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Going To Hell In A Very Stylish Handbasket.

we've had this many folks visit so far:

"El diablo sabes mas por viejo que por diablo" - old Mexican proverb

archives:

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Achtung! Das machine ist nicht fur gerfingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy schnappen der pringenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dumkopfen, das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in der pockets, relaxen und watchen der blinkenlights.

links:
Tom Paine
The Nation
Think Progress
Bush or Chimp?
Landover Baptist Church
The White House
The Onion
Ernie's House of Whoop Ass
Project for the New American Century
Project for the Old American Century
Project for the New American Empire
All Hat, No Cattle
Unfairly Balanced
Buck Fush

Poll: Americans see gloom, doom in 2007

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Another terrorist attack, a warmer planet, death and destruction from a natural disaster. These are among Americans' grim predictions for the United States in 2007.

Only a minority of people think the U.S. will go to war with Iran or North Korea over those countries' nuclear ambitions. An overwhelming majority of those surveyed think Congress will raise the federal minimum wage. One-third see hope for a cure to cancer.

These are among the findings of an Associated Press-AOL News poll that asked people in the U.S. to contemplate what 2007 holds for the country.

Six in 10 people think the U.S. will be the victim of a terrorist attack. An identical percentage thinks it likely that a biological or nuclear weapon will be unleashed somewhere else in the world.

Seventy percent of people in the U.S. predict a major natural disaster in the country and an equal percentage expects worsening global warming. Also, 29 percent think it likely that the U.S. will withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Among other predictions for the U.S. in 2007:

_35 percent predict the military draft will be reinstated.

_35 percent predict a cure for cancer will be found.

_25 percent anticipate the second coming of Jesus Christ.

_19 percent think scientists are likely to find evidence of extraterrestrial life.

With Democrats poised to take control of Congress this week, eight in 10 people predict lawmakers will raise the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage. It would be the first increase since 1997.

Democratic leaders have proposed raising it in stages to $7.25 an hour.

President Bush has said he supports the idea, with some protections for small businesses.

Fewer than half the public think it likely the U.S. will go to war with Iran or North Korea. Should it come down to that, 40 percent think the battle will be with Iran while 26 percent said North Korea.

Higher gas prices, legalized gay marriage and the possible arrival of bird flu also are seen as being in the cards.

More than 90 percent of people think higher gas prices are likely. A gallon of self-serve regular gasoline averaged $2.29 last week, compared with $3 over the summer.

Also, 57 percent said it is likely that another state will legalize gay marriage. Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts; four other states offer civil unions or domestic partnerships.

People were split on whether 2007 will bring the U.S. its first bird flu case. More than 150 people worldwide have died from the disease. Health officials fear a pandemic if the virus mutates into a form easily passed from person to person.

Women generally were more likely than men to expect some of the more dire predictions to come true, such as a worldwide terrorist attack and war with Iran or North Korea. Democrats and people under 35 were more likely than Republicans and older people to say global warming will worsen in 2007.

Ice mass snaps free from Canada's Arctic

TORONTO, Associated Press - A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a "major" reason for the event.

The Ayles Ice Shelf — all 41 square miles of it — broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.

Scientists discovered the event by using satellite imagery. Within one hour of breaking free, the shelf had formed as a new ice island, leaving a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and couldn't believe what he saw.

"This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years," Vincent said. "We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead."

The ice shelf was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic. They are packed with ancient ice that is more than 3,000 years old. They float on the sea but are connected to land.

Some scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in Canada in 30 years and that climate change was a major element.

"It is consistent with climate change," Vincent said, adding that the remaining ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906. "We aren't able to connect all of the dots ... but unusually warm temperatures definitely played a major role."

Laurie Weir, who monitors ice conditions for the Canadian Ice Service, was poring over satellite images in 2005 when she noticed that the shelf had split and separated.

Weir notified Luke Copland, head of the new global ice lab at the University of Ottawa, who initiated an effort to find out what happened.

Using U.S. and Canadian satellite images, as well as seismic data — the event registered on earthquake monitors 155 miles away — Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early afternoon of Aug. 13, 2005.

Copland said the speed with which climate change has effected the ice shelves has surprised scientists.

"Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so that perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly," he said.

Derek Mueller, a polar researcher with Vincent's team, said the ice shelves get weaker and weaker as temperatures rise. He visited Ellesmere Island in 2002 and noticed that another ice shelf had cracked in half.

"We're losing our ice shelves and this a feature of the landscape that is in danger of disappearing altogether from Canada," Mueller said.

Within days of breaking free, the Ayles Ice Shelf drifted about 30 miles offshore before freezing into the sea ice. A spring thaw may bring another concern: that warm temperatures will release the new ice island from its Arctic grip, making it an enormous hazard for ships.

