The next two decades will see a world living with the daily threat of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe and the decline of America as the dominant global power, according to a frighteningly bleak assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.

"The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons," said the report by the National Intelligence Council.

The analysts said that the report had been prepared in time for Barack Obama's entry into the Oval office on January 20, where he will be faced with some of the greatest challenges of any newly-elected president.

"The likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used will increase with expanded access to technology and a widening range of options for limited strikes," the 121-page assessment said.

The analysts draw attention to an already escalating nuclear arms race in the Middle East and anticipate that a growing number of rogue states will be prepared to share their destructive technology with terror groups.

"Over the next 15-20 years reactions to the decisions Iran makes about its nuclear program could cause a number of regional states to intensify these efforts and consider actively pursuing nuclear weapons," the report Global Trends 2025 said. "This will add a new and more dangerous dimension to what is likely to be increasing competition for influence within the region," it said.

The spread of nuclear capabilities will raise questions about the ability of weak states to safeguard them, it added. "If the number of nuclear-capable states increases, so will the number of countries potentially willing to provide nuclear assistance to other countries or to terrorists."

The report, a year in the making, said that global warming will aggravate the scarcity of water, food and energy resources. Citing a British study, it said that climate change could force up to 200 million people to migrate to more temperate zones. "Widening gaps in birth rates and wealth-to-poverty ratios, and the impact of climate change, could further exacerbate tensions," it said.

The report says the warming earth will extend Russia and Canada's growing season and ease their access to northern oil fields, strengthening their economies. But Russia's potential emergence as a world power may be clouded by lagging investment in its energy sector, persistent crime and government corruption, the report says.

"The international system will be almost unrecognizable by 2025, owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, a transfer of wealth from West to East, and the growing influence of non-state actors. Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States' relative strength -- even in the military realm -- will decline and US leverage will become more strained."

Global power will be multipolar with the rise of India and China, and the Korean peninsula will be unified in some form. Turning to the current financial situation, the analysts say that the financial crisis on Wall Street is the beginning of a global economic rebalancing.

The U.S. dollar's role as the major world currency will weaken to the point where it becomes a "first among equals."

"Strategic rivalries are most likely to revolve around trade, investments and technological innovation, but we cannot rule out a 19th-century-like scenario of arms races, territorial expansion and military rivalries." The report, based on a global survey of experts and trends, was more pessimistic about America's global status than previous outlooks prepared every four years. It said that outcomes will depend in part on the actions of political leaders. "The next 20 years of transition to a new system are fraught with risks," it said.

The analysts also give warning that the kind of organized crime plaguing Russia could eventually take over the government of an Eastern or Central European country, and that countries in Africa and South Asia may find themselves ungoverned, as states wither away under pressure from security threats and diminishing resources.

The intelligence community expects that terrorism would survive until 2025, but in slightly different form, suggesting that Al Qaeda's "terrorist wave" might be breaking up. "Al Qaeda's inability to attract broad-based support might cause it to decay sooner than people think," it said.

On a positive note it added that an alternative to oil might be in place by 2025.

Check out the article at Fox News.

This is not the best of news. So much for "Change We Need..."

Check out Another Version of the Truth and use your mouse to wipe away the lies.

Labels: History, Images, Military, Politics

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WASHINGTON -- A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may -- may not, I hope not -- but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our diplomacy."

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.

Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

Obama's transition office did not respond immediately to Broun's remarks.

Check out the article at Fox News.

What a scary thought! One can only hope that our system wouldn't allow such a thing to happen... I don't think it will.

Labels: History, Military, Politics

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OPELOUSAS -- There’s more than superficial concern expressed by 90-year-old Paul Kimball Sr. when he contemplates the type of combat facing U.S. soldiers now fighting in Iraq.

“That’s urban warfare, it’s the worse kind,” says Kimball, while sitting in a quiet room of his secluded farmhouse several miles south of Opelousas.

If anyone knows the ferocity of house-to-house fighting, it’s Kimball, who served as a World War II ammunition and supply sergeant with the 75th Infantry Division in Europe from 1944 until May 1945.

Recently, just days before Veterans Day, Kimball took time to recall how just weeks after he arrived in France, he was rushed to Belgium near Bastogne, to help repulse the mid-December German counteroffensive launched through the Ardennes Forest.

Later he and members of his division moved into Holland, and then the Alsace-Lorraine area of France, fought along the Maginot Line, crossed the Rhine River and then finished the war in Germany, where they helped liberate a slave labor camp.

According to an official report compiled by the Army Office of the Theater Historian for the European Theater of Operations, the 75th Infantry Division was in combat for 94 days beginning Dec. 25, 1944.

During that time, the division suffered 3,954 combat casualties — killed, wounded and missing — and another 4,062 noncombat casualties.

Most of the fighting Kimball and his men experienced was in rural villages or in open countryside, where soldiers lived for days in foxholes. They faced machine gun fire, strafing from fighter planes and shelling from German artillery.

“The one thing the war did for me was make me a Christian. I say the rosary twice a day now and go to Mass every day. The old saying about no atheists in a foxhole is true,” he said.

Kimball said he never intended to serve in the Army. However, because it was difficult to find employment during the Great Depression in St. Landry Parish, Kimball said he and his brother, Pete, joined the Marine Corps in 1937.

