Theodore's World

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 07 – A senior Revolutionary Guards commander dismissed on Tuesday threats by the United States over Iran’s nuclear program as “political bluff”, the government-owned news agency Fars reported.
Brigadier General Ali-Reza Afshar, a veteran Revolutionary Guards commander and director of propaganda and cultural affairs in the high command of the Armed Forces, made the remarks on the final day of a conference in Tehran entitled “the West’s Psychological War Against Iran”.

“The bulk of America’s threatening propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran is just political bluff”,
Afshar said.

He said that Iran was countering the “psychological war” being waged by the U.S. by highlighting America’s “domestic problems”, citing issues such as poverty, torture in prisons, unemployment, inequality, and instrumentalisation of women.

Afshar said that his government was exposing “America’s plots” in the Middle East. “When Muslims become aware of such plots, they forge a remarkable unity against America”.

Afshar cited the seizure of British gunboats by the Revolutionary Guards in June 2004 as an example of successful psychological war by Iran.

“If the Revolutionary Guards had not acted quickly in putting out news of the seizure of the boats, we would not have been able to create that psychological war against the British”, he said.

Scenes of blindfolded and handcuffed British marines being paraded by Revolutionary Guards shocked television viewers in London in the summer of 2004. Despite repeated requests by Britain, Iran has refused to return the boats and equipment.
Afshar listed four stages of psychological war as peace, threats, crisis and war. He said that with the coming to power of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “enemy plans to sow discord within the government of the Islamic Republic” have been thwarted.

“Now the enemy is trying to use other tools against us, including ethnic and religious conflicts and partisan strife, but we must recognise these and be ready to confront them”, the Revolutionary Guards general said.

Wild Thing’s comment……
I’ll put it this way. If this was a poker game, I would want the hand that the USA held and NOT the hand that Ahmadinejad held. Don’t Mess with the USA!

Symposium: To Rape an Unveiled Woman
FrontPageMagazine.com
A Muslim rape epidemic in sweeping over Europe — and over many other nations host to immigrants from the Islamic world. The direct connection between the rapes and Islam is irrefutable, as Muslims are significantly overrepresented among convicted rapists and rape suspects. The Muslim perpetrators themselves boast that there crime is justified since their victims were, among other things, not properly veiled.
The jihad against the infidels is conducted on each and every level, not only as terror and suicide bombing. The jihad against women, who by their behaviour in the public sphere, are “asking for rape”, as the Danish mufti Shahid Mehdi, a Qur’an teacher of joung Muslims in Copenhagen, put it in 2004, and/or towards their husbands, by their alleged disobedience are challenging the survival and expansion of Islam, of the “Ummah”, is a must for the Muslim men.

Rehov:A friend of mine is a retired chief of police, who used to be in charge of the security of a major city in the south of France. He reported to me that his men had to face an average of 10 rapes a week, 80% made by Muslim young men. 30% being what we call, in French, a “ tournante “, meaning that the victim is being raped by an entire gang, one after the other, often during an entire night. My friend reports that, in many cases, he was able to locate and arrest the rapists, often very young ones, and, as part of the investigation, call the families.
He was astonished that, in most cases, the parents not only would back up their rapist children, but also would not even understand why they would be arrested.
There is an instant shift in the notion of good and evil as a major component of culture. The only evil those parents would see, genuinely, is the temptation that the male children had to face. Since in most cases the victims were not Muslims, the parents’ answer and rejection was even more genuine: how could their boys be guilty of anything, when normally answering to a provocation by occidental women, known for their unacceptable behavior?

The entire article is HERE

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Wild Thing’s comment………
There is a word that followers of Islam hate more then any other word. If you are on a forum and Muslims are present and you use this word, most of the time they will immediately leave. The word is Nakba. The word Nakba is Arabic for “the Catastrophe,” and it refers to the creation of the state of Israel. The Palestinian rallies mournfully commemorate the day Israel was created. They call it “Al Nakba”.
We as a country need to stop calling it the Religion of Peace, we need to say we are at war with Islam because that is more to the truth then the war on terror (WOT). Islam is TERROR and it is delivered to the world by such evil that we truly will never understand it imo. Oh we get hate, we get being pissed of, and we get how to fight back better then any other Military because ours ROCKS!
What some people don’t get, those inflicted with apathy and filled with the disease of political correctness is that unless we call it what it is, unless our leaders make those speaking against this Nation i.e. Carter, Gore, Clinton,Kerry, Murtha, Reid and others…….are punished for treason when we are at war with the most vile, evil enemy this world has ever known…….we very well may loose if they get their way. They do not effect those of us except make us furious. But their constant barage of words and deeds are a negative force.
I agree with Craig Winn when he wrote….