Wait now - isn't the gummint supposed to work *for* the people?

Gov't watchdogs under attack from bosses

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The inspectors general entrusted to unearth waste, fraud and abuse in federal agencies are increasingly under attack, as top government officials they scrutinize try to erode the watchdogs' independence and authority.

During 2006, several inspectors general felt the wrath of government bosses or their supporters in Congress after investigations cited agencies for poor performance, excessive spending or wasted money.

For instance:

_The top official of the government's property and supply agency compared its inspector general to a terrorist, hoping to chill audits of General Services Administration regional offices and private businesses.

_Directors of the government's legal aid program discussed firing their inspector general, who investigated how top officials lavishly spent tax dollars for limousine services, ritzy hotels and $14 "Death by Chocolate" desserts.

_Administration-friendly Republicans in Congress tried to do away with the special inspector general for

Iraq, who repeatedly exposed examples of administration waste that cost billions of dollars. Among the contractors criticized was Halliburton Corp., once headed by Vice President

Dick Cheney.

_The Pentagon has been making its inspector general use lawyers picked by the defense secretary instead of independently hired attorneys.

"It's hard to believe that the government is serious about policing itself when it's whacking the people who are actually minding the store," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight, a nonpartisan group that tracks government waste and fraud. "These people are our security officers who help guard tens of billions of dollars. It's ridiculous to prevent them from doing their jobs."

Sean Kevelighan, spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the Bush administration counts on "independent and unbiased views" of the watchdogs and is willing to intervene in any disputes.

"If and when there are times where intervention is necessary, the administration will do so to ensure all the parties are educated about one another's roles and the importance of maintaining a productive relationship — and a healthy respect for the responsibilities of all involved," he added.

When GSA Inspector General Brian Miller's team intensively audited the agency's regional offices, he ran into strong resistance from agency administrator Lurita Doan.

A business owner, Doan suggested some auditing functions be taken away from the watchdog and given to small businesses.

"There are two kinds of terrorism in the U.S.: the external kind and internally, the IGs have terrorized the regional administrators," she told Miller and his staff on Aug. 18.

The quotes are from a participant's meeting notes obtained by The Associated Press. Miller aide Robert Samuels attended the meeting and confirmed the comments, as did another attendee.

Doan declined comment.

The jobs of two watchdogs had to be rescued by Congress.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., outgoing chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, inserted language in a defense bill to close down the Iraq inspector general by the end of 2007.

That inspector general, Stuart Bowen Jr., has conducted several high-profile investigations of how the Bush administration has spent money during Iraqi reconstruction. He found dramatic examples of missing weapons, wasted billions and excessive overhead costs by Halliburton.

Hunter said he agreed that Bowen's office had been useful but that a termination date was needed so that normal oversight functions could be returned to the Defense and State departments.

Democrats and key Republicans rebelled and saved Bowen's job.

"It is inconceivable that we would remove this aggressive oversight while the American taxpayer is still spending billions of dollars on Iraq reconstruction projects," Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, said.

Legal Services Corp. Inspector General Kirt West rankled top managers of the federal legal aid program for the poor when he investigated lavish executive expenditures. The agency's board of directors discussed firing him in early 2006.

West "should know that he's got to ... shape up or we will ship him out," board vice chairman Lillian BeVier said, according to one meeting transcript.

Three members of Congress intervened to save West's job.

Congress and the Bush administration also have left open one of the most critical watchdog jobs — the Pentagon inspector general's post. The job has been vacant for 16 months, even as billions of dollars are spent each month in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Bush's nominee, David Laufman, withdrew recently because he couldn't get a Senate vote.

But while his nomination was alive, he warned Congress of a lack of independence for the Pentagon watchdog.

Laufman brought to senators' attention a directive — renewed in 2004 by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office — that requires the inspector general's legal office to be staffed by lawyers who work for the secretary rather than independently hired attorneys.

Congress created the inspectors general jobs during the post-Watergate era to ensure federal agencies had independent oversight and accountability. The IGs audit how money is spent and also play a critical role in investigating allegations of wrongdoing and protecting federal whistleblowers.

Even amid increasing attacks, inspectors general have made their mark.

Interior Department inspector general Earl Devaney has played a key role investigating the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, by exposing political pressures and shenanigans designed to get favorable treatment inside Interior for Abramoff's tribal clients.

And GSA's Miller has conducted investigations that:

_Led Oracle Corp. to pay $98.5 million to settle charges of inflated computer costs to the government.

_Exposed vendors for offering the government facial tissues priced at $22 more per carton than commercial customers.

_Uncovered portable radios priced $1,473 more to government agencies than to private sector customers.