Kimball served four years in the Corps but decided not to re-enlist. He also got a warning from a Marine officer which proved prophetic.

“He told me if I didn’t join up again, I’d be drafted into the Army,” Kimball said. Three months after being discharged from the Marines, Kimball was an Army staff sergeant in charge of an ammunition and pioneer platoon at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

The 75th Infantry Division arrived at Le Harve, France, in November 1944 and moved on to nearby Rouen, in Normandy province, where Kimball once traded Army rations for a butchered cow.

By early December, Kimball went to Vise, Belgium, and then the nearby town of Liege, where he took cover in a barn during a concentrated rocket attack.

“The rockets were coming in so low, we shot at them with our rifles, but it didn’t stop them,” he said.

Three days later Kimball moved to Charleroi and then onto Ny, about 6 miles from Bastogne, where the Germans eventually surrounded the American infantry.

Kimble said he and his soldiers accidentally dug into the Belgian forest 5 miles behind German lines, where they supplied rifle companies with ammunition.

“We fought all Christmas day and the day afterward. We took a lot of casualties, killed or wounded,” he said.

Kimball remembered that Christmas night as being clear and extremely cold, with a vivid full moon.

Kimball said one of his saddest memories of that engagement was knowing that a good friend, a lieutenant, died a few days after the man received a letter saying said his wife had delivered a baby boy.

Another scene Kimball can’t forget is watching an American P-38 Lightning fighter plane get shot down during a dogfight with a German Messerschmitt over Belgium.

“When the P-38 crashed, we all cried,” he said.

On New Year’s Day, 1945, Kimball was summoned to the front line, a hill held by the Americans.

For close to an hour, Kimball was in an earthen dugout where German artillery fire toppled trees over his protection.

Kimball said his knowledge of French allowed him to ride at the head of troop convoys.

In Alsace, France, he said the 75th joined the First French Army and the Third U.S. Army to flush the Germans out of a mountainous region.

Kimball recalled dining on cheese and champagne before a German artillery round exploded and cut off the leg of a cook sitting near him.

“Nobody ate anything after that,” he said.

A few days later at Weckleshiem, Kimball said he “almost vomited my guts out” when he was assigned to organize the burial of 30 German bodies, which had been stored in a barn for several days.

Several days afterward, he took a Luger pistol off a dead German officer lying face down at the Maginot Line.

“This officer was dressed to kill and he got killed, too. He must have been important, because the holster had the German Order of the Iron Cross on it,” Kimball said.

While in Germany, Kimball and his men were under siege in Dortmund before heading to Wesel and then Hemer.

It was near Hemer where Kimball said the Germans had established a slave labor camp which included Russian prisoners.

“Most of them looked like skeletons when we got there. They were dying at a rate of 250 per day,” he said.

Kimball said he helped organize a 50-man civilian detail to help bury the camp’s dead until “the graves looked like a big levee.”

During the past 63 years Kimball said he contemplated revisiting Europe.

Over time that changed.

“I thought about it, but then I decided not to. The memories are not that good,” he said.

Check out the article at The Advocate.

What an impressive story! I have nothing but the utmost respect for what that man and all members of the greatest generation went through.

Always honor our veterans... they have fought for our freedom and deserve our respect at all times!

For some more very interesting history and personal accounts of WWII, I highly recommend Band of Brothers, Pegasus Bridge, D-Day June 6, 1944, and Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose

Be sure to check out the Patriotic Fact Sheet and 2008 Presidential Proclamation by George W. Bush at the Department of Veteran Affairs website.

Labels: History, Images, Military

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Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" (http://snipurl.com/457to): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Fred Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards' own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women (NOW) threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe -- and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

Check out the editorial by Orson Scott Card.

This is one extremely well-written and spot-on editorial by Orson Scott Card... who is also the author of Ender's Game, which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

On to the subject at hand... Regardless of your political leanings, I have respect for your beliefs... as you should have respect for mine. I don't believe for a moment that the media should be feeding the masses lies, propaganda, or biased coverage for any candidate for public office. It is the media's responsibility to call these people down and hold them to account for their past actions and associations and their plans for the future. No individual seeking the highest power in the world should be excused from this most important of litmus tests. Unfortunately, Barack Obama has been given a free pass. If you don't watch Fox News, then you are a victim of the left's media propaganda machine... which Senator Obama has purchased with his vast campaign funds. It is a crying shame when an election can be bought so publicly right under our noses - WAKE UP AMERICA!!!

	Check out NObama.com to learn the truth about Barack Obama's agenda!
	Be sure to check out John McCain.com to learn the truth about what he stands for and what he will do for this great nation.

Labels: History, Military, Politics

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The country honored the nearly 3,000 victims of the worst terrorist attack on American soil Thursday with ceremonies in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania to mark seven years since Sept. 11, 2001.

At the White House, President Bush led a moment of silence on the South Lawn at 8:46 a.m., the time that terrorists flew the first commercial jetliner into one of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. The second plane crashed into the other tower at 9:03 a.m.

In New York, victims' families and dignitaries paused for four moments of silence Thursday morning to commemorate the precise times that two hijacked jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center, along with the times that each tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. and 10:29 a.m.

