Theodore's World

Massive rally backs Chavez opponent
Seattle Times
CARACAS, Venezuela — Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans packed a major highway Saturday in a rally for opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, one of the largest demonstrations against President Hugo Chavez in years.
Shouts of “Dare to change!” rose up from the dense crowd filling the highway for several miles and spilling into nearby overpasses and streets in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. The rally came eight days before the country’s presidential election on Dec. 3.

Rosales, speaking from a stage, promised democracy for a country he said was sinking into Cuba-style authoritarianism under Chavez.

“I don’t want to be a president who controls all the branches of government,” Rosales shouted to thundering applause. “Let there be true democracy in Venezuela!”

He denounced the government for prohibiting television crews from using helicopters to film the march, saying:

“They don’t want the people to see this multitude.”

“They are scared,” he shouted, pumping his fists. “We are going to win on Dec. 3.”

The crowd appeared to number in the hundreds of thousands. Organizers claimed more than 1 million people attended.
Rosales, the governor of the oil-rich western state of Zulia who favors a free-market economy over Chavez’s brand of socialism, trailed the Venezuelan president by a wide margin in an AP-Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month.
However, his candidacy has managed to galvanize Venezuela’s fractured opposition, reviving a movement that had struggled to recover from a crushing defeat in a 2004 recall referendum against Chavez.
Rosales said the vast crowd on Saturday was proof he would defeat Chavez.
They danced to Venezuelan folk music booming from loudspeakers and chanted anti-Chavez slogans.

“After seeing this, nobody should have any doubts about Rosales’ chances,” 43-year-old accountant Franklin Salas said.

More than 3,000 police were deployed along the march route to prevent clashes with Chavez supporters who gathered on several street corners, shouting “Viva Chavez!” as marchers passed. There were no reports of violence.
Despite the revived opposition movement, Chavez remains hugely popular among the poor, especially those who see benefits from oil-funded social programs ranging from free health care to heavily subsidized government grocery stores.
Rosales lashed out at Chavez for wanting to be “president all his life, until he dies like Fidel Castro – indefinite re-election.”

“This country doesn’t want that. It wants modernity,” he said.

Chavez, first elected in 1998, has said he wants to continue governing Venezuela until 2021 or longer. He said he plans to ask Venezuelans in a referendum if they support changing the constitution to allow indefinite re-election. It currently allows two consecutive presidential terms.
Rosales accused the Chavez administration of having no respect for private property and giving away the country’s oil wealth to leftist allies overseas while neglecting the poor at home. He said Chavez wants “a new rich and more poor people … an elite that runs everything.”
Rosales, who temporarily stepped down as Zulia governor to run for president, is one of the few opposition politicians to hold on to office as Chavez’s allies have gained control of the National Assembly, state offices and the courts.
Rosales accused the Chavez government of imprisoning people for political reasons and said he would free them if elected. The government says Venezuela has no political prisoners, only people legitimately convicted of crimes.
Ernesto Galindez, a 58-year-old butcher who backs Chavez, said he was surprised by the size of Saturday’s march, but predicted Rosales would lose.

“They are going to have to wait six more years because Chavez is still very strong, and he’s not going anywhere,” said Galindez, grinning.

Wild Thing’s comment……
I wonder if our traitor Jimmy Carter will show up to give his support to his commie friend Hugo Chavez?

Russian rocket deliveries to Iran started
Breitbart.com
Russia has begun deliveries of the Tor-M1 air defence rocket system to Iran, Russian news agencies quoted military industry sources as saying, in the latest sign of a Russian-US rift over Iran.

“Deliveries of the Tor-M1 have begun. The first systems have already been delivered to Tehran,” ITAR-TASS quoted an unnamed, high-ranking source as saying Friday.