Most criticism of the watchdogs comes from federal officials "not particularly happy with the messages being delivered," said Gaston Gianni Jr., now retired as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. inspector general.

"I don't think you compromise to get brownie points. You have to report what you find."

___

On the Net:

General Services Administration:

http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/home.do?tabId0

Legal Services Corporation:

...but what if their only skill is lying?

Bogus data masks China's pollution woes, state media says

BEIJING (AFP) - Soaring pollution levels in China may be even worse than thought because local governments bent on economic growth are lying about their progress in meeting environmental goals.

Data reported by China's regional governments indicates a national goal to reduce China's two main pollutants by two percent in 2006 has been reached, but calculations by the top environment watchdog show they actually grew two percent, Xinhua news agency said, quoting an environment official Thursday.

"The figures on pollution control reported by local governments dropped remarkably this year, while the real environmental situation continues to deteriorate," said the unnamed official with the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).

"The inaccurate figures were caused by insufficient supervision of the local governments and possible fabrication."

The two pollutants are chemical oxygen demand, a measure of organic pollutants in water, and sulfur dioxide, Xinhua said.

The official's comments mark the latest in a series of alarms by SEPA, which has said central-government efforts to curb the environmental damage from China's chugging economy are being overwhelmed by the local pursuit of economic growth at any cost.

Major Chinese cities are routinely enveloped in choking smog so thick it affects air travel and SEPA has said half of China's rivers are severely polluted and one-third of the country affected by acid rain.

Billions are being invested to upgrade environmental facilities and penalties for violations are being increased.

But collusion between industry and local-level officials, who often have a financial stake in economic growth, is hindering progress, SEPA has said.

"Illegal small chemical plants, paper and leather mills are still being set up. Many outdated technologies, which should have been replaced, are still in use," SEPA Director Zhou Shengxian said in a report on Tuesday to China's legislature.

He said environmental offices in China's far-flung provinces are undermanned, poorly equipped and their staff face harassment and demotion by higher-ups.

Dire warnings from China's first climate change report

BEIJING (AFP) - Temperatures in China will rise significantly in coming decades and water shortages will worsen, state media has reported, citing the government's first national assessment of global climate change.

"Greenhouse gases released due to human activity are leading to ever more serious problems in terms of climate change," the Ministry of Science and Technology said in a statement.

"Global climate change has an impact on the nation's ability to develop further," said the ministry, one of 12 government departments that prepared the report.

In just over a decade, global warming will start to be felt in the world's most populous country, and it will get warmer yet over the next two or three generations.

Compared with 2000, the average temperatures will increase by between 1.3 and 2.1 degrees Celsius by 2020, the China News Service reported, citing the assessment.

By the middle of the century, the annual average temperature in China will rise by as much as 3.3 degrees Celsius (more than five degrees fahrenheit), and by 2100 it could soar by as much as six degrees Celsius, according to the news service.

"We're in a period of rapid economic growth, and energy consumption will increase as a result," Liu Hongbin, a Beijing-based expert at the National Climate Center, told AFP.

"As a result, China will continue to emit a rather large amount of greenhouse gases."

The report predicted that precipitation will also increase drastically in the coming decades, rising up to 17 percent by the turn of the next century, according to the news service.

However, this will bring little or no relief to China's frequently drought-stricken farmers, the report noted.

Although parched north China is expected to have more rain, water shortages will increase because of faster evaporation caused by higher temperatures.

Drought, heat waves and other extreme weather will also hit China more often, according to the report.

Few aspects of human endeavor in China will be immune to the devastating effects of global warming, the report suggests.

Even a railway that opened this year linking remote Tibet to provinces further east will be affected.

This is because part of the rail is built on top of subsoil that maintains sub-zero temperatures throughout the year but may start to thaw due to hotter weather "threatening the safety of railway operations", the news service said.

"The report will serve as the country's scientific and technical reference in policy making and international cooperation," said Li Xueyong, vice minister of the science ministry.

The report notes that China has already started seeing the effects of global warming, the China News Service said.

Glaciers in the nation's northwest have decreased by 21 percent since the 1950s, the report says, according to the news agency.

It also says all China's major rivers have shrunk over the past five decades, although it provides no figures for the actual decrease.

In a separate report, the state-run Xinhua news agency said the water level in the middle reaches of the nation's longest river, the Yangtze, hit a record low this week.

The port city of Anqing, on the Yangtze River, encountered a low of 1.95 meters (6.4 feet) on Tuesday, a level posing a risk to shipping, Xinhua said.

The same thing is happening in China, the same thing happens in hordes of other barbaric middle eastern and asian countries. Frankly, if disease or war wipes out the entire population of these warped societies, it would serve the ratfuckers right.