"Today marks the seventh anniversary of the day our world was broken," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "It lives forever in our hearts and our history, a tragedy that unites us in a common memory and a common story ... the day that began like any other and ended as none ever has."

Family members and students representing more than 90 countries that lost citizens on Sept. 11, 2001, gathered in Lower Manhattan for remarks and a recitation of the names of the more than 2,700 people killed in New York.

Shortly before 9 a.m., families of Sept. 11 victims went down seven stories into the cavern where the towers stood — called Ground Zero ever since this day in 2001 — using the construction ramp on the south side of the 16-acre site to touch the place where their loved ones died before returning to street level.

Bush said Thursday that history will look back at America's response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks and conclude that "we did not tire, we did not falter and we did not fail."

After the White House remembrance, Bush headed to the Pentagon in Washington to dedicate a memorial to each life lost when American Airlines Flight 77 hit that building — a symbol of American military prowess — in the third strike that morning.

The Pentagon monument consists of 184 benches, one for each victim, that overlook small reflecting pools. The Defense Department's headquarters were struck about an hour after the attacks in New York.

A fourth plane that was apparently headed for the White House or the Capitol building in Washington crashed prematurely in a field in Shanksville, Pa. A ceremony was also held there.

Barack Obama and John McCain, the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, will appear together at Ground Zero in New York on Thursday afternoon once the ceremony is over to honor those who died.

The campaigns agreed to halt television advertising critical of each other for the day.

McCain also attended the service in Shanksville for the 40 people killed there aboard United Airlines Flight 93.

Obama called on Americans Thursday to renew "that spirit of service and that sense of common purpose" that followed the attacks. McCain asked every person "to be as good an American" as the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 after they rose up against the hijackers.

In Pennsylvania, at least 200 people gathered Thursday morning at an observance in a reclaimed minefield in Shanksville where Flight 93 came down after passengers reportedly stormed the cockpit to thwart terrorists' plans to use that plane as a weapon like the others. Bells tolled and victims' names were read as part of the service.

Some mourners in New York wondered if the remembrance would, or should, continue as it has indefinitely. About 3,500 people attended last year's ceremony, a roughly 25 percent decrease from 2006.

Other victims' relatives worry that Sept. 11 will revert to being just another date on the calendar.

The New York ceremony included the reading of 2,751 victims' names, one more than last year. The city restored Sneha Philip, a woman who vanished on Sept. 10, to its official death toll this year after a court ruled that she was likely killed at the trade center.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani spoke at the commemoration, as he has every year, along with officials including Bloomberg and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Joining the president at the White House and the Pentagon were first lady Laura Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne, members of Congress, Cabinet members, military officials and about 3,000 White House employees and guests.

The Pentagon ceremony included a wreath laying, music and a reading of the names of those who died on the plane and inside the building. Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke.

"This memorial tells the story to future generations," Gates said. "They won't directly feel the heat, smell the smoke or know the horror of that day, but they will know, as the inscription says, that we claim this ground."

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mourned those who "one morning kissed their loved ones goodbye, went off to work and never came home" and the airline passengers "who in the last moments made phone calls to loved ones and prayed to the Almighty before their journey ended not far from where it began."

The Pentagon Memorial was built at a cost of $22 million on a 1.9-acre parcel of land adjacent to the Defense Department building and within view of the crash site.

Memorials are years away from being built in Pennsylvania and New York. As in past years, two bright blue beams of light will shine at night on the New York City skyline, in memory of the fallen towers.

Check out the article at Fox News.

Never Forget 911!!!

For some excellent images, check out:

• Freedom Tower Rendering
• National 911 Memorial
• Tribute in Light photos

Be sure to check out a very interesting article: Foiled Terror Plots since 9-11

Labels: History, Images, Military, Politics

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The United States Navy's Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, popularly known as the Blue Angels, was formed in 1946 and is the world's first officially sanctioned military aerial demonstration team, as well as the oldest currently flying aerobatics team.

The Blue Angels’ mission is to enhance Navy and Marine Corps recruiting efforts and to represent the naval service to the United States, its elected leadership and foreign nations. The Blue Angels serve as positive role models and goodwill ambassadors for the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps.

A Blue Angels flight demonstration exhibits choreographed refinements of skills possessed by all naval aviators. It includes the graceful aerobatic maneuvers of the four-plane Diamond Formation, in concert with the fast-paced, high-performance maneuvers of its two Solo Pilots. Finally, the team illustrates the pinnacle of precision flying, performing maneuvers locked as a unit in the renowned, six-jet Delta Formation.

The team is stationed at Forrest Sherman Field, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, during the show season. However, the squadron spends January through March training pilots and new team members at Naval Air Facility El Centro, California.

The Blue Angels are scheduled to fly 66 air shows at 35 air show sites in the United States during the 2007-2008 season, as the team celebrates 20 years of flying the F/A-18 Hornet. Last season, more than 15 million spectators watched the Blue Angels perform. Since its inception in 1946, the Blue Angels have performed for more than 427 million fans.

Check out the Official Blue Angels website.

We headed back to Pensacola to catch the annual Blue Angels Airshow. Saturday rained out, so it was rescheduled for Sunday, July 13... but they didn't disappoint! If you've never seen the Blue Angels perform live, you don't know what you're missing! They're awesome every time you see them!