The United States has pressed Russia to halt military sales to Iran, which Washington accuses of harbouring secret plans to build a nuclear weapon.
Moscow has consistently defended its weapons trade with Iran. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the contract for 29 rocket systems, signed in December last year, was legitimate because the Tor-M1 has a purely defensive role.
ITAR-TASS reported that the rockets were to be deployed around Iran’s nuclear sites, including the still incomplete, Russian-built atomic power station at Bushehr.
In August, Washington announced sanctions against several companies, including Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport, for supplying technology to Iran that could allegedly be used to develop missile technology and weapons of mass destruction.
Under the sanctions no US company can deal with foreign companies on the sanctions list for two years.
A spokesman for Rosoboronexport contacted by AFP would not confirm or deny the reports about the Tor-M1 delivery, which were also issued by the Interfax news agency.
The Tor-M1 is a low to medium-altitude missile fired from a tracked vehicle against airplanes, helicopters and other airborne targets.
The news came as the UN Security Council continued to consider possible sanctions against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile activity in response to the Islamic republic’s suspect nuclear programme.
The major powers have been debating a draft resolution drawn up by Britain, France and Germany that would impose limited sanctions on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile sectors for Tehran’s failure to comply with an earlier UN resolution on halting enrichment.
China and Russia, both close economic partners with Iran, argue the measures are too extensive, while Washington has pressed for tougher action.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
Putin is playing with fire, the Muslims who destroyed a theater and murdered children care not one whit who supplies them with arms, they will attack the Russians just as quickly as they attack their fellow muslims.
Putin is a dangerous little man, killing one of his KGB agents in London, turning on Poland and continuing to arm the most dangerous people on the planet. What’s next for Pootie, murdering anyone who seems a danger to his agenda of hate America, freedom and fair elections. Russia is falling down a rathole with this punk as their great leader. Wake up, and smell the corruption coming from Moscow, we are the enemy to Putin and it is time we stop enabling this little monster.

Explosive teddy bears found in lab
YNet news
Efrat Weiss Published: 11.25.06, 14:51
A joint paratrooper and Shin Bet force uncovered an explosive lab in Nablus Friday night. In the lab, the forces found teddy bears with wires hanging from them, apparently slated to be used as explosive devices.
The lab was detonated in a controlled manner, and there were no reports of injuries.
The forces also found in the explosives lab three belts made from cloth, ready to contain explosives, a hollow coat used for hiding explosives, and 20 light bulbs and light sockets used for activating explosives.
Test tubes, a hollow gas tank, hollow pipes, batteries, 40 liters of hydrogen peroxide and ohms were also found in the lab.
Since the beginning of the year, Israel Defense Forces soldiers operating in Nablus hit 41 gunmen who were planning, according to the defense establishment, to hit IDF troops or Israeli citizens.
Some 320 wanted terror suspects were arrested in the West Bank city and its surroundings since the beginning of the year, most of them affiliated with Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah and Hamas.
At the beginning of the year, another explosives lab was uncovered in the city’s casba. The forces located the lab in an abandoned building after receiving intelligence.
Captain Assaf Cabra, a company commander at the Haruv battalion, addressed the operation at the time: “We launched a regimental operation in Nablus, which included searches, seizing weapons and arrests. We uncovered the explosive lab in the casba, which contained between 40 to 50 kilograms (88 to 110 pounds) of explosives for preparing explosive devices.”
The defense establishment reported that the terror organizations were working with greater vigor to carry out terror attacks from the city, and in the past months many explosive belts were captured in the area and gunmen were arrested on their way to carry out attacks in Israel .

Wild Thing’s comment……
I am glad they found this lab and I should not be surprised that these subhuman pieces of flesh would do such a thing as to use a childs toy, something so innocent to bring death to children. But then why be surprised, they send their own children off to kill and destroy others lives.

* SondraK …Thank you Sondra!

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This Category Bunker Notebook at Theodore’s World, 
will be about the things shared in emails from 
our troops and other Americans that are 
located in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Theodore’s World is very aware of how 
loose lips endanger our troops and other Americans 
working in the hot zones, so at all times great care will be 
taken in how much information is posted. 

Some notes will be directly from the troops 
and other notes from those such
as employees with Halliburton and others..

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Yes there is a curfew in Bagdad, I have received emails from a friend that is there. She is an employee with Haliburton in Baghdad.

“They’re really not worse…they’re better than they were in 2004. They’re coming to a head. Most of rest of Iraq is calm now. But there is a need for some changes in the leadership. I guess people learn lessons after a first-time election. I’ve heard so many Iraqis bemoan not having voted for Allawi’s party now.
The media has been very successful in distorting the war to the people back home. I’ve watched them do it for some time now and it disgusts me. They’ve even been able to influence events here. People just don’t realize what ramifications there are when they go spouting off about that. This is not a failure, we have not lost and pulling out now would be disastrous.”