-----------

India has killed 10 mln girls in 20 years - Renuka Chowdhury

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, a government minister said on Thursday, describing it as a "national crisis".

A UNICEF report released this week said 7,000 fewer girls are born in the country every day than the global average would suggest, largely because female foetuses are aborted after sex determination tests but also through murder of new borns.

"It's shocking figures and we are in a national crisis if you ask me," Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told Reuters.

Girls are seen as liabilities by many Indians, especially because of the banned but rampant practice of dowry, where the bride's parents pay cash and goods to the groom's family.

Men are also seen as bread-winners while social prejudices deny women opportunities for education and jobs.

"Today, we have the odd distinction of having lost 10 million girl children in the past 20 years," Chowdhury told a seminar in Delhi University.

"Who has killed these girl children? Their own parents."

In some states, the minister said, newborn girls have been killed by pouring sand or tobacco juice into their nostrils.

"The minute the child is born and she opens her mouth to cry, they put sand into her mouth and her nostrils so she chokes and dies," Chowdhury said, referring to cases in the western desert state of Rajasthan.

"They bury infants into pots alive and bury the pots. They put tobacco into her mouth. They hang them upside down like a bunch of flowers to dry," she said.

"We have more passion for tigers of this country. We have people fighting for stray dogs on the road. But you have a whole society that ruthlessly hunts down girl children."

According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys.

The ratio has fallen since 1991, due to the availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests.

Although these are illegal they are still widely available and often lead to abortion of girl foetuses.

Chowdhury said the fall in the number of females had cost one percent of India's

GDP and created shortages of girls in some states like Haryana, where in one case four brothers had to marry one woman.

Economic empowerment of women was key to change, she said.

"Even today when you go to a temple, you are blessed with 'May you have many sons'," she said.

"The minute you empower them to earn more or equal (to men), social prejudices vanish."

The practice of killing the girl child is more prevalent among the educated, including in upmarket districts of New Delhi, making it more challenging for the government, the minister said.

The "decider" decides that the Iraq Study Group Report is not the kind of advice he wanted...

Richest 2% hold half the world’s assets

LONDON, Financial Times - Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the richest two per cent of adults own more than 50 per cent of the world’s assets while the poorest half hold only 1 per cent of wealth.

A survey released on Tuesday shows that middle-income countries with high growth rates still have a long way to go before they have a hope of catching up with the levels of prosperity of the richest.

Adults with more than $2,200 of assets were in the top half of the global wealth league table, while those with more than $61,000 were in the top 10 per cent, according to the data from the World Institute fpr Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-Wider).

To belong to the top 1 per cent of the world’s wealthiest adults you would need more than $500,000, something that 37m adults have achieved.

So much of the world’s wealth is concentrated in few hands that if all the world’s wealth was distributed evenly, each person would have $20,500 of assets to use.

Almost 90 per cent of the world’s wealth is held in North America, Europe and high-income Asian and Pacific countries, such as Japan and Australia.

While North America has 6 per cent of the world’s adult population, it accounts for 34 per cent of household wealth.

The concentration of wealth in different countries varies considerably, with the top 10 per cent in the US holding 70 per cent of the country’s wealth, compared with 61 per cent in France, 56 per cent in the UK, 44 per cent in Germany and 39 per cent in Japan.

According to Anthony Shorrocks, the director of UNU-Wider, the number of wealthy individuals in a country depends on the size of the population, the average wealth and its inequality.

“China fails to feature strongly among the super-rich because average wealth is modest and wealth is evenly spread by international standards”, he said.

As countries grow richer, their population changes how it holds wealth, according to the report.

In developing countries, property, particularly land and farm assets are important, while cash savings tend to dominate in middle-income counties.

Only in certain advanced countries such as the US and the UK with developed financial sectors is there a strong appetite for holding equities and other more sophisticated financial assets.

Debt is also low in poor countries because financial institutions do not exist to allow people to borrow.

In contrast, the authors say “many people in high-income countries have negative net worth and, somewhat paradoxically, are among the poorest people in the world in terms of household wealth.”

Wealth is difficult to measure even in the most advanced countries, so the research was based on painstaking compilation of aggregate and survey data for the 38 countries of the world where it exists and statistical models for the rest of the world.

Ambassadors to honor female WWII spy

(Virginia Hall receiving the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945)

BALTIMORE, Associated Press - In 1942, the Gestapo circulated posters offering a reward for the capture of "the woman with a limp. She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies and we must find and destroy her."

The dangerous woman was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore native working in France for British intelligence, and the limp was the result of an artificial leg. Her left leg had been amputated below the knee about a decade earlier after she stumbled and blasted her foot with a shotgun while hunting in Turkey.

The injury derailed Hall's dream of becoming a Foreign Service officer because the State Department wouldn't hire amputees, but it didn't prevent her from becoming one of the most celebrated spies of World War II.

