Free Republic

2/8/2010 - EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFNS) -- The first remotely piloted aircraft exchange officer stationed at the 556th Test and Evaluation Squadron at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., is not bothered by the 5,000 miles between the state of Nevada and her native England. "It has been an opportunity that money can't buy," said Royal Air Force Maj. Adele Stratton. "This post is the only exchange job within the rapidly evolving RPA community, and as the first incumbent, I have found it to be an interesting couple of years." As the first exchange officer at the RPA operational...

The Orlando International Airport TSA security officer arrested on charges of molesting a minor is a fan of bondage and sadomasochism, according to his MySpace page. Charles Henry Bennett's MySpace profile identifies him as "Master Charles or Sir." The online page shows the 57-year-old airport security guard has "many years experience" as a bondage and sadomasochism master and is looking to meet people, especially "submissive females." Officials with the Transportation Security Administration today said Bennett has been working security at the airport since 2002. A spokeswoman at the federal agency said officials are investigating the allegations.

The head of the Taliban in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud, has been killed in a US drone attack, according to Pakistan state television. The Pakistani Taliban are believed to have played a role in the suicide bombing of a CIA base in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province in December last year. More to follow...

The Pentagon will probably send the U-​​2 to Haiti so its unique multi-​​spectral imagery capabilities can be put to use spotting breaks in water and gas lines, chemical spills and similar problems. “My expectation is that we hope to get that deployed soon,” Col. Bradley Butz, vice commander of the Air Force’s 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Va., told reporters this morning. The U-​​2 contains unique multi-​​spectral imagery equipment (the seven-​​band SYERS 2) that Global Hawk and Predator don’t possess. Butz said the multi-​​spectral tools would provide useful information about breaks in water and...

KABUL -- A senior commander connected to the Afghan Taliban and involved with the attack against the CIA that left eight people dead said Saturday that the bombing was retaliation for U.S. drone strikes in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. "We attacked this base because the team there was organizing drone strikes in Loya Paktia and surrounding area," the commander said, referring to the area around Khost, the city where the U.S. facility was attacked. The commander, a prominent member of the Afghan insurgency, spoke on the condition of anonymity. The suicide attack, which dealt the biggest loss to the agency...

Looks like we shwacked a nest of terrorist rats in Yemen. They're smoking dog turds in hell now, as Satan violates their every orifice.Turbaned turds everywhere must be wondering why Allah has granted global omnipotence and omnipresence the infidel America ...  WHY? BECAUSE GOD HATES YOU, THAT'S WHY!!!  Just look at where you live!  Do your really think God's favored people would be found in a third world toilet, mired in ignorance and fetid squalor?  The only bright spot in the whole Middle East, where democracy, scholarship and scientific discovery takes place is ISRAEL, A JEWISH STATE!!!   God...

SALISBURY — - More than 3,000 volunteers gathered on Christmas Day to take part in the ongoing search for an 11-year-old girl who police say was kidnapped from her bedroom by a registered sex offender. The voluneers gathered around 7 a.m. at Arthur W. Perdue Stadium to register for the search. The night before, more than 200 people scoured frozen fields and ponds the night before without success. Sarah Haley Foxwell was wearing a pink shirt and red pajamas printed with Christmas trees when she disappeared from her maternal aunt's home Tuesday night, police said. A younger sister awoke during...

Ever since the election, I have been writing, here, in comments and on my blog. I started my blog right after the election in November. I have not been real active on my blog of late, I have been deeply involved in some political activities in other venues. Tonight, I was looking at the logs on my server and I ran across an entry for a visit and it had an address I could trace back so I decided to check this one entry out. It sent a chill down my spine until I remembered who we are dealing with...

Senior U.S. military officers working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed the danger of Russia and China intercepting and doctoring video from drone aircraft in 2004, but the Pentagon didn't begin securing the signals until this year, according to people familiar with the matter. The disclosure came after The Wall Street Journal reported insurgents in Iraq had intercepted video feeds from drones, downloading unencrypted communications from the unmanned planes. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, said a person...

True, money can't buy me love, but $26 worth can buy me plenty of lead time to get out of Dodge when a Predator is on the way to blow up my tent. According to this Wall Street Journal story, Predator drones are just as wildly popular with the Iraqi bad guys as they are with the U.S. military good guys. Something tells me that the new generation of the Predator is going to have some serious upgrades.