Labels: Entertainment, Images, Military, Technology

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Pensacola is a sea port on Pensacola Bay, which connects to the Gulf of Mexico. A large United States Navy base, Naval Air Station Pensacola, is located southwest of Pensacola and is home to the Blue Angels flight demonstration team, the National Museum of Naval Aviation, the Pensacola Naval Air Station Historic District, and historic Fort Barrancas and its associated Advance Redoubt are all located at NAS Pensacola.. The main campus of the University of West Florida is situated north of the city center.

Pensacola is nicknamed "The City of Five Flags" due to the five governments that have flown flags over it during its history: the flags of Spain (Castile), France, Great Britain, the Confederate States of America, and the United States. Other nicknames include "World's Whitest Beaches" (due to the white sand prevalent along beaches in the Florida panhandle), "Cradle of Naval Aviation," "Western Gate to the Sunshine State," "America's First Settlement," "Emerald Coast," "Redneck Riviera," and "Red Snapper Capital of the World."

Check out the article at Wikipedia.

We had an awesome vacation in Pensacola! The city is beautiful and boasts a very nice public parks system. The highlights of our vacation were Historic Downtown Pensacola, Naval Air Station Pensacola, and Pensacola Beach! We didn't get a chance to do any fishing, but this is the place for it: from the bayfront parks in downtown to the Pensacola Beach Fishing Pier, to some awesome offshore charters!

While we were there, we discovered Pelicans in Paradise, which is a promotional city-wide art project (much like the New Orleans Festival of Fins) from a few years back. The only question I have is... now that the city's project is over, where have all of the pelicans gone? The original locations are mostly vacant, so I've embarked on my own personal Pelican Hunt!

Labels: Entertainment, Images, Military

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ARLINGTON, Va. — President Bush paid tribute Monday to America's fighting men and women who died in battle, saying national leaders must have "the courage and character to follow their lead" in preserving peace and freedom.

"On this Memorial Day, I stand before you as the commander in chief and try to tell you how proud I am," Bush told an audience of military figures, veterans and their families at Arlington National Cemetery. Of the men and women buried in the hallowed cemetery, he said, "They're an awesome bunch of people and the United States is blessed to have such citizens."

"From faraway lands, they were returned to cemeteries like this one where broken hearts received their broken bodies," Bush said. "They found peace beneath the white headstones in the land they fought to defend. It is a solemn reminder of the cost of freedom that the number of headstones in a place such as this grows with every new Memorial Day."

He eulogized all U.S. troops who have died in service to the nation, but particularly those who lost their lives this past year.

"I am humbled by those who have made the ultimate sacrifice that allow a free civilization to endure and flourish," Bush said. "It only remains for us, the heirs of their legacy, to have the courage and the character to follow their lead and to preserve America as the greatest nation on Earth and the last, best hope for mankind."

Check out article at Fox News.

Hope everyone enjoys their Memorial Day and remembers the reason behind the holiday... the Rolling Thunder definitely didn't forget!

Labels: History, Military

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On first look, the uniform worn by Pope Benedict XVI’s bodyguards — the colorful yellow and blue stripey uniforms, the red ostrich feather-plumed helmets, the tights and bloomers — might lead you to think your grandmother could take them on.

You would be gravely mistaken.

The Swiss Guards are renowned in the security community; they are the world’s smallest army, but have an excellent reputation, outstanding capabilities and a noble history. Although tiny in number, they are a force to be reckoned with — an elite, company-sized military force that has defended pontiffs for more than 500 years, a duty that has sometimes demanded bloodshed.

Trained and equipped to fight an armed enemy (should the need arise), they are like the American Marines at the White House and the Beefeaters guarding Buckingham Palace. The Swiss Guards stand watch throughout the Apostolic Palace from the Vatican’s exterior gates to the entrance to the Pope’s private apartments.

As in other elite military units, competition to join the Swiss Guard is fierce. Selection standards are extremely high — all recruits must be unmarried Roman Catholic males between the ages of 19 and 30 who are able to endure grueling 24-hour shifts.

To be selected, a candidate must also be at least 5-foot-8 and have completed military training in the Swiss armed forces.

Carrying on tradition, the selected recruits train to handle swords and the Guard's trademark weapon: a combination spear and battle-axe known as the halberd.

Armed only with Renaissance weaponry, this minuscule army successfully kept Nazi soldiers out of Vatican City during World War II as Germany occupied Rome.

While they still wear armor and carry antique weapons, it’s not all medieval warfare for the Swiss Guards. They must maintain a high degree of physical fitness and master modern weaponry, such as the H&K submachine gun and the SIG Sauer 9 mm pistol. To best protect the Pope, they also train at close-quarters fighting and tactical movement, as well as security and counter-terrorism techniques.

And battle-axe might not be the best tool to ward off religious fanatics determined to pass a message to the Pope or to threaten him, so the guards have also added tear gas and pepper spray to their arsenal.

Across the pond, during the first papal visit to the U.S. since Usama bin Laden accused the pope of leading a “new Crusade” against Muslims, the Swiss Guard will be joined by the very best from the United States as well.

The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting foreign dignitaries alongside local Washington and New York law enforcement, will be providing Benedict XVI and President Bush the utmost protection.

