational agents, is urging employees inside the intelligence agency to break the law and leak any information they have that could show the Bush administration is engineering the release of evidence to match its penchant for war...
What a coincidence, huh?
More on Mel Goodman, from 
:
9/11 conspiracy theories
US Representative Cynthia McKinney led a Capitol Hill hearing on July 23, 2005 into "what warnings the Bush administration received before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001."
Panelist and former CIA official
Melvin Goodman was quoted as saying "Congresswoman McKinney is viewed as a contrarian and I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom."
Many 9/11 researchers testified at the hearing, including Michael Ruppert, Peter Dale Scott, Wayne Madsen and several others.
That is to say, Goodman hopes it becomes conventional wisdom that Bush knew 9/11 was going to happen - and he let it happen. Even encouraged it to happen.
These are the thoughts of Dana Priest's friends and colleagues. Her brethren.
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spacey
Tia Nelson, the daughter of former U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, said "we pay less for a gallon of gas than anywhere else in the world. And if we paid what the Europeans paid we'd wouldn't be driving vehicles that got 12 miles a gallon."
She said that if there's a silver lining in the higher gas prices, it's that people are driving less and companies are being forced to think about being more efficient.
Saturday is the 37th annual observance of Earth Day -- the first without Gaylord Nelson, who died last July.
Tia Nelson said it's a bittersweet day for her family but added that they are grateful his legacy lives on.
silly
KERRY: 'IF YOU'RE LEAKING TO TELL THE TRUTH...' 
Former presidential candidate John Kerry has come to the defense of a fired CIA officer accused of disclosing classified information to the press.
"I'm glad she told the truth but she's going to obviously -- if she did it, if she did it, suffer the consequences of breaking the law,' Kerry explained to ABC THIS WEEK.
ABC 'THIS WEEK' HOST GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: On another -- on another front, excuse me, CIA official Mary McCarthy lost her job this week for disclosing classified information according to the CIA probably about a WASHINGTON POST story which reveal revealed the existence of secret prisons in Europe. A lot of different views. Senator Pat Roberts praised action but some former CIA officers described Mary McCarthy as a sacrificial lamb acting in the finest American tradition by revealing human rights violations. What's your view?
SEN. KERRY: Well, I read that. I don't know whether she did it or not so it's hard to have a view on it. Here's my fundamental view of this, that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the white house for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, DC Here.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That's one issue of hypocrisy but should a CIA officer be able to make decisions on his or her --
KERRY: ... Of course not. Of course, not. A CIA agent has the obligation to uphold the law and clearly leaking is against the law, and nobody should leak. I don't like leaking. But if you're leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you, you know, put on that person. Obviously they're not going to keep their job, but there are other larger issues here. You know, classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was eloquent and forceful in always talking about how we needed to, you know, end this endless declassification that takes place in this city, and it has become a tool to hide the truth from Americans.
STEPHANOPOULOS: These --
SEN. KERRY: So I'm glad she told the truth but she's going to obviously -- if she did it, if she did it, suffer the consequences of breaking the law.
chatty
C.I.A. Fires Senior Officer Over Leaks
The C.I.A. would not identify the officer, but several government officials said it was Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran intelligence analyst who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, where she served under President 
The dismissal of Ms. McCarthy provided fresh evidence of the Bush administration's determined efforts to stanch leaks of classified information. The Justice Department has separately opened preliminary investigations into the disclosure of information to The Post, for its articles about secret prisons, as well as to The New York Times, for articles last fall that disclosed the existence of a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants supervised by the National Security Agency. Those articles were also recognized this week with a Pulitzer Prize.
Several former veteran C.I.A. officials said the dismissal of an agency employee over a leak was rare and perhaps unprecedented. One official recalled the firing of a small number of agency contractors, including retirees, for leaking several years ago.
as part of an intensified effort that began in January to scrutinize employees who had access to particularly classified information. She was given a polygraph examination, confronted about answers given to the polygraph examiner and confessed, the government officials said. On Thursday, she was stripped of her security clearance and escorted out of C.I.A. headquarters. Ms. McCarthy did not reply Friday evening to messages left by e-mail and telephone.
"A C.I.A. officer has been fired for unauthorized contact with the media and for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information," said a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. "This is a violation of the secrecy agreement that is the condition of employment with C.I.A. The officer has acknowledged the contact and the disclosures."
Mr. Gimigliano said the Privacy Act prohibited him from identifying the employee.
Intelligence officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said that the dismissal resulted from "a pattern of conduct" and not from a single leak, but that the case involved in part information about secret C.I.A. detention centers that was given to The Washington Post.