And this is from an email from someone that is in the military in Iraq …Army Infantry Lieutenant…Platoon Leader in the first Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT)…..with his permission:

“As you know,Mosul, my personal playground, is more or less stable, but there is a strong insurgent presence here. We in the Stryker Brigade are able to contain them very well, but we’ve been unable to make a real dent in them personnel-wise. Logistically, we’ve been hammering them, and that’s almost as good. Intelligence (for us) is scattered but reliable. For them, well, there are a very large number of people who are happy to pass on tidbits of info b/c it seems like the good Iraqi/Muslim thing to do.
People like to talk about how it took 10 years in Germany and Japan after WWII, but they’re ignoring the basic fact that Arabs are NOT German nor are they Japanese. Completely different cultures with completely different mindsets. The current plan would work swimmingly if the Iraqi people gave half a damn about their (meager) existences. They don’t; they merely worry about which tribe or sect this or that person is with and whether he/she should be killed (either due simply to their affiliation or in retribution). The IA and IPs (except for the Kurds) follow the same pattern. We, as Americans, can’t change that perception. We can’t want it more for them than they want it for themselves. It is literally that simple. Americans see this in one way, but the Arab mentality is vastly different (and inferior) from ours. Unfortunately, since it’s their country and their region of the world, it’s their viewpoint and subsequent actions that matter.
With all the talk back home about having us pull out of Iraq sooner rather than later, I can say with a completely clear conscience that the U.S has not failed the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people have failed us and not lived up to our sacrifices. Democracy and the associated civic and personal responsibilities associated with it are incompatible with Islam, period.
We are still patrolling like 3 years ago. Day in, day out. Only recently have we taken a more “tactical overwatch” stance, but we’re still very active in the city. The good news is that the IA are, too. However, ours is a unique situation. IA in Mosul is over 95% Kurdish. They are dedicated and loyal. In the rest of the country, they are Arab, and are loyal to their religious sect and won’t hesitate to stab us in the back if it means they can kill some Sunnis/Shi’ites (or whichever other flavor that’s out there they don’t like). The Arabs are always shady, b/c you really never know where their loyalties lie. Even if some of the IA are substandard Soldiers (below US Army standards, that is), at least they’re loyal and motivated. You get no such guarantees from Arabs, ever.
You are right about your assessment of the dedication and professionalism of the military, of course, and you’re correct about the idiocy of the media’s presentation of the battlespace. We need to get serious with these terrorists/insurgents. This arresting and turning over to the Iraqis is absolute nonsense. Once caught, AIF need to be shot on sight. That will send a clear message that we aren’t playing around anymore, and it will make the jihad a lot less fun for these guys. IA over here just caught three guys with weapons and handcuffs at a checkpoint. They admitted to going around fishing for kidnapping victims (who invariably end up dead). Instead of being shot, they’re now hanging out in a detention facility getting three meals a day and being questioned (nicely). All AIF know that our ROE is pretty limited and they use our morality against us constantly. It needs to end. They need to be deathly afraid of us.
The bottom line here is that any withdrawal on our part is hardly indicative of a failure on the U.S.’s part but that of the failure of the Iraqi people. Voting for representatives doesn’t make you a democracy, it takes a lot of personal responsibility, and these people haven’t even figured out sewage and garbage treatment yet! Will Iraq ever be able to handle the responsibility of a democracy? Who knows? What getting out or talking about it does effect are insurgents, it gives them encouragement that they and we don’t need from them. And every time one of our Soldiers is killed up here, well it’s like this Chrissie, I drive around the city every day looking at these people and I know for a fact that none of ’em are worth the platoon sergeant from my company who was killed a few months back. Not a single one.
But I do want to complete what we were sent here to do. I want to do it for him, and for all the others we have lost, my brothers. I want to do it for all of you back there to be safe and keep these people from bringing it back home where all my loved ones are. As for myself we’re fighting them here rather than on U.S. soil.
Thanks for your support and letting me sound off to you when I can. Thank everyone at your blog too, we check it out over here when we can. It is appreciated!”

Here are two quotes from men regarding Iraq:
First, Kurdish Regional Government Prime Minister Barzani:

“When I was in the United States recently and read the negative news in the Washington Post, New York Times and in the network TV broadcasts, I even wondered if things had gotten so bad since I had left that I shouldn’t return.”

Next, Gen. Abizaid:

“When I come to Washington, I feel despair. When I’m in Iraq with my commanders, when I talk to our soldiers, when I talk to the Iraqi leadership, they are not despairing.”

Democrats’ Secret Weapons
Investors.com
Intelligence: Senate Democrats are focusing their new powers on one thing above all else: wrenching as many national security secrets as possible from this White House and using them for political assassination.
Patrick Leahy of Vermont, soon to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has made more than 65 requests for classified documents from the Bush administration. Among other secrets, he wants..

“all directives, memoranda and/or orders including any and all attachments to such documents regarding CIA interrogation methods or policies for the treatment of detainees.”