Supervisory Special Agent Ed Donovan gave us the inside scoop that one lucky Secret Service Agent has the very important job of driving the Popemobile. The Secret Service has a long history of working with the Swiss Guard on previous Papal visits as well as presidential visits to the Vatican.

As the pope makes his way to New York this weekend, security measures will be rigorous, from airspace restrictions and blockaded waterways to streets being entirely shut down. Police helicopters will patrol the skies, and the waters will be protected by harbor units and scuba divers stationed in the East River.

While measures will be similar to Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1995, we will see on the streets a very visible uniformed police presence and bomb-sniffing dogs.

The security services have stressed that they are not aware of any specific threats to the pope during this visit, but they recognize that bin Laden was critical of the pontiff in his latest videotape.

While you may not see the Swiss Guard in their eye-catching garb or carrying their trademark halberds on this trip, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. In fact, it was a plainclothes undercover Swiss Guard who shielded Pope John Paul II and saved his life during a 1981 assassination attempt. The Swiss Guards, undercover and incognito, are on duty to protect the pope at all times.

Check out the article at Fox News.

The Swiss Guard is rich with history and tradition! You gotta have respect for these guys... they adhere to a very strict set of standards and are not to be trifled with! For more info, check out this article at Wikipedia.

For more information regarding Pope Benedict XVI and his Apostolic Journey, check out the Official US Papal Visit website.

Labels: History, Images, Military

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U.S. Officials Plan to Shoot Down Satellite

WASHINGTON — Taking a page from Hollywood science fiction, the Pentagon said Thursday it will try to shoot down a dying, bus-size U.S. spy satellite loaded with toxic fuel on a collision course with the Earth.

The military hopes to smash the satellite as soon as next week — just before it enters Earth's atmosphere — with a single missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the northern Pacific Ocean.

One of the main goals of the satellite's destruction is to prevent any sensitive equipment from falling into the wrong hands.

"We are worried about something showing up on e-Bay," defense and intelligence expert John Pike said, adding that breaking up the satellite's pieces lessens the chance that sensitive U.S. technology could wind up in Chinese hands.

"What they have to be worried about is that a souvenir collector is going to find some piece, put it on e-Bay, and the Chinese buy it," said Pike, who is director of the defense research group GlobalSecurity.org.

The dramatic maneuver may well trigger international concerns, and U.S. officials have begun notifying other countries of the plan — stressing that it does not signal the start of a new American anti-satellite weapons program.

Military and administration officials said the satellite is carrying fuel called hydrazine that could injure or even kill people who are near it when it hits the ground.

That reason alone, they said, persuaded President Bush to order the shoot-down.

"That is the only thing that breaks it out, that is worthy of taking extraordinary measures," said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon briefing.

He predicted a fairly high chance — as much as 80 percent — of hitting the satellite, which will be about 150 miles up when the shot is fired.

The window of opportunity for taking the satellite down, Cartwright said, opens in three or four days and lasts for about seven or eight days.

"We'll take one shot and assess," he said. "This is the first time we've used a tactical missile to engage a spacecraft."

Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey discounted comparisons to an anti-satellite test conducted by the Chinese last year that triggered criticism from the U.S. and other countries.

"This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings," Jeffrey said. "Specifically, there was enough of a risk for the president to be quite concerned about human life."

There might also be unstated military aims, some outside the administration suggested.

Similar spacecraft re-enter the atmosphere regularly and break up into pieces, said Ivan Oelrich, vice president for strategic security programs at the Federation of American Scientists.

He said, "One could be forgiven for asking if this is just an excuse to test an anti-satellite weapon."

A key issue when China shot down its defunct weather satellite was that it created an enormous amount of space debris.

"All of the debris from this encounter, as carefully designed as it is, will be down at most within weeks, and most of it will be down within the first couple of orbits afterward," said Jeffrey. "There's an enormous difference to spacefaring nations in ... those two things."

He and others dismissed suggestions that this was simply an attempt by the U.S. to flex its muscles, and that officials were overstating the toxic fuel threat.

Left alone, the satellite would be expected to hit Earth during the first week of March. About half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft would be expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and would scatter debris over several hundred miles.

If the missile shot is successful, officials said, much of the debris would burn up as it fell. They said they could not estimate how much would make it through the atmosphere.

They said the largest piece that would survive re-entry would be the spherical fuel tank, which is about 40 inches wide — assuming it is not hit directly by the missile.

The goal, however, is to hit the fuel tank in order to minimize the amount of fuel that returns to Earth, Cartwright said.

A Navy missile known as Standard Missile 3 would be fired at the spy satellite in an attempt to intercept it just before it re-enters Earth's atmosphere.

It would be "next to impossible" to hit the satellite after that because of atmospheric disturbances, he said.

Known by its military designation US 193, the satellite was launched in December 2006. It lost power and its central computer failed almost immediately afterward, leaving it uncontrollable. It carried a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor.

Software associated with the Standard Missile 3 has been modified to enhance the chances of the missile's sensors recognizing that the satellite is its target. The missile's designed mission is to shoot down ballistic missiles, not satellites.

Other officials said the missile's maximum range, while a classified figure, is not great enough to hit a satellite operating in normal orbits.

"It's a one-time deal," Cartwright said when asked whether the modified Standard Missile 3 should be considered a new U.S. anti-satellite technology.