Ms. McCarthy's departure was another unsettling jolt for the C.I.A., battered in recent years over faulty prewar intelligence in Iraq, waves of senior echelon departures after the appointment of Mr. Goss as director and the diminished standing of the agency under the reorganization of the country's intelligence agencies.
The C.I.A.'s inquiry focused in part on identifying Ms. McCarthy's role in supplying information for a Nov. 2, 2005, article in The Post by Dana Priest, a national security reporter. The article reported that the intelligence agency was sending terror suspects to clandestine detention centers in several countries, including sites in Eastern Europe.
Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, said on its Web site that he could not comment on the firing because he did not know the details. "As a general principle," he said, "obviously I am opposed to criminalizing the dissemination of government information to the press."
The disclosures about the prisons provoked an outcry among European allies and set off protests among Democrats in Congress. The leak prompted the C.I.A. to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department. Lawyers at the Justice Department were notified of Ms. McCarthy's dismissal, but no new referral was issued, law enforcement officials said. They said that they would review the case, but that her termination could mean she would be spared criminal prosecution.
In January, current and former government officials said, Mr. Goss ordered polygraphs for intelligence officers who knew about certain "compartmented" programs, including the secret detention centers for terrorist suspects. Polygraphs are routinely given to agency employees at least every five years, but special polygraphs can be ordered when a security breach is suspected.
The results of such exams are regarded as important indicators of deception among some intelligence officials. But they are not admissible as evidence in court - and the C.I.A.'s reliance on the polygraph in Ms. McCarthy's case could make it more difficult for the government to prosecute her.
"This was a very aggressive internal investigation," said one former C.I.A. officer with more than 20 years' experience. "Goss was determined to find the source of the secret-jails story."
With the encouragement of the White House and some Republicans in Congress, Mr. Goss has repeatedly spoken out against leaks, saying foreign intelligence officials had asked him whether his agency was incapable of keeping secrets.
In February, Mr. Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee that "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission." He said it was his hope "that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."
"I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less," he said.
Ms. McCarthy has been a well-known figure in intelligence circles. She began her career at the agency as an analyst and then was a manager in the intelligence directorate, working at the African and Latin America desks, according to a biography by the strategic studies center. With an advanced degree from the University of Minnesota, she has taught, written a book on the Gold Coast and was director of the social science data archive at 
Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of 
who were granted anonymity after requesting it for what they said were obvious reasons under the circumstances - were divided over the likely effect of the dismissal on morale. One veteran said the firing would not be well-received coming so soon after the disclosure of grand jury testimony by Vice President 
"It's a terrible situation when the president approves the leak of a highly classified N.I.E., and people at the agency see management as so disastrous that they feel compelled to talk to the press," said one former C.I.A. officer with extensive overseas experience.
But another official, whose experience was at headquarters, said most employees would approve Mr. Goss's action. "I think for the vast majority of people this will be good for morale," the official said. "People didn't like some of their colleagues deciding for themselves what secrets should be in The Washington Post or The New York Times."
Paul R. Pillar, who was the agency's senior analyst for the Middle East until he retired late last year, said: "Classified information is classified information. It's not to be leaked. It's not to be divulged." He has recently criticized the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence about 
9th Circus Rules in Favor of "The Offended"
I think of these liberals, I just think of them living their private lives and what they must do behind closed doors. You know it isn't fun. You know they're just sitting there wringing their hands and worried about the fate of communism and what will we do reenergize it and so forth. I do. I share these inner most thoughts with you. I think of these libs behind closed doors and the last thing I see them doing is enjoying life. I see them fretting all the time. Anyway, "Reinhardt affirmed a lower court's decision against an injunction against the school and said schools may bar slogans believed to be hurtful. Students 'who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as race, religion, or sexual orientation, have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses,' Reinhardt wrote.
'The demeaning of young gay and lesbian students in a school environment is detrimental not only to their psychological health and well-being, but also to their educational development,' Reinhardt added. In his dissent, Judge Alex Kozinski said the majority would gag campus dissent to Poway High School's policies. 'The types of speech that could be banned by the school authorities under the Poway High School hate policy are practically without limit. Any speech code that has at its heart avoiding offense to others gives anyone with a thin skin a heckler's veto - something the Supreme Court has not approved in the past,' Kozinski wrote."