“Calling it the war on terror camouflages our actual enemy….which is Islam. We need to understand who the terrorists are (good Muslims) and why they kill (Islam). The Qur’an is a declaration of war against all mankind. The Hadith is a terrorist manifesto. Muhammad could not give them a reason to live. He gave them a reason to die.”

We should be blaming 9-11 on Islam not Osama bin Laden. He is just a currier of Islam. Not one of the Muslim murderers of that day said “Hail Osama.” They shouted, “Allahu Akbar.”
They have learned well this hate they have, they teach it to their young. What you drive, where you live, how much you own or have in your bank account does not matter to them. Your lifestye, politics, government policies, and even sanctions do not make a difference. Their hate is for anyone that is not a Muslim.

Let the entire world hear me,” said Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27, 2002. “Our hostility to the Great Satan is absolute.”

There’s good reason to take this sheik seriously. In 1983, his Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist group attacked the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans. According to the opinion of U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in the case of Peterson v. the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nasrallah attended the meeting in Baalbek, Lebanon, where the 1983 attack was planned. It was one of the deadliest terrorist strikes ever against the United States.
The sheik’s Sept. 27, 2002, rally in Beirut celebrated the Palestinian intifadah. It was broadcast live on Lebanese TV and monitored by the BBC.

“Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September,” Nasrallah said that day, “Death to America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America!”

Memri
Iranian Martyr Recruitment Website:
Coalition Forces In Iraq Be Warned –Iranian Martyr Forces on Alert to Move In

“Thousands of Young Martyrdom-Seeking Iranians are Counting the Minutes Until They Can Give Their Souls.”
“The website of the Iranian martyrdom-seekers began its operations by declaring an alert amongst the Iranian martyrdom forces… The site also demanded that the Iranian martyrdom-seeking forces intervene in Iraq and protect the Shi’ite holy places “there.”
“The World Islamic Organization’s Headquarters for Commemorating the Shahids has set as its goal the unification of the forces of struggle in the Islamic world, in order to confront the heresy i.e. the forces of the West and the occupying Zionism.
The Headquarters hereby warns the egotistical and debased occupying enemies in Iraq that thousands of young martyrdom-seeking Iranians are counting the minutes until they can give their souls for the sake of their holy places, and until they strike the lightning blow of their sacred rage upon the heads of the agents of world arrogance i.e. the U.S. and the West.
“Headquarters demands that high-ranking officials of the Iranian regime permit the martyrdom-seeking forces to go to Iraq, in order to fulfill their religious obligation and to defend the sacred precincts of the four cities holy to the Shia Najaf, Karbala, Kazemin, and Samarra….”
“Headquarters Spokesman Muhammad ‘Ali Samedi… Claimed That So Far… 53,900 Have Signed Up”

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Wild Thing’s comment…..
Now wait a minute here! Our troops have something to say about this! Screw you Iranian Martyr Forces!

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Click the HERE to hear a song

“Iran won’t be allowed a nuclear weapon“
In the strongest message to date addressed to the Iranian leadership, US Vice President Dick Cheney warned Teheran that the US is not ruling out any option in preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. “The United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime”, Cheney said to 5,000 Aipac members gathered in Washington for the organization’s annual policy conference.
Cheney, who received a standing ovation from the crowd after his harsh words towards Iran, added that “the United States joins other nations in sending that regime a clear message: we will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon” and that the international community will impose actions that will have “meaningful consequences” if Iran continues to develop its nuclear program.

I am filing this under Terrorists in my sidebar, because that is exactly what it is. Why nut cases in America want to say it is anything else is BS!

