Nizar Rayyan, a considered successor of Hammas founder Ahmed Yassin [wiki], has been killed January 1, 2009 after an Israeli airstrike targeted his house at the Jabalya Palestinian refugee camp in the northern Gaza. Together with him were several of his family members according to Xinhua. Nizar Rayyan (pictured above), Hamas's political-military liaison, is the most senior Hamas leader to be killed since the death of Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi [wiki] in April 2004, BBC noted.
Illustrative photo via Javno.com
The United States launched an airstrike in Southern Somalia to target a "known" terrorist suspect affiliated with East African al Qaeda operations early Monday. Three missiles reportedly fired from military planes hit a town near Dhoobley held by Islamic extremists. Dhoobley's District Commissioner Ali Nur Ali Dherre told CNN, the strike destroyed two houses -- killing three women and three children, and wounding another 20 people. The operation was confirmed by the Pentagon officials but yet to determine if the mission was successful or not.
AP Photo/Bill Haber
USS New York (United States Ship New York, LPD-21), the fifth ship in the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock was christened by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England's wife Dotty who smashing a bottle of champagne against it (picture below) in a ceremony attending by thousands held at the base of Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Ship Systems in Avondale, Louisiana on Saturday March 1st.
The amphibious assault ship, the sixth ship of the United States Navy to be named for the state of New York, was partially built with scrap steel from the World Trade Centre as a floating monument to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
George Pataki, the then-New York Governor, asked the Navy to commemorate the disaster by reviving the name New York, which required an exception to Navy policy of assigning state names only to nuclear submarines.
The billion-dollar, 25,000-ton vessel, which can carry a crew of about 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines, is 684 feet long, 105 feet wide.
The warship's bow stem, which contains 7.5 tons of steel from the site, bore a shield with two gray bars to symbolize the twin towers and a banner over that declaring "Never Forget," a slogan among New Yorkers.
Photo credit: Tiffini M. Jones
Along with the steel from one of the worst terrorist attacks in the U.S., it also survived one of the nation's worst natural disasters: Hurricane Katrina.
USS New York's prospective commanding officer is Cmdr. F. Curtis Jones, a native New Yorker, and the ship is expected to be commissioned in New York City in September 2009.
September 11th Families' Association president Lee Ielpi (his firefighter son died at the WTC) said, "[The ship won't be used for war] unless you bother us.....This ship, as it cuts through the water, is going to send a ripple. That ripple will say, 'We cherish our freedom.'"
Apparently , Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y., was aggressive, "If the USS New York has to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, PCO Jones and his crew ... have my full support."
Source: AP
US$1.2 Billion Monster: B-2 Stealth Bomber
A B-2 stealth bomber crashed Saturday morning at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, a U.S. Pacific island territory 3,700 miles southwest of Hawaii. Both pilots ejected safely and were in good condition. A board of officers will investigate the accident.
A slightly expensive B2 Bomber has crashed in Guam this morning. The B2 Bomber has a hefty sticker price of $1.2 Billion and that doesn't include the radio and A/C! The newer B2's have the Sirius Satellite radio built in it but they just don't get good reception in Baghdad. For those missions you'll want to use the CD player or get an iPod attachment.
The 2 pilots of the B2 Bomber were able to eject safely after the flying wedge crashed shortly after takeoff from its base at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. However, with a loss of $1.2 Billion we expect they'll have some questions to answer.
According to the Postchronicle, the aircraft was taking off with three others on their last flight out of Guam after a four-month deployment, part of a continuous U.S. bomber presence in the western Pacific
AFP report:
A Close-up of B-2 Bomber
The stealth crash is the first for the B-2 bomber, a radar evading long range bomber developed by Northrop Grumman that first saw combat in the 1999 air war over Kosovo. It can fly more than 6,000 miles (~11,000km) before refueling while carrying 40,000 pounds of conventional or nuclear weapons.
B-2's bombs dropping exercise off Pt. Mugu in the Pacific Ocean in 1994.
B-2 Bomber is operated exclusively by the United States Air Force. All 21 B-2's are stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base under the command of the 509th Bomb Wing and its two bomb squadrons, the 13th and 393rd. (B-2 Stealth Bomber pictures via NRI and Wikipedia)
Today December 7th is the Pearl Harbor Day!
On the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan's Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the United States Pacific Fleet base at Hawaii's Pearl Harbor during a pre-emptive military strike.
Two aerial attack waves, totalling 350 aircraft, were launched from six aircraft carriers with the intent to destroy the United States Pacific Fleet.
The attack that wrecked numerous warships and hundreds of aircrafts, and killed nearly 2500 made the United States enter World War II, which finally led USA drop two atom bombs in Japan some year later and brought the end of the war.
Below is an old Pearl Harbor Attack documentary!
Check out Wikipiedia for detailed info on Attack on Pearl Harbor. Tags:
Retired Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets picture
To the end, he has no regrets over dropping the first A-bomb
Paul Tibbets, the pilot and commander of the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, died Thursday November 1. He was 92.