On Tuesday, the French and British ambassadors plan to honor Hall, who died in 1982 at age 78, at a ceremony at the home of French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte in Washington.

British Ambassador Sir David Manning plans to present a certificate signed by King George VI to Hall's niece, Lorna Catling. Hall should have received the document in 1943, when she was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.

"I think it was ironic that the State Department turned her down because she was an amputee, and here she went on and did all this other stuff," said Catling, who lives in Baltimore. Catling said she didn't learn many of the details of her aunt's espionage career until after her death.

Hall, who was fluent in French, was living in Paris when the Nazis invaded in 1940, and she decamped for London, where she was recruited by the secret British paramilitary service, the Special Operations Executive, becoming its first female field operative.

Hall was sent to Lyon, becoming "the heartbeat" of the local French Resistance, said Judith L. Pearson, whose biography of Hall, "Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's First Female Spy," was published last year.

"Any agent from London came through her flat. She coordinated them with Resistance members," Pearson said. "Most agents only stayed about three months in the field. She stayed 15 months."

After the Gestapo wanted posters made her situation untenable, she fled through the Pyrenees mountains into Spain. During the journey, she sent a radio message to London, reporting that "Cuthbert" — her nickname for her prosthetic leg — was giving her trouble.

Her commanders didn't understand the reference, and their reply suggested the gravity of Hall's circumstances and her value to the Allied cause: "If Cuthbert troublesome eliminate him."

Back in London, she joined the American Office of Strategic Services — the precursor to the

CIA — and returned to France in 1944, disguised as an elderly peasant. She located parachute drop zones where money and weapons could be passed to Resistance fighters and later coordinated guerrilla warfare. Her teams destroyed bridges, derailed freight trains and killed scores of German soldiers.

"I would certainly put her name in the pantheon of people who distinguished themselves in intelligence," said Peter Earnest, executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, which has an exhibit devoted to Hall.

Hall maintained her cloak of secrecy after the war. The certificate that went with her British OBE medal sat in a vault for more than 50 years because the British government was unable to track her down.

In the meantime, OSS chief William Donovan had presented Hall with a Distinguished Service Medal in September 1945 during a private ceremony in his office that was witnessed only by Hall's mother. She was the only civilian woman to win the medal for service in World War II.

In 1950 she married French-born OSS agent Paul Goillot. She took a job with the CIA in 1951 and retired in 1966, living out her days with her husband on a farm in Barnesville.

"She would talk about books and she was very into animals and things like that. But work, no. There was a big wall about anything like that," Catling said. "She always seemed kind of glamorous and mysterious."

On the rare occasions that Hall told war stories, they weren't particularly harrowing.

"One time she said she and Paul found a deserted chateau, and they discovered a whole wine cellar," Catling said. "They had a wonderful evening enjoying that."

___

On the Net:

Spy Museum: http://www.spymuseum.org/

Let us not be stopped by that which divides us but look for that which unites us

If we could reduce the world's population to a village of precisely 100 people, human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:

- 60 Asians

- 12 Europeans

- 5 US Americans and Canadians

- 8 Latin Americans

- 14 Africans

- 49 would be female

- 51 would be male

- 82 would be non-white

- 18 white

- 89 heterosexual

- 11 homosexual

- 33 would be Christian

- 67 would be non-Christian

- 5 would control 32% of the entire world's wealth and be US citizens

- 80 would live in substandard housing

- 24 would not have any electricity (and of the 76% that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)

- 67 would be unable to read

- 1 (only one) would have a college education.

- 50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation

- 33 would be without access to a safe water supply

- 1 would have HIV

- 1 near death

- 2 would be near birth

- 7 people would have access to the Internet

If you take a look at the world from this condensed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes evident.

Think of it!

If you woke up this morning with more health than sickness, you are luckier than the million that will not survive this week.

If you have never experienced a war,

the loneliness of imprisonment,

the agony of torture

or a famine

You are happier, than 500 million persons in this world.

If you are able to go to church, mosque or synagogue without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death,

you are happier, than 3 billion persons in this world.

If there is a meal in your refrigerator,

if you are dressed and have got shoes,

if you have a bed and a roof above your head,

you are better off than 75% of people in this world.

If your parents are still alive and still married, then you are a rarity.

If you have a bank account,

money in your purse

and there is some trifle in your coin box,

you belong to 8% of well-provided people in this world.

If you read this text, you are blessed three times as much, because someone has thought of you;

You do not belong to those 2 billion people which cannot read

and... you have a computer!

Someone once said:

Work like you don't need money,

Love like you've never been hurt,

Dance like nobody's watching,

Sing like nobody's listening,

Be surprised, like you were born yesterday,

Tell the truth and you don't have to remember anything,

Live like it's Heaven on Earth.