He said that if an initial shoot-down attempt fails, the military would have about two days to reassess and decide whether to take a second shot.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told reporters that analysis shows the hydrazine tank would survive a fall to Earth under normal circumstances, much as one did when the space shuttle Columbia crashed.

"The hydrazine which is in it is frozen solid, as it is now. Not all of it will melt," he said.

If the tank hits the ground it will have been breached because the fuel lines will have broken off and hydrazine will vent out, he said.

Jeffrey said members of Congress were briefed on the plan earlier Thursday and that diplomatic notifications to other countries were being made by the end of the day.

"It should be understood by all, at home and abroad, that this is an exceptional circumstance and should not be perceived as the standard U.S. policy for dealing with errant satellites," said House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton.

Check out the article at Fox News.

If you're interested in getting a look at this satellite before we blow it out of the sky, it will be easy to see with the unaided eye. Just go check out the Satellite US 192 page at Heavens-Above.com for more info. I'm kinda hoping I can catch a glimpse of the explosion... provided I don't get a close-up view of any falling debris!

Labels: Military, Space, Technology

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World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” - officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…"

Check out the article at Department of Veteran Affairs website.

Never forget our veterans... past, present or future!

Check out the Veterans Day Wiki page.

Labels: History, Images, Military

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Ever wish you could be a "fly on the wall" at a closed-door meeting or to hear a foe’s secrets?

Enter the robobug.

Witnesses are buzzing about recent sightings of robotic-looking dragonflies seen at Washington and New York political events. And U.S. government and private agencies have admitted to striving for the spy technology, The Washington Post reports, though no one has confessed to deploying the bugged bugs.

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Others think they are, well, dragonflies -- an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look.

No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely.

The robobugs could follow suspects, guide missiles to targets or navigate the crannies of collapsed buildings to find survivors.

The technical challenges of creating robotic insects are daunting, and most experts doubt that fully working models exist yet.

"If you find something, let me know," said Gary Anderson of the Defense Department's Rapid Reaction Technology Office.

But the CIA secretly developed a simple dragonfly snooper as long ago as the 1970s. And given recent advances, even skeptics say there is always a chance that some agency has quietly managed to make something operational.

"America can be pretty sneaky," said Tom Ehrhard, a retired Air Force colonel and expert in unmanned aerial vehicles who is now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit Washington-based research institute.

Robotic fliers have been used by the military since World War II, but in the past decade their numbers and level of sophistication have increased enormously. Defense Department documents describe nearly 100 different models in use today, some as tiny as birds, and some the size of small planes.

All told, the nation's fleet of flying robots logged more than 160,000 flight hours last year -- a more than fourfold increase since 2003. A recent report by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College warned that if traffic rules are not clarified soon, the glut of unmanned vehicles "could render military airspace chaotic and potentially dangerous."

But getting from bird size to bug size is not a simple matter of making everything smaller.

Check out the article at Fox News or the original article at The Washington post.

Cool, I could use a few of those!

Seriously, let's just hope that these things don't get in the wrong hands... yeah, like they aren't already.

Just imagine how good the New England Patriots would be if Bill Belichick got his hands on one of those spybugs!

Check out this interesting Spybug article I found at How Stuff Works.

Labels: Images, Military, Technology

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NEW YORK — Mourners across the country bowed their heads in silence Tuesday to mark the moments exactly six years earlier when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. The dreary skies created a grim backdrop, and a sharp contrast to the clear blue of that morning in 2001.

"That day we felt isolated, but not for long and not from each other," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said as the first ceremony began. "Six years have passed, and our place is still by your side."

Construction equipment now fills the vast city block where the World Trade Center once stood. The work under way for four new towers forced the ceremony's move away from the twin towers' footprints and into a nearby park for the first time.

As people clutched framed photos of their lost loved ones, Kathleen Mullen, whose niece Kathleen Casey died in the attacks, said the park was close enough.

On this sixth anniversary, presidential politics and the health of ground zero workers loomed, perhaps more than any other.

The firefighters and first responders who helped rescue thousands that day in 2001 and later recovered the dead were to read the victims' names for the first time. Many of those rescuers are now ill with respiratory problems and cancers themselves, and they blame the illnesses on exposure to the fallen towers' toxic dust.

For the first time, the name of a victim who survived that towers' collapse but died five months later of lung disease blamed on the dust she inhaled was added to the official roll.

Felicia Dunn-Jones, an attorney, was working a block from the World Trade Center. She became the 2,974th victim linked to the four crashes of the hijacked airliners in New York, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pa., where federal investigators say the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 fought the hijackers on the rallying cry "Let's roll!"

A memorial honoring Flight 93's 40 passengers and crew began at 9:45 a.m., shortly before the time the airliner nosedived into the empty field.

"As American citizens, we're all looking at our heroes," said Kay Roy, whose sister Colleen Fraser, of Elizabeth, N.J., died when the plane went down.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff also spoke to the mourners, telling them: "You have my promise that we will continue to work every single day to protect the people of this country, all in the name of those who perished heroically on Flight 93."

In New York, drums and bagpipes played as an American flag saved from the collapse was carried toward a stage.

Firefighters shared the platform with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who many victims' families and firefighters had said shouldn't speak at the service to keep from politicizing it.