Giving Leahy and his staff secrets would, quite simply, be a security risk. Since the 1980s, Leahy’s nickname inside the Beltway has been “Leaky Leahy” because of his willingness to provide the press with juicy secrets to be used against Republican presidents.
In 1987, Leahy was forced to resign as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee after leaking a draft report of the Iran-Contra affair to a reporter. In 1985, he was charged with revealing secrets in the Achille Lauro terrorist hijacking, a misdeed that may have cost an Egyptian anti-terrorist agent his life. And Leahy apparently blackmailed the Reagan administration’s CIA, threatening to expose a covert operation against the terrorist state of Libya.
The man about to become the new chairman of the panel from which Leahy was removed in 1987 is another big security risk. Incoming Senate Intelligence Committee head Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told National Public Radio last week how frustrated he is with the government’s restrictions on sharing secrets from intelligence briefings.

“You can’t discuss it with anybody on your staff,” he complained. “You can’t discuss anything that you’ve heard with anybody.

“It’s a stupid situation . . . and it’s one we have to get ourselves out of,” he insisted, “and the way you do that is to brief more members of the Senate and House — the intelligence committees — into the program so that they know exactly what’s going on.”

Rockefeller certainly knew exactly what was going on when, during a 2002 trip to the Middle East, he gave Bashar al-Assad, president of the terrorist state of Syria, advance warning of U.S plans to invade Iraq. Why should we take Rockefeller’s advice and spill secrets to other Democratic senators and congressmen? So they can fly to the Middle East and give their own freelance intelligence briefings to terrorists?
Carl Levin, who’ll head the Senate Armed Services Committee, will need lots of the classified documents Leahy and Rockefeller demand if he’s to follow through with his promised “thorough review” of the CIA’s interrogation and imprisonment program.

“I’m not comfortable with the system,” he has said. “I think that there’s been some significant abuses which have not made us more secure, but have made us less secure and have also, perhaps, cost us some real allies, as well as not producing useful information.”

In the five years after the 9/11 attacks, there has not been a single terrorist strike on the homeland. More than a dozen terrorist plots have been foiled, proof that tough interrogations have produced useful information — lots of it — making us much more secure.

“The American people,” Leahy wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, “deserve to have detailed and accurate information about the role of the Bush administration in developing the interrogation policies and practices that have engendered such deep criticism around the world.”

Wrong. What the American people deserve from our government is not kowtowing to foreign criticism, but protection from terrorism. That is something President Bush has done to perfection — and Democrats seem willing to sacrifice protection in their crusade to destroy this presidency.

Wild Thing’s comment……
The Administration should resist these congressional committees tooth-and-nail. They are not about the national interest, but the raw self-interest of the Democratic party. They are not legitimate legislators, but bullies and thugs who have no problem aiding the enemy, since the enemy they care about is the Republican party.

Most of you probably have read “Merry Christmas, My Friend” before, but have you heard it with the backdrop of Silent Night?
It was originally title “Merry Christmas, My Friend”, and was an instant success that reportedly brought tears to the eyes of the barrracks Commander who ordered it distributed to everyone he knew. It appeared in the barracks publication Pass in Review in December 1987 and Leatherneck Magazine in December 1991.
Written by former Marine Corporal James M. Schmidt, in 1987 when stationed in Washington D.C., it was pounded out on a typewriter while awaiting the commading officer’s Christmas holiday decoration inspection.
The poem was recorded as a tribute by Father Ted Berndt, a former Marine and Purple Heart recipient during World War II, currently residing in Dousman, Wisconsin for his daughter Ellen Stout, a Clear Channel radio personality.
Here is the link to the MP3 audio version of “Merry Christmas, My Friend”, titled “Soldier’s Silent Night” –

* Blackfive

U.S. Army NASCAR driver Joe Nemechek was presented a copy of A Million Thanks by Shauna Fleming, the 16-year-old founder of A Million Thanks, prior to Sunday’s (Feb. 26) Auto Club 500 Nextel Cup race in Fontana, Calif.

What began as a community school project for Shauna at Orange Lutheran High School in Orange, Calif., has turned out to be national in scope. Since she began the letter writing campaign two years ago, Shauna has received more than two million letters of thanks for the American men and women in uniform who are stationed overseas.
She presented the one millionth letter to President George W. Bush at the White House in November, 2004.

TomR mentioned in a comment about NASCAR’s Joe Nemechek’s US Army Chevy. I had not heard about it so I looked it up and found this totally cool story. Gosh I love things like this happening. Americans loving and appreciating our troops.
Thank you Tom

Soldiers in a Stryker vehicle stop for a muster of turkeys crossing the road in the outskirts of Mosul Nov. 3. The Soldiers are with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. (Sgt. Antonieta Rico, 5th Mobile Public Affairs Det.)