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Students To Protest UNC’s Reluctance To Label Pit Incident Terrorism
UNC-Chapel Hill student leaders said that Monday’s protest is aimed at the reluctance of the university to label Friday’s incident as an act of terrorism.
“This is innocent people being attacked by an SUV, driven by a man who was doing it for retaliation for treatment of Muslims around the world,” said Jillian Bandes, with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “To me, that spells terrorism.”
Taheri-azar, who is currently in Raleigh’s Central Prison under a $5.5 million bond, is charged with nine counts of attempted first-degree murder and nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury with intent to kill.
Because of what Taheri-azar admitted to local authorities, the FBI is also participating in the investigation.
Based on comments made after his arrest, Poarch said Taheri-azar acted to “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.”

Police said Mohammad Taheri-azar, a 2005 UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, admits he acted to “avenge the death of Muslims around the world.” UNC police and local authorities, however, say they have not taken a stance on that interpretation, but are simply repeating what the suspect has told them.

Wild Thing’s comment….
They have not taken a stance? And interpretation??? What the hell is that about?!?! A person says he wanted to kill people to get even for Muslims being killed and I don’t have to think too hard to figure out what he meant by that.

* Six Meat Buffet
* Michelle Malkin
* Jihad Watch

Kerry: U.N. ‘Food for Oil’ Plan Could End Terrorism

Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, in a landmark speech Sunday on the global dynamics of terrorism, said a ’strong United Nations’, working with ‘moderate Muslim leaders’ could save the world from terrorism if the West stops propping up Arab kingdoms by purchasing oil.
The senator proposed putting the French in charge of U.N. military operations, appointing a member of the Hamas Palestinian government to head the U.N. Human Rights Council, and “transitioning the Arab Middle East from an oil economy to an agricultural one, where lush, green acres replace the sand stretching out so far and wide.”
“Some say that terms like a ’strong U.N.’ and ‘moderate Muslim leaders’ are oxymorons,” said Sen. Kerry. “But that’s what they said about Democrat principles, liberal values and progressive think-tanks.”
Mr. Kerry, the presumptive runner-up for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination, proposed that the United States take the lead in funding his Arab agriculture initiative, dubbed “Food for Oil,” which promises to “beat drill bits into plowshares.”

Wild Thing’s comment….
Hanoi Kerry can keep his stupid opinion to himself! I love the “presumptive runner up”……haha.
A “strong United Nations“……oh man oh man
” Moderate Muslim leaders”……….they DO NOT EXIST!
“Democrat principles, liberal values and progressive think-tanks”……….a-hem Hanoi Kerry, Democrats do not have any principles and values either. As far as think tanks, they have no had any ideas, they only know how to mess things up, complain, whine, moan, lie, and complain some more.
Don’t you just know John Kerry has scientists working day and night to try to get cars to run on catsup?
Then we could have Food for Catsup ,
or Catsup for Oil,
or Money for Catsup,
or Money for Kerry.

Swords Into Plowshares



The United Nations garden contains several sculptures and statues that have been donated by different countries. This one is called “Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares” and was a gift from the then Soviet Union presented in 1959. Made by Evgeniy Vuchetich, the bronze statue represents the figure of a man holding a hammer in one hand and, in the other, a sword which he is making into a plowshare, symbolizing man’s desire to put an end to war and convert the means of destruction into creative tools for the benefit of all mankind.

I apologize for this long post, but I want to make sure to get all the information in as well as the photos for you to see.
OK I have a question. ( ??????) Last year this story came out on August 5th, 2005. I did not have a blog then and I saved it. I am posting it now, because of another article that came out today about this.
My quedtion is this……are these the same IED’s …only written about at different times? The stories are very similar in information.
Some Bombs Used in Iraq Are Made in Iran, U.S. Says
August 5,2005
Iran Focus
New York Times