This is exactly right. Now, you people wondering, "Why are we spending so much time on this, Rush?" I've dealt with this my entire broadcast career. You know, and I'm not advocating this particular T-shirt here, homosexuality is shameful, that's not the point. The point is, like Mr. Snerdley and I talking about this story today. He said, "Well, who gets to sit there and decide what's hurtful?" And I said, "The hurt." So we're going to have a new group. We already have the offended. If you go back to the archives of this program I have told you who the offended are. There's a professional business, the offended are political correctness aficionados, and they shut things up that they don't want to hear by claiming that it offends them. And this is the way the minority reaches out and gags the majority.
Judge Kozinski is exactly right here. You know my theory on being offended, nobody has the power to make me feel offended, it's up to me. I don't get offended, folks. I really don't get offended. I have not only a thick skin, but I'm not going to let somebody have that kind of power. Can you imagine being such an emotional vegetable that you go through life and you're just scared to hear anything because it might offend you? What kind of life is that?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
By the way, we now know that hurtful speech has been banned by the Ninth Circuit. You can't hurt anybody when you say anything. Folks, do you understand how that's going to shut everybody up if this spreads? I mean, "You can't say that, it offends me. You hurt my feelings." You may not even be talking to somebody and they hear you say something, "You can't say that, shut up!" You know, people too weak and too spineless to not even be able to overlook it. I mean do you want to let somebody have that kind of power over you to offend you, you go right ahead, but in the meantime, I don't know if you knew 
"The court said the writers of the hit TV series 'Friends' did not create a hostile work environment or sexually harass a woman who worked for them by transcribing their raucous work sessions creating programs. The case was closely watched in Hollywood, where several leading writers and civil liberties lawyers said the suit threatened to undermine freedom of speech and the creative process. A spokesman for Warner Bros. Television, named as a defendant in the suit, hailed the ruling, saying: 'Now we can continue doing what we do best, writing and producing hit television shows--'" cussing, making all kinds of despicable, deceitful remarks, I don't care who hears them, and nobody can do anything to us about it. "The unanimous ruling by the --" (interruption) who's safe, H.R.? Well, yeah, we're safe because you people can't come after me for hurtful speech because I am creating in the process.
The difference here, sex talk, offensive talk, when you're creating art, writing a TV series -- (laughing) -- it doesn't matter who you offend. Andres Serrano knows this, and so does the person who put elephant dung on the Virgin Mary at the Brooklyn museum. No, if you offend somebody in the process of, uh, being creative, which of course we are here on the EIB Network. So, you know, I'm immune. But if you put on -- (interruption) yeah, you're safe also because you all are part of the creative process, absolutely right. Everybody working on this program is safe. I mean, I can't be sued for sexual harassment; I can't be sued for anything based on this ruling in California -- now, I know this ruling in California is California, but it's precedent out there. So all of us in the creative process -- (laughing) -- we have free rein to make you mad, to hurt your feelings, and offend you 'til you die, and you can't do anything about it. If you're just an average schmo running around in school someplace wearing a harmless little T-shirt, you're in trouble, according to the US Ninth Circus.
END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Background Material...
d'oh
Mollohan's decision comes in an election year when his party is accusing majority Republicans of allowing a "culture of corruption" in Congress.
Mollohan, of West Virginia, will be replaced by Rep. Howard Berman of California, a former ranking Democrat on the panel. Mollohan has denied any wrongdoing.
The only evenly divided panel in the House, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct
has been divided along partisan lines for the past 16 months and unable to launch any major new investigations. If Mollohan had stayed while under his own ethics cloud, the chances for the stalemate to end would have been almost impossible.
The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago that Mollohan (right) steered millions of dollars to nonprofit groups in his district - with much of the money going to organizations run by people who contribute to the lawmaker's campaigns.
Also, a conservative group filed a complaint with federal prosecutors this year questioning whether Mollohan correctly reported his assets on financial disclosure forms.
While Mollohan's troubles threaten to become a major campaign problem for Democrats, Pelosi, of California, said in a statement that Mollohan decided on his own to step down and that she accepted his decision.
"The allegations against Congressman Mollohan originate from the National Legal and Policy Center, which engages in highly partisan attacks on Democrats," Pelosi said.
"The attacks are an attempt to deflect attention from the long list of Republican criminal investigations, indictments,
plea agreements and resignations which have resulted from the reported long-term and extensive criminal enterprise run out of House Republican leadership offices," she said.
Using a phrase that has become a Democratic refrain, Pelosi said, "The Republican culture of corruption has been ignored by the ethics committee for a year and a half following the decision of the Republican leadership to fire their own chairman and committee members for doing their job."
While Mollohan and committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., had 16 months of friction, Berman had a good working relationship with former ethics chairman Joel Hefley, R-Colo.