This is your World!

And you are able to make changes!

Hasten to do good works!

Think of it

Scarcely a ripple about this newest addition in the western media news...

Groups mixed on Mary Cheney's pregnancy

(Mary Cheney, left, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, sits with her partner, Heather Poe, in Madison Square Garden during the Republican National Convention on Sept. 1, 2004.)

NEW YORK, Associated Press - Conservative leaders voiced dismay Wednesday at news that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Dick Cheney, is pregnant, while a gay-rights group said the vice president faces "a lifetime of sleepless nights" for serving in an administration that has opposed recognition of same-sex couples.

Mary Cheney, 37, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, 45, are expecting a baby in late spring, said Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president.

"The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation" to the arrival of their sixth grandchild, McBride said.

Mary Cheney was an aide to her father during the 2004 campaign, and now is vice president for consumer advocacy at AOL. She and Poe moved from Colorado to Virginia a year ago to be closer to the Cheney family.

Family Pride, which advocates on behalf of gay and lesbian families, noted that Virginia last month became one of 27 states with a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

"Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child," said Family Pride executive director Jennifer Chrisler.

The couple "will quickly face the reality that no matter how loved their child will be. ... he or she will never have the same protections that other children born to heterosexual couples enjoy," Chrisler said. "Grandfather Cheney will no doubt face a lifetime of sleepless nights as he reflects on the irreparable harm he and his administration have done to the millions of American gay and lesbian parents and their children."

For years, Mary Cheney's openness about her sexual orientation had posed a dilemma for conservative activists who admire Dick Cheney's stance on many issues but consider homosexuality a sin.

Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America described the pregnancy as "unconscionable."

"It's very disappointing that a celebrity couple like this would deliberately bring into the world a child that will never have a father," said Crouse, a senior fellow at the group's think tank. "They are encouraging people who don't have the advantages they have."

Crouse said there was no doubt that the news would, in conservatives' eyes, be damaging to the Bush administration, which already has been chided by some leaders on the right for what they felt was halfhearted commitment to anti-abortion and anti-gay-rights causes in this year's general election.

Carrie Gordon Earll, a policy analyst for the conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family, expressed empathy for the Cheney family but depicted the newly announced pregnancy as unwise.

"Just because you can conceive a child outside a one-woman, one-man marriage doesn't mean it's a good idea," said. "Love can't replace a mother and a father."

The vice president's office declined to elaborate on the circumstances of Mary Cheney's pregnancy.

The news was welcomed by the president of the largest national gay-rights group, Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign.

Crucial marine food chain link withers

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The critical base of the ocean food web is shrinking as the world's seas warm, new NASA satellite data show. The discovery has scientists worried about how much food will grow in the future for the world's marine life.

The data show a significant link between warmer water — either from the El Nino weather phenomenon or global warming — and reduced production of phytoplankton of the world's oceans, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature.

Phytoplankton are the microscopic plant life that zooplankton and other marine animals eat, essentially the grain crop of the world's oceans.

"Everything else up the food web is going to be impacted," said oceanographer Scott Doney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. "What's worrisome is that small changes that happen in the bottom of food web can have dramatic changes to certain species at higher spots on the food chain."

This is yet another recent scientific study with real-time data showing the much predicted harmful effects of global warming are not just coming, but in some cases are already here and can be tallied scientifically, researchers said.

A satellite commissioned by NASA tracked water temperature and the production of phytoplankton from 1997 to 2006, finding that for most of the world's oceans when one went up the other went down and vice versa, said study lead author Michael Behrenfeld, a biological oceanographer at Oregon State University.

As water temperatures increased from 1999 to 2004, the crop of phytoplankton dropped significantly, about 200 million tons a year. On average about 50 billion tons of phytoplankton are produced yearly, Behrenfeld said.

During that time, some ocean regions, especially around the equator in the Pacific, saw as much as a 50 percent drop in phytoplankton production, he said.

However, the satellite first started taking measurements in 1997 when water temperatures were at their warmest due to El Nino. That's the regular cyclical warming of part of the Pacific Ocean that affects climate worldwide.

After that year, the ocean significantly cooled until 1999 and the phytoplankton crop soared by 2 billion tons during those two years.

"The results are showing this very tight coupling between production and climate," Behrenfeld said.

Phytoplankton, which turn sunlight into food, need nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphates and iron from colder water below, Behrenfeld said. With warmer surface water, it's harder for the phytoplankton to get those nutrients.

Behrenfeld said the link between the El Nino changes and phytoplankton production is clear. For years scientists warning about climate change have said warmer waters will reduce phytoplankton production and this shows it's happening, he said.