WASHINGTON – Many of the new, more sophisticated roadside bombs used to attack American and government forces in Iraq have been designed in Iran and shipped in from there, United States military and intelligence officials said Friday, raising the prospect of increased foreign help for Iraqi insurgents.
Unlike the improvised explosive devices devised from Iraq’s vast stockpiles of missiles, artillery shells and other arms, the new weapons are specially designed to destroy armored vehicles, military bomb experts say. The bombs feature shaped charges, which penetrate armor by focusing explosive power in a single direction and by firing a metal projectile embedded in the device into the target at high speed. The design is crude but effective if the vehicle’s armor plating is struck at the correct angle, the experts said.
Since they first began appearing about two months ago, some of these devices have been seized, including one large shipment that was captured last week in northeast Iraq coming from Iran. But one senior military officer said “tens” of the devices had been smuggled in and used against allied forces, killing or wounding several Americans throughout Iraq in the past several weeks.
“These are among the most sophisticated and most lethal devices we’ve seen,” said the senior officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate intelligence reports describing the bombs. “It’s very serious.”
Pentagon and intelligence officials say that some shipments of the new explosives have contained both components and fully manufactured devices, and may have been spirited into Iraq along the porous Iranian border by the Iranian-backed, anti-Israeli terrorist group Hezbollah, or by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. American commanders say
“The devices we’re seeing now have been machined,” said a military official who has access to classified reporting on the insurgents’ bomb-making abilities. “There is evidence of some sophistication.”
American officials say they have no evidence that the Iranian government is involved. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the new United States ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, complained publicly this week about the Tehran government’s harmful meddling in Iraqi affairs.

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And now here is the recent story dated March 6th,2006
EXCLUSIVE: Iraq Weapons — Made in Iran?
Intelligence Officials Say Weapons Responsible for Increasing U.S. Deaths in Iraq
ABC News

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.
They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops’ strongest armor.
What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.
“The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production,” says explosives expert Kevin Barry. “So it’s the same make and model.”
U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.
“I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there,” says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. “I think it’s very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops.”
Very Lethal’
U.S. intelligence officials say Iran is using the bombs as a way to drive up U.S. casualties in Iraq but without provoking a direct confrontation.
John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Februrary 2, saying, ”
The U.S. Army has embarked on a crash effort to find ways to stop the bombs, according to an unclassified report issued last month. The devices are easily hidden and detonated by motion detectors — like those used in garden security lights — that cannot be jammed.
When exploded, the copper disc becomes a molten liquid bullet that can penetrate the thickest armor the United States has.
“They penetrate the armor of an M1 Abrams tank,” Clarke says. “They’re shape charges. They go through anything, and they are very lethal.”
There is currently no real defense against the weapons, he says.
“The Pentagon has a major crash study underway to figure out how to stop them,” Clarke says, “but they haven’t figured it out yet.”

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And now here are the photos….. there were no photos with last years story but there are this year.

Arrows show the impact of new, deadlier IEDs being used against the U.S. military’s armored vehicles in Iraq.

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The explosively formed projectile IEDs are designed to penetrate armored vehicles and are the most lethal insurgent weapon in Iraq.

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The bombs entail a casing, a high explosive and a liner and are generally a length of steel pipe. (ABC News)

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The explosives also can be made from plastic and tin cans, and the rear is sealed with a back plate or concrete.
(ABC News)

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This civilian vehicle was attacked by an explosively formed projectile IED on Jan. 18, 2006.

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Wild Thing’s comment….
Please pray every day for our troops, and every time you think of them during the day as well. Pray for their safety! When you are driving down the road and you feel safe in your vehicle with no bombs going off over your head pray for our troops. When you go in and out of a building and do not have to worry about bombs like they do in Israel, pray for our troops. When you take your children to school and do not have to make sure they know where the exits are to run for cover like they do in Israel, please pray for our troops safety. They have our six, they are fighting the most vile enemy in the world and they make sacrifices every day for all of us.