Hefley sought to have his term as chairman extended at the start of but he and two other Republicans were forced off the 10-member committee after having voted to admonish then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
Since the beginning of last year, the two leaders fought over internal rules and staffing, and in a recent meeting discussed - but were unable to agree - on launching any new investigations.
Citing the Washington Post story on the then-secret prisons and the New York Times article disclosing terrorist surveillance efforts, both of which won Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, NPR's Nina Totenberg declared on Inside Washington that nefarious Bush administration practices justified the decision to reward the two newspapers: "It's a good thing that they won for those intelligence stories because the Bush administration is investigating now and is threatening to subpoena and conceivably jail those reporters. So I think it's important that those stories be rewarded as something important to have done." (Transcripts follow.)
Schieffer introduced the April 21 CBS Evening News story:
"It is no secret that the current administration does not like its people hanging out with news reporters without permission. But the administration took that concern to a new level today and scored a first -- a dubious first, to be sure -- but a first. Jim Stewart has more on that."
Later, on Inside Washington aired at 8:30pm EDT on Washington, DC's PBS affiliate, WETA-TV channel 26 (and which will re-air at 7pm Saturday on Washington's cable NewsChannel 8 and again at 10am Sunday on Washington's ABC affiliate, WJLA-TV channel 7 where it was taped Friday afternoon), NPR's Nina Totenberg argued:
"It's a lucky thing that the New York Times and the Washington Post -- not a lucky, it's a good thing that they won for those intelligence stories because the Bush administration is investigating now and is threatening to subpoena and conceivably jail those reporters. So I think it's important that those stories be rewarded as something important to have done...."
"One of the things that a civilized and democratic society is supposed to do is have a system of checks and balances. And this administration did not allow that system of checks and balances to exist. Congress didn't know about this stuff by in large, it didn't approve of this stuff by in large. And the administration has not tried to institute any sort of mechanisms, legal, any legal mechanisms to put, have anybody from outside check them."
Fellow panelist Charles Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist, retorted: "In the NSA case, that's simply not so. There were eight top leaders in the Congress who knew about the program. To say that Congress was not informed is simply wrong."
CNN reporter tossed from Hu welcoming ceremony
Duke Researchers Debunk Apocalyptic Liberalism
They go on to demonstrate here through science and objective thinking why the hysteria of the left regarding the misnomer global warming is, as I have always said, it's political. Scaremongering on the earth's climate is not based on science and the reason that they can get away with it is because science and math, as we all know, is horribly taught in this country. Look at the science and math scores. We know they're horrible. The United States was near the bottom of the heap in industrialized nations when it comes to teaching and learning science and math. The second story was in the 
"Global warming may not be as dramatic as some scientists have predicted. Using temperature readings from the past 100 years, 1,000 computer simulations and the evidence left in ancient tree rings, Duke University scientists announced yesterday that 'the magnitude of future global warming will likely fall well short of current highest predictions.'" They're not predictions; they're wild guesses! "Supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, the Duke researchers noted that some observational studies predicted that the Earth's temperature could rise as much as 16 degrees in this century because of an increase in carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gases. The Duke estimates show the chances that the planet's temperature will rise even by 11 degrees is only 5 percent, which falls in line with previous, less-alarming predictions that meteorologists made almost three decades ago. Marked climate change in other centuries resulted from 'external forcing,' said the Duke findings.
"
At any rate, you do now have some scientific community members from elite leftist institutions now who are worried about their reputations, and I would think a lot of scientists would be. They don't want to get lumped in with this mad dash to insanity that is based purely on politics and money -- and then 
"The study's results refute recent research suggesting that the climate may be susceptible to extreme increases in temperature. But Hegerl cautions that the findings do not diminish the threat of global warming." Oh, of course not, they don't diminish the "threat," no, no, no! The climate may not be as susceptible to it, and it may not be as bad, but, oh, we can't deny there's global warming. Now, you know what's happening. As the leftist environmental wackos hear this and other leftist intellectuals and they find out that all this contrary study and data is coming from Duke within the context of the Duke rape case,
you just know that the left has got somebody out there saying, "I knew there was something wrong at Duke. Everybody thinks it's this rape thing, but it's their science department! I knew there was something wrong at Duke."
Oh, and then there's this from the 
It means the climate isn't killing us, it means we've got the best health care system in the world and all we have is a crisis, panic-oriented community on the left that gins up doom and gloom every day.
We all know the life expectancy is increasing. We all know people are living longer. How does this story even get written as though it's news? The headline here: "
.
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