Senior US officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan's tribal region and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in the city of Quetta, The Los Angeles Times reported late Sunday. The newspaper said the prospect of Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta signals a new US resolve to decapitate the Taliban. But it also risks rupturing Washington's relationship with Islamabad. The concern has created tension among officials in the administration of President Barack Obama over whether unmanned aircraft strikes in a city of 850,000 are a realistic...

Sorry, kids—scientists have not discovered the first known bubblegum-blowing sea creature. But they have found the only known corals to eat adult jellyfish, a new study says. Opening wide--yes, that's a mouth--a mushroom coral ingests a roughly 4-and-a-half-inch-wide (12-centimeter) moon jellyfish (pictured) in the Red Sea in March 2009. And this coral wasn't alone. The study, led by scientists from Israel's Bar-Ilan University and Tel Aviv University, witnessed other corals dining on the jellyfish. Marine ecologist Jennifer Smith, who wasn't part of the study, agreed the find was unique, though she's "not entirely surprised." Mushroom corals, which have soft bodies,...

The Indiana State Supreme Court has overturned a law that was set to protect the public. Part of Indiana's sex offender law was placed to be retroactive. It was a state amendment to Zachary's law, and now the highest court in Indiana has declared it unconstitutional.

The U.S. Air Force has a morale problem with its combat pilots. The issue is lack of action for the pilots. That, plus the increased use of unmanned aircraft, and the very real prospect that the age of the manned combat aircraft may be coming to an end. This is made worse with hundreds of fighter pilots being assigned to operating Predator and Reaper UAVs. This was not popular duty, even though the pilots still draw flight pay. It is tedious work, although the UAV operators often saw more combat action than they did when piloting F-16s or F-15s. The...

A SATANIST obsessed with teenage schoolgirls invented a fake gothic society online to groom them for sex in the grounds of Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery. Daniel William Peckham, 24, lured at least three girls, aged from 13 to 17, into the cemetery on his MySpace blog, "Rookwood Gothic Society". A message on the site read: "If you have hang-ups about getting naked ... you are not welcome." Peckham pleaded guilty yesterday to the aggravated sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl and to using the internet to solicit and transmit naked pictures of young girls between 2005 and 2007. The opening day...

A predator on the Sex Offenders' Register killed a 17-year-old girl he met and groomed on Facebook after luring her to a secret meeting. The 32-year-old posed as a 16-year-old boy to befriend Ashleigh Hall on the social networking site. But within hours of their first meeting, the teenager was dead...

If only Dave had kept it in his Worldwide Pants. Letterman must be wishing that now, after accused blackmailer Robert (Joe) Halderman said "not guilty" at his arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday. After bigtime defense lawyer Gerald Shargel said ominously there are a lot more skeletons in this closet. "This story is far more complicated than what you heard this afternoon," said Shargel, who won a big one for the late mob boss John Gotti.

U.S. charges three men with molesting children in Cambodia They are the first to be charged under an international law-enforcement operation that targets U.S. citizens who travel to Cambodia for illicit sex. They could face 30 years in jail for each victim. Raja Abdulrahim September 1, 2009 Three American men who are suspected of traveling to Cambodia to molest children have been charged in federal court as part of a new initiative aimed at cracking down on the child sex tourism business there, authorities said Monday. Ronald Gerard Boyajian, 49, of Menlo Park, Calif.; Erik Leonardus Peeters, 41, of Norwalk;...

A Taliban leader with a $5 million American reward on his head is thought to be dead from an drone attack in South Waziristan, Pakistan, but a friend says that report is “ridiculous.” Baitullah Mehsud is alive, or he may be dead. See update below. Members of the Mehsud tribe consider Baitullah Mehsud their leader. He is believed to command as many as 20,000 Taliban. So far, reports of his probable death by drone strike have not been disproved. In other words, he has sent no message to prove that he is alive and the West has no concrete evidence...

A new book published by Al Qaeda shows that the terrorist group is under intense pressure and in "deathly fear" of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan, terror experts say. The 150-page book, titled "Guide to the Laws Regarding Muslim Spies," was recently posted on jihadist Web sites. It was written by a senior Al Qaeda commander, Abu Yahya Al-Libi, and features an introduction by Ayman Al-Zawahri, the No. 2 man in Al Qaeda. The book accuses some in Al Qaeda's ranks of being spies who provide intelligence, including information about Al Qaeda camps and safehouses, to U.S. forces. According to...