Other oceanographers agree with the El Nino link but said with only a decade of data it is harder to make global warming connections.

"It's something you certainly can't ignore, because its potential is quite significant," said James Yoder of the Woods Hole Institute. "But there are some caveats because of the shortness of the record."

Another worry is that with reduced phytoplankton, the world's oceans will suck up less carbon dioxide, increasing the Earth's chief global warming gas, said NASA ocean biology project manager Paula Bontempi. That's because phytoplankton take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in making food.

This is at least the third significant peer-reviewed research paper in the past six months showing that long-anticipated global warming biological side effects are already happening.

A study earlier this year linked increases in Western U.S. wildfires to global warming and a mega-study showed that dozens of species of plants and animals were dying off from global warming.

"What you're looking at is almost an avalanche of each individual effect," said Stanford University biological sciences professor Stephen Schneider. "As it gets warmer and as we measure more things, the evidence accumulates."

___

On the Net:

Olbermann's Hot News

The Nation -- If you picked up the New York Times on October 18, you'd have had little reason to think it was a particularly significant day in American history. While the front page featured a photo of George W. Bush signing a new law at the White House the previous day, the story about the Military Commissions Act--which the Times never named--was buried in a 750-word piece on page A20. "It is a rare occasion when a President can sign a bill he knows will save American lives" was the first of several quotes of praise from the President that were high up in the article. Further down, a few Democrats objected to the bill, but from the article's limited explanation of the law it was hard to understand why.

But if you happened to catch MSNBC the evening before, you'd have heard a different story. It, too, began with a laudatory statement from the President: "These military commissions are lawful. They are fair. And they are necessary." Cut to MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann: "And they also permit the detention of any American in jail without trial if the President does not like him."

What? Did the Times, and most other outlets, just miss that?

Indeed, they did. Olbermann, who decried the new law as a shameful moment in American history, went on to proclaim that the Military Commissions Act--which he did name--will be the American embarrassment of our time, akin to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 or the 1942 executive order interning Japanese-Americans.

It was a perfect story for the bold and eccentric host of Countdown With Keith Olbermann, which airs weeknights on MSNBC. A former anchor for ESPN's SportsCenter, Olbermann likes to call the news as he sees it--especially when almost everyone else in the media seems to be ignoring a critical play. As it turns out, that tack on the news is increasingly popular these days, upending the conventional wisdom that incisive analysis and intelligent critiques don't win viewers on mainstream television.

Olbermann first cast off the traditional reporter's role in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, delivering a powerful indictment of the government's handling of the rescue effort. "These are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping this country safe," he said bitterly. The government "has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water."

At the time, other newscasters, most famously CNN's Anderson Cooper, also unleashed their outrage, spawning speculation that the natural disaster might also become a watershed event for broadcast news. But most anchors quickly returned to business as usual, censoring their own criticisms no matter how bad the news continued to be. Not Olbermann. Encouraged by rising ratings, he's since turned his distinctive take on the government's incompetence into a regular part of his show.

Last August he took the tone up a notch when he aired the first of his hard-hitting Special Comments. Regularly invoking some of the most shameful examples of American history to frame the Bush Administration in historical perspective, he's likened the President's recent acts to John Adams's jailing of American newspaper editors, Woodrow Wilson's use of the Espionage Act to prosecute "hyphenated Americans" for "advocating peace in a time of war" and FDR's internment of 110,000 Americans because of their Japanese descent. Ours is "a government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from," declared Olbermann the day after the President signed the Military Commissions Act.

Since his first Special Comment ripped into Donald Rumsfeld for attacking Americans who question their government, video clips and transcripts of Olberman's commentaries have been zipping around the Internet, a favorite on sites like Crooks and Liars, Truthout and YouTube. (The Rumsfeld commentary was watched more than 100,000 times in the month after it appeared on Countdown.) But it's not just a niche following: Since late August Olbermann's ratings have shot up 55 percent. In November he was named a GQ Man of the Year. When MSNBC teamed him with Chris Matthews to cover the midterms, the network's ratings were up 111 percent from the 2002 election in the coveted 25-to-54 demographic. And certain fifteen-minute segments on Olbermann's show have edged out his nemesis, Bill O'Reilly. (Olbermann deems O'Reilly the "Worst Person in the World" on his popular nightly contest for the newsmaker who's committed the most despicable act of the day.) Unlike O'Reilly, Olbermann doesn't shout over his guests, condescend to his opponents or deliver empty diatribes. Instead, his show--which attracts guests ranging from Frank Rich to

John Ashcroft--features in-depth interviews with prominent academics, public officials and journalists on serious, often overlooked events of the day.