Giuliani has made his performance after the 2001 terrorist attacks the cornerstone of his presidential campaign, but the Republican has said his desire to be there Tuesday was entirely personal.

"It was a day with no answers, but with an unending line of people who came forward to help one another," he told those gathered.

In Washington, President Bush paused for a moment of silence outside the White House, while Gen. Peter Pace spoke beside the Pentagon wall where one of the hijacked planes broke through.

Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the victims' families that their loved ones will always be remembered.

"I do not know the proper words to tell you what's in my heart, what is in our hearts, what your fellow citizens are thinking today. We certainly hope that somehow these observances will help lessen your pain," he said.

Pace also spoke of the military, calling the anniversary "a day of recommitment." At the main U.S. base at Afghanistan, service members bowed their heads in memory of the victims.

National intelligence director Mike McConnell said U.S. authorities remain vigilant and concerned about "sleeper cells" of would-be terrorists inside the United States. "We're safer but we're not safe," McConnell said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Even though the World Trade Center ceremony gathering was moved out of ground zero, an estimate 3,500 family members descended briefly into the site to lay flowers near the twin towers' footprints.

Among the first family members down the ramp was Marjorie Miller, whose late husband Joel worked at Marsh & McLennan. She said the rain was almost welcome after five consecutive years of Sept. 11 sunshine.

"A lot of tears coming down from up there," she said, gesturing toward the sky, "and a lot of tears down here."

In all, 2,974 victims were killed by the Sept. 11 attacks: 2,750 connected to the World Trade Center, 40 in Pennsylvania and 184 at the Pentagon. Those numbers do not include the 19 hijackers.

Check out the article at Fox News.

Never forget what they did to us on that terrible day in 2001. If it weren't for our troops fighting overseas right now, we would probably have already been reminded of their hatred for us. But, I guess that is something that the anti-war crowd will never realize until it is far too late.

For more 911 images, check out my Never Forget 911 blog post from last year.

Labels: History, Military, Politics

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Richard Clarke remembers standing in the Oval Office and handing President George W. Bush a letter regarding what the nation should do to secure cyberspace.

"I think he signed it. I don't think he read it. I don't think he knows what it was," Clarke said during his keynote here in Las Vegas at the Black Hat security conference on Aug. 1.

Clarke is somebody whose advice Bush should have heeded.

Until his retirement in 2003, Clarke was a member of the Senior Executive Service, having served as an advisor to four presidents between 1973 and 2003.

He was the chief counter-terrorism advisor on the U.S. National Security Council for both the latter part of the Clinton administration through the early part of Bush's administration and the 9/11 attacks.

Serving with the Clinton administration, he toured the country for two years, collecting industry and academic intelligence on one crushingly important question: How do we secure cyberspace?

This is important. Within the coming 20 years, Clarke said, our soldiers will enter the battlefield with multiple IP addresses.

The Pentagon is already working toward what Clarke called net-centric warfare, part of which will be exoskeleton armor covered with interior and exterior sensors.

These exoskeletons will allow soldiers to literally have eyes in the back of their heads, to see around corners as robots fly ahead and beam back images to their visors, to lift weights at 5 to 10 times their normal capability due to exoskeletal servo-motors, and have their health monitored and their illness or fatigue medicated — again, automatically through the exoskeletal suit.

The Pentagon's vision of net-centric warfare relies on IP addresses, lots of them.

It's why the Pentagon is the only part of government now pushing for the next-generation Internet, IPv6, with its vast capacity for IP addresses, Clarke said.

But this all assumes that cyberspace is secure.

"It's not," Clarke said. "The chaos that goes on in cyberspace very day, I don't have to tell you about," he said to the audience of black, white and gray hackers.

"We are building more and more of our economy, our global economy, on the foundation of cyberspace 1.0," Clarke said. "The fundamental architecture hasn't changed since creation. And we still have secured very little" of that architecture, he said, including the very foundations of today's Internet's, DNS and PHP — themselves still not very secure.

We're also still running code from major vendors across the world that's "replete with errors, replete with errors people can use to hack into systems," Clarke said.

We still have no industry or academically generated standards to secure code, he added.

We still don't write secure code, either, he said, with high rates of errors commonplace.

We still don't authenticate much of cyberspace, either, he said.

We could also be using encryption far more than we do today, Clarke said — an omission evidenced by the loss of a laptop bearing the Social Security numbers of U.S. veterans.

"When some government laptop with the Social Security numbers of every veteran in the United States is stolen in Washington, we shouldn't have to worry about it; it should be encrypted. Databases should be encrypted," he said.

And, yet, they're not.

VoIP (Voice over IP) can be encrypted. With headlines about national security letters being abused by the FBI and other uses of surveillance, perhaps we should encrypt phone calls, Clarke suggested.

The United States also needs to adopt IPv6 "much more rapidly," Clarke said — not only because the Defense Department's plans rest on having IP address-loaded soldiers, but "because it also offers opportunity for security and for prioritization, which we don't have today. Think of how prioritization could improve disaster response in situations like 9/11 or Katrina, where communications channels get swamped immediately, barring emergency first responders from the prioritization they should have.

"And yet we're now planning disaster relief and other response based on cyberspace. On the Internet," Clarke said. "There's no way today to differentiate e-mail from someone to their grandmother or a packet with their vacation photos with that of [communications from a first responder in a disaster situation]."