Iran Wants to Inspect Auschwitz
The government of Iran is seeking permission from the Polish government to conduct on-site inspections of the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau as part of its so-called investigation into whether the Holocaust actually took place.
The Jewish Forward reports this week:
“With an international showdown fast approaching, Iran once again upset Jewish organizations and raised Western ire by questioning the Holocaust. This time, Iran proposed sending a team of investigators to conduct on-site inspections of Nazi concentration camps, in advance of a Tehran-sponsored conference to debate the ‘real scale of the Holocaust.'”
The plan was quickly rejected by Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Miller.
“Under no circumstances should we permit this,” Miller told the Polish press agency PAP. “This is beyond all imaginable norms that such a thing is discussed.”
The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum said in a statement that it would not allow Iranian experts to conduct their Holocaust investigation at the camp.
In recent months, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly questioned the accuracy of historical reports on the Holocaust, while at the same time calling for Israel to be “wiped of the map.”
Wild Thing’s comment…….
The very fact of their “investigation” is a desecration.

Thirty Six Years Ago Today on March 6th, 1970…….
Three members of the radical activist group known as the Weather Underground, Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins, blew themselves straight to hell.
The bomb they were making was intended to blow up a dance, a dance held at Fort Dix. Had they been better bomb-makers, instead of killing themselves, they would have killed an untold number of American soldiers. All in the name of peace.
The Weathermen’s hatred of the United States manifested itself in the bombings of the U.S. Capitol building, New York City Police Headquarters, the Pentagon, and the National Guard offices in Washington, D.C. The Weathermen’s leader, Bill Ayers summed up the Weathermen’s ideology as follows: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents.”

The Weathermen were radicals. They wanted their people to get involved, demonstrate, get arrested and force change down the throat of the “establishment.” They fought at the Democratic Presidential Convention in 1968 and converged in Chicago in 1969 for an event that came to be known as “Days of Rage.”
The more violent extremists during that era were responsible for a score of bombings in places like Harvard University, various corporate headquarters and a number of government institutions. They praised Charles Manson and freed Dr. Timothy Leary from prison. Wherever there was violence and chaos in the name of dissent, the Weathermen were there.

At a “War Council” in Flint, Michigan in 1969, their leader Bernardine Dohrn praised the serial murderer Charles Manson: “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach. Wild.” She then proclaimed that the time had come to launch the war against “Amerikkka” (the Weathermen always spelled America this way) and to form a Weather Underground to carry out terrorist activities.
The Weathermen claimed credit for 25 bombings over the next several years. They set bombs at the rebuilt Haymarket statue; a bathroom at the Pentagon; the Capitol barber shop; the New York City police headquarters; and a variety of other targets.
Dohrn’s husband, Bill Ayers confessed that the bomb that killed the aforementioned Weather Underground members in New York was an anti-personnel weapon filled with nails and screws that would have killed or injured many at the Fort Dix dance. Ayers has recently, publicly acknowledged his feeling that his group should, in his opinion, have set off even more bombs.
Wonder where the Weathermen are today???
You only need only look to our Universities, Bar Associations, and, the ACLU. That’s right. The ACLU. The unrepentant Dohrn is currently a law professor at Northwestern University. She also serves on the Board of the American Civil Liberties Union and committees of the American Bar Association. Her husband, and co-leader of the Weathermen Bill Ayers, is now Professor of Education at the University of Illinois.
Dohrn, Ayers and other members of the Weather Underground are currently under investigation in connection with a police officer killed by a bomb in 1970.
If they are indicted, they will likely have some trouble finding a lawyer, Ramsey Clark is busy in Iraq, and Lynne Stewart, who has represented other members of the Weather Underground, was convicted of helping terrorists by smuggling messages of violence from one of her imprisoned clients — the radical Egyptian sheik behind the 1993 WTC Bombing– to his terrorist disciples on the outside.
Too bad for them because Lynne has been a strong supporter of terrorists since she began her career as a lawyer, Lynne loves representing terrorists of the home grown variety only slightly less than she likes representing the imported islamic variety.
On March 10, 2006, Lynne Stewart will be sentenced. You can help Lynne receive the maximum sentence allowed for her crimes against America but you gotta do it now, time is running out. You can make a difference. Click here.
Get this, unfreaking beliveable!!!!!!!!

Weather Underground member Susan Rosenberg, implicated in the Nyack robbery, and Linda Evans, at different times wanted on a number of criminal charges, were apprehended carrying 740 pounds of explosives in 1985. Both acknowledged that the explosives were to be used to carry out additional bombings. Rosenberg was given 58 years in prison, Evans 40.