Washington Times
China obtained secret stealth technology used on B-2 bomber engines from a Hawaii-based spy ring in a compromise U.S. officials say will allow Beijing to copy or counter a key weapon in the Pentagon’s new strategy against China.

Details of the classified defense technology related to the B-2’s engine exhaust system and its ability to avoid detection by infrared sensors were sold to Chinese officials by former defense contractor Noshir S. Gowadia, an Indian-born citizen charged with spying in a federal indictment released by prosecutors in Hawaii.

Additionally, Mr. Gowadia provided extensive technical assistance to Chinese weapons designers in developing a cruise missile with an engine exhaust system that is hard to detect by radar, according to court papers made public recently.
He also helped the Chinese modify a cruise missile so that it can intercept U.S. air-to-air missiles, and helped Chinese weapons designers improve testing and measurement facilities, the court papers state.
Most of the indictment, handed up Nov. 8, outlines how the engineer helped China develop a radar-evading stealth exhaust nozzle for a cruise missile engine.
Additionally, the court papers indicated that Mr. Gowadia sent e-mails to Israel, Germany, and Switzerland in 2002 and 2004 that contained data labeled “secret” and “top secret” that was related to U.S. stealth technology intended for use in the TH-98 Eurocopter and for foreign commercial aircraft.
One computer file found in Mr. Gowadia’s Maui, Hawaii, home was a file containing the radar cross-sections of U.S. B-1 and F-15 jets and the Air Force’s air-launched cruise missile, information that would be useful to countering those systems by anti-aircraft missiles or other air defense weapons.
The case is the second major military technology espionage case involving China. Earlier this year, two Chinese-born brothers in Los Angeles were arrested as suspects in passing Navy warship and submarine weapons secrets to China.
In all, Mr. Gowadia is charged with making at least six secret visits to China from 2002 through 2005, and being paid at least $110,000 by Chinese officials for highly classified defense technology supplied through January, according to court papers. Investigators think he was paid as much as $2 million, some of which remains in foreign bank accounts.
The first known compromise was Mr. Gowadia’s lecture in a foreign country in 1999 that involved the disclosure of defense secrets. He offered classified defense information to as many as eight foreign nations, the court papers state.
Mr. Gowadia was first indicted in November 2005 in connection with passing information to several countries that were not identified. The new indictment states that Mr. Gowadia continued to be engaged in a conspiracy to sell classified technology through January 2006.
Mr. Gowadia worked for B-2 developer and manufacturer Northrop Aircraft Inc. from 1968 to 1989 as part of an ultrasecret special access program for the B-2, and later as a Northrop contractor involved in classified research on missiles and aircraft. He also worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1990s.

Wild Thing’s comment……
We develop it … The Chinese steal it from us.
It just never seems to stop, and we don’t seem to do anything about it. It’s way beyond sad. When you look at the Cold War and how we strove to protect our nation’s secrets and keep spies out, you see how truly outrageous our current policies are. Heck, we even let them into the White House and other top-level agencies during the Clinton fiasco.
The US is not severe enough with its traitors. I know it is too late now, but I have always felt we should start with the Clinton’s and Loral executives giving guidance technology and bring it all the way up to this. Punish to the max all involved. It makes me sick how the Clinton’s got away with what they did and now we have this jerk.

Team Rensi Motorsports Thanks the Marines for Six Years of Support
HOMESTEAD, FL —Saturday’s Ford 300 NASCAR Busch Series race will mark the conclusion of one of the most popular relationships in the series. The United States Marine Corps colors and logo will take one final ride as the primary marketing partner on the No. 25 Team Rensi Motorsports Ford. The association began in 2001 and amassed 205 races with five trips to victory lane.

“Team Rensi Motorsports would like to thank The United States Marine Corps Recruiting Command and all the Men and Women of the Marine Corps for allowing us to be a part of their recruiting efforts the last six years,” said Team Rensi Co-owner Gary Weisbaum. “It was an honor for us to represent The United States Marine Corps and to meet many outstanding active, reserve and retired Marines and their families over the years.”

Team Rensi Motorsports Co-owner Ed Rensi also sends out his appreciation.

“Team Rensi Motorsports will always be a friend of the Marine Corps and honor the Marine Corps into the future wherever possible. We intend to display the Eagle/Globe/Anchor logo on all of our race cars.”

Many memories have been shared together and the NASCAR community has become more familiar with the outstanding work of the United States Marine Corps over the years. The familiar site of Marines saluting the flag and surrounding the No. 25 Ford during the National Anthem will be missed.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
Just a thank you to the Marine Corps for this and the many other things that have been involved with. It is always great to hear of others that appreciate all the things our military does and in all the various areas they are involved with. God Bless our troops.