Tibbets died at his Columbus home after a two month decline in his health stemming from a variety of health problems.
Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest.
Tibbets' historic mission in the plane Enola Gay, named for his mother, marked the beginning of the end of World War II. It was the first time man had used nuclear weaponry against his fellow man.
It was the morning of August 6, 1945, when the plane and its crew of 14 dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb over Hiroshima. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others.
On August 9, a second B-29, piloted by Maj. Charles Sweeney, delivered "Fat Man" over Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war.
Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his role. It was, he said, his patriotic duty - the right thing to do.
Source: Chinadaily
Link to the Salt Lake Tribune to learn more about Paul Tibbeys' 1945 mission. Paul Tibbets on
Acepilots
From Wikipedia The Hundred Years' War was a conflict between France and England, lasting 116 years from 1337 to 1453. It was fought primarily over claims by the English kings to the French throne and was punctuated by several brief and two lengthy periods of peace before it finally ended in the expulsion of the English from France, with the exception of the Calais Pale. Thus, the war was in fact a series of conflicts and is commonly divided into three or four phases: the Edwardian War (1337-1360), the Caroline War (1369-1389), the Lancastrian War (1415-1429), and the slow decline of English fortunes after the appearance of Joan of Arc, (1412-1431). The term "Hundred Years' War" was a later historical term invented by historians to describe the series of events.
The war owes its historical significance to a number of factors. Though primarily a dynastic conflict, the war gave impetus to ideas of both French and English nationality. Militarily, it saw the introduction of new weapons and tactics, which eroded the older system of feudal armies dominated by heavy cavalry. The first standing armies in Western Europe since the time of the Western Roman Empire were introduced for the war, thus changing the role of the peasantry. For all this, as well as for its long duration, it is often viewed as one of the most significant conflicts in the history of medieval warfare.
Brutality in Burma! Burma's junta regime are evils! They shot Kenji Nagai
(长井健司), 50-year-old Japanese photojournalist working for the Tokyo based APF video and photo agency to death for taking photos of protesters and soldiers on the streets of Rangoon, Burma on September 27, 2007.
SWASTIKA? The four L-shaped buildings, constructed in the 1960s, are on the Coronado amphibious base and serve as a barracks for Seabees. From the ground, or even adjoining buildings, the configuration cannot be seen. Nor are there any civilian or military landing patterns that provide such a view.
But once people began looking at satellite images from Google Earth, they started commenting about on blogs and websites about how much the buildings resembled the symbol used by the Nazis.
So now the U.S. Navy has decided to spend as much as $600,000 for landscaping and architectural modifications to obscure the fact that one its building complexes looks like a swastika from the air.
In August, UK' Barclays removed their 317-year-old Eagle emblem from its headquarters after it was complained about the resemblance to a Nazi Eagle symbol.
Source: Navy to mask Coronado's swastika-shaped barracks @ Latimes
Don't know if this propaganda video will soon be disallowed by Youtube under the order of the Bush Administration. Anyway, something must go seriously wrong with the Blackwater security company!
This is a video clip of Blackwater. A private NO BID CONTRACT army of so called Christians. Here in this clip you will see them shooting at people for sport. OUR TROOPS have been blamed for this and it was NOT the troops. IT WAS BLACKWATER! Yes folks you are seeing right. They are killing people for sport and are under NO law. Even our moronic congress can't get answers as to who overlooks these savages! PLEASE research and spread the word because their home base is right here in America and they are growing. They are the "CHRISTIANS" who rescued the helpless poor people in NEW ORLEANS after Katrina hit by GUNPOINT. You might come face to face with them someday for having an opinion. It could be your last day on earth. Put all the pieces together and you will see that Bush is the most dangerous man on earth! They have been funded by Republicans as well as Christian groups including JAMES DOBSON!
BLACKWATER charges the American taxpayer $600 per soldier per day!That is far more than our troops (who are dying for Bush's corporate buddies) make.
. THE Royal Australian Navy is paying for women sailors to have breast enlargements for purely cosmetic reasons, at a cost to taxpayers of $10,000 an operation.
Defence officials claim the surgery is justified because some servicewomen need bigger breasts to address "psychological issues".
Darling Point plastic surgeon Kourosh Tavakoli told The Sunday Telegraph the navy had paid for two officers, aged 25 and 32, to have breast-augmentation surgery at his private clinic.
A Defence spokesman admitted cosmetic surgery occurred at "public expense" when there were "compelling psychological/psychiatric reasons.
Source: Taxpayer money spent funding breast enhancements @ News.com.au
From TimesOline
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said. Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.
Shocked!
The US military suffered its worst loss of life from a helicopter crash in Iraq
in two years today as a Black Hawk crashed, killing 14 servicemen [from Task Force Lightning
The UH-60 Black Hawk was part of a two-unit convoy engaged in night operations in northern Iraq when it came down.
A spokesman for US forces said early indications pointed to mechanical failure as the cause of the crash but could not rule out a strike by a surface to air missile. An investigation is being carried in tandem with a recovery operation.
Source: Telegragh
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