President Bill Clinton, in two of a number of highly suspicious late-term pardons, pardoned both women.

* Something….and Half of Something

Department of Defense
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld poses with wounded troops participating in the Vail Veterans Program just before they begin their third and final day of skiing in the program at Vail, Colo. (Photo by Donna Miles)
Twenty-four servicemembers who lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan are here reaping the hospitality of a community first established by returning World War II veterans and to schuss down the slopes of this world-class ski resort.
The guests, all patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., along with their spouses or guests, are participating in the third annual Vail Veterans Program that kicked off March 1 and continues through March 5.
The all-expenses-paid program is hosted by Vail Mountain and the Vail community and gives wounded war veterans an opportunity to learn how to ski and snowboard, event organizer Cheryl Jensen said.

“For many of these veterans, the trip to Vail is their first adventure outside the hospital,” Jensen said. “This program is all about providing an inspirational experience that focuses on the abilities versus disabilities.”

Jensen said the experience is a huge confidence builder for young, athletic troops who are now learning to live with disabilities.
The event includes three all-day private ski and snowboard lessons through Vail’s Adaptive Ski Program. The program specializes in providing ski and snowboard classes for people with disabilities. Using specially modified ski equipment, including “outriggers” — poles with miniature skis attached to them for balance — the skiers are learning to maneuver through Vail’s slopes and trails.

“These servicemembers have been through a lot of trials and tribulations together, but this gives them the opportunity to experience something positive together as well,” Jensen said. “They’re a really wonderful group and have been tremendously supportive of each other.”

Countless volunteers and 25 local businesses and organizations are donating lodging, meals, lift tickets, ski equipment and personal time to make the grassroots effort a success. “Without the community, it just couldn’t happen,” Jensen said.
Participants arrived in Vail to a hero’s welcome from local elementary school children and are getting the red-carpet treatment during their stay. Tonight, guests will ride the gondola to the top of Vail Mountain for dinner at the Eagle’s Nest Restaurant, and tomorrow night, the Vail Fire Department will treat them to a homemade lasagna meal at the fire station.

“There is an unsaid promise to protect their families while they protect our freedom serving abroad,” said Craig Davis, president of the Vail Professional Firefighters Association. “Inviting the veterans to dinner at our home is the least we can do to pay tribute.”

Jensen introduced the Vail Veterans Program because she recognized the value it could bring to wounded veterans. “I knew what adaptive skiing can do for people with disabilities, especially people like these who are healthy and athletic,” she said. “Skiing can change their lives.”

One former participant told Jensen it had done just that for him. “That’s the inspiration for this program, to see that it can make a difference,” Jensen said.

Jensen called the program just one small way to show support for the troops. “They’ve all made tremendous sacrifices for us, and this is an opportunity to thank them,” she said.

Rumsfeld and his wife Joyce appeared unannounced last night, joining 24 servicemembers who lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan at the top of Vail Mountain for dinner at the Eagle’s Nest Restaurant. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived to cheer them on and congratulate them for their accomplishments.
He chatted one-on-one with the troops, posed for photos around the room and offered up encouragement and thanks to all.

“I’m having a blast!” said Army 1st Lt. Frank Washburn, a New York National Guardsman who lost the front half of his foot to an improvised explosive device near Samarra, Iraq, last May.

“This is the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been injured,” agreed Army Staff Sgt. Joe Kapacziewski. “It was awesome!” Kapacziewski received extensive leg and arm injuries in Northern Iraq while serving with the 3rd Ranger Battalion. While doctors were able to save his leg, 18 pins are holding it together as it heals.

“Completely exhilarating” was how Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Joseph Worley, a corpsman who lost most of his left leg in Fallujah, Iraq in September 2004 and has a fused right ankle, summed up his skiing experience through the program.

Army 1st Lt. Ryan Hollin, a below-the-knee amputee who was wounded in Balad, Iraq, agreed. “His coming here to support us physically shows that he appreciates our sacrifices,” he said. “It’s one thing to say you support the troops. But his actions show that he really means it.”

Wild Thing’s comment…….
I love it so much when things like this happen for your troops. They deserve to be thanked and appreciated so much.