The work needed to create an Internet infrastructure that could support a more secure, more rationalized cyberspace has unfortunately been starved of funding by a Congress, an administration and a society that just "doesn't get it," Clarke said.

"The Bush administration has systematically reduced the work necessary to secure cyberspace," he said.

"It's not because the answers aren't there," he said. "Or because it's a really hard problem. Sure it's a hard problem, but a lot can be done quickly. Two years we went around holding meetings, asking experts, asking industry, What should we do to secure cyberspace?"

Perhaps, instead of debating stem cell research, instead of debating whether evolution should be taught in schools, instead of surveilling citizens rather than terrorists, we should be having this crucial debate, Clarke said.

"The enemy is terrorists. The enemy is not citizens," he said.

The takeway from his talk: The enemy is an insecure cyberspace.

Check out the article at Fox News.

Scary stuff! One can only hope that the government and society recognize the threat and begin to act before it's too late!

For more information, check out the Cyber Security Wiki page.

Labels: Military, Politics, Technology

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TOKYO – Japan has changed the name of the Pacific island of Iwo Jima to the original name of Iwo To given by locals, who have become disenchanted with the popularization of its modern-day moniker by such movies as Clint Eastwood's recently released "Letters from Iwo Jima."

The new name in Japanese looks and means the same as Iwo Jima — or Sulfer Island — but sounds different, the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute said.

The institute announced the name change on Monday after discussing the issue with Japan's coast guard. An official map with the new name will be released Sept. 1.

Iwo Jima was the site of the World War II battle immortalized by the famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal of The Associated Press of Marines raising the American flag on the islet's Mount Suribachi.

Before the war, however, the volcanic island was known as Iwo To by the 1,000 or so civilians who lived there.

They were evacuated in 1944 as U.S. forces advanced across the Pacific. Some Japanese navy officers who moved in to fortify the island mistakenly called it Iwo Jima, and the name stuck. After the war, civilians weren't allowed to return and the island was put to exclusive military use by both the U.S. and Japan, cementing its identity.

Never satisfied that the name Iwo Jima took root, locals took action in March after the release of Eastwood's two films "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flags of Our Fathers" spotlighted the misnomer.

"Though we're happy for Iwo To, which has been forgotten by history, the islanders are extremely grieved every time they hear Iwo To referred to as Iwo Jima," the local Ogasawara newspaper reported at the time.

Ogasawara, the municipality that administers Iwo To and neighboring islands, responded by adopting a resolution making Iwo To the official reading. Residents and descendants of Iwo To evacuees petitioned the central government to follow suit.

"These people are now scattered nationwide and are not able to go back to Iwo To," said the survey institute's Mitsugu Aizawa. "These people have said that the place is originally called Iwo To and their claim lead to this revision."

Today the only inhabitants are about 400 Japanese soldiers.

The 1945 battle for Iwo Jima pitted some 100,000 U.S. troops against 22,000 Japanese deeply dug into a labyrinth of tunnels and trenches. Nearly 7,000 Americans were killed capturing the island, and fewer than 1,000 of the Japanese would survive.

The Americans occupied the island after the war, and returned it to Japanese jurisdiction in 1968. The U.S. Navy still uses an Iwo To airstrip to train pilots who operate from aircraft carriers.

Check out the article at Fox News.

I'm glad that this historical error has finally been rectified... I'm sure the history books won't be re-written, but I guess this is as good as it's going to get for the former residents of the island.

Clint Eastwood recently produced two excellent, historically accurate movies about WWII Iwo Jima, or should I say Iwo To.

Letters from Iwo Jima is told from the Japanese defenders' point of view, and gives amazing insight into the Japanese mindset of the day. The movie is entirely in Japanese, with English subtitles... but don't let that stop you, it is an excellent movie!

Flags of our Fathers is a true story revolving around the lives of the individuals who were depicted raising the American Flag in the famous photograph on Mt. Suribachi. Based on the book by the same title, the story examines how those six soldiers' lives were forever changed when they were immortalized in that photograph. They were called heroes, but they didn't think that of themselves. The comment made by John Bradley sums up their true feelings: "The heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who didn't come back."

Labels: History, Military

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The American Flag represents freedom and has been an enduring symbol of our Nation's ideals since the earliest days of our Nation. Wherever it flies, we are reminded of America's unity and in the great cause of liberty and justice for all.

Two hundred and thirty years ago, the Second Continental Congress officially made the Stars and Stripes the symbol of America. The Founders declared that the 13 stars gracing the original flag represented "a new constellation," just as America embodied new hope and new light for mankind. Today, our flag continues to convey the bold spirit of a proud and determined Nation.

Americans have long flown our flag as a sign of patriotism and gratitude for the blessings of liberty. We also pledge allegiance to the flag as an expression of loyalty to our country and to the belief in the American creed of freedom and justice. By displaying and showing respect for the flag, we honor the ideals upon which our democracy rests and show appreciation for the freedoms we enjoy today. Flying the flag can also be an expression of thanks for the men and women who have served and sacrificed in defense of our freedoms -- from the early patriots of the Continental Army to the courageous Americans in uniform who are defending those freedoms around the world today.

During Flag Day and National Flag Week, we honor Old Glory and reflect on the foundations of our freedom. As citizens of this great Nation, we a