"Keith is a refreshing change from most of the coverage of civil liberties since 9/11," says Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and frequent guest on Olbermann's show. "Reporters tend to view these fights in purely political terms, so the public gets virtually no substantive analysis. As long as two people disagree, reporters treat it as an even debate. They won't say that the overwhelming number of constitutional and national security experts say this is an unlawful program--they'll just say experts disagree. It's extremely misleading."

Olbermann, who denies any partisan leanings and whose background doesn't suggest any, insists his job is to report on what's really going on--even if the public is loath to believe it. "We are still fundamentally raised in this country to be very confident in the preservation of our freedoms," he said in a recent interview. "It's very tough to get yourself around the idea that there could be a mechanism being used or abused to restrict and alter the society in which we live." Olbermann credits sportscasting for his candid and historical-minded approach. "In sports, if a center-fielder drops the fly ball, you can't pretend he didn't," he says. "There's also an awareness of patterns, a relationship between what has gone before and what is to come that is so strong in sports coverage that doesn't seem to be there in news reporting."

If history lessons in prime time seem an unlikely sell, it helps that Olbermann's show is also witty, quirky and fast-paced, covering everything from the Iraq War to Madonna's adoption fiasco to pumpkin-smashing elephants--one of his nightly fifteen-second Oddball segments. With a growing number of TV viewers saying they get their news from Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, it's no wonder Olbermann--who's sort of a cross between Edward R. Murrow and Jon Stewart--has a growing audience.

MSNBC seems to be egging him on. "The only issues I've had with my employers is to calm them down and say 'doing this every night won't work,' " says Olbermann, referring to his Special Comments. "I have to do it only when I feel moved to."

"The rise of Keith's skeptical or pointed comments are the mood of the country," says Bill Wolff, MSNBC's vice president for prime-time programming. "He has given voice to a large part of the country that is frustrated with the Administration's policies."

In a pre-election Special Comment about the Republican National Committee's campaign ads featuring menacing images of Osama bin Laden and associated terrorists, for example, Olbermann declared: "You have adopted bin Laden and Zawahiri as spokesmen for the Republican National Committee." Invoking FDR for contrast, he added: "Eleven Presidents ago, a chief executive reassured us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. His distant successor has wasted his Administration insisting that there is nothing we can have but fear itself."

Not surprisingly, Olbermann has his critics. National Review recently lambasted him for his "angry and increasingly bizarre attacks on the Bush administration," claiming that he offers nothing in the way of hard news. But the author didn't cite a single fact that Olbermann had wrong. Meanwhile, as the Review acknowledged, O'Reilly's numbers are trending downward as Olbermann's are shooting up.

Women take on major battlefield roles

Associated Press - A goodwill mission to deliver kerosene heaters to Iraqi schools erupts into the fiery chaos of a roadside bombing — and Maj. Mary Prophit shields a comrade so he can rescue a critically burned Iraqi soldier.

A convoy outside Baghdad is ambushed by machine-gun wielding Iraqi insurgents — and Spc. Ashley Pullen races down a road to save an injured sergeant.

A Black Hawk helicopter is struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq — and co-pilot Tammy Duckworth, bloody and severely wounded, struggles to stay conscious until the damaged aircraft is down and her crew is safe.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, women warriors are writing a new chapter in military history, serving by the tens of thousands, fending off enemy fire and taking on — and succeeding in — high-profile roles in the battlefield and the skies as never before.

"The American public is beginning to realize that women are playing an equal part in this war and that they are facing the same risks," says Duckworth, who lost both legs in the 2004 insurgent attack. "This is the first time in our nation's history ... when it's normal to see female names as part of the war wounded or those killed in action."

More than 155,000 women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, according to the

Pentagon, nearly four times the number during the Persian Gulf War. Females now account for 15 percent of the active duty force.

The number of women casualties — 68 dead and more than 430 injured — represents a tiny fraction of the total. Still, by one estimate, the deaths exceed the number of military women who lost their lives in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War combined.

The public, long accustomed to seeing disabled male veterans and grieving widows clutching folded U.S. flags, has adjusted to a new set of somber images: women soldiers coming home with life-changing injuries and tearful farewells to mothers, wives and daughters.

In just two weeks in September, bombs killed four military women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among them: Sgt. 1st Class Merideth Howard, a 52-year-old former firefighter with a master's degree in marine biology, and 2nd Lt. Emily J.T. Perez, a 23-year-old West Point graduate of the "Class of 9-11" who played the clarinet, spoke fluent German, read the Bible daily and helped start an

AIDS ministry at her church.

There is no shared experience that binds together the women of war. Each has a different story, a reason why they're in uniform, an explanation of how their lives have changed.

Some feel pressured to prove themselves as women. Others don't. Some never fire their weapons. Others engage in life-and-death battles. Some are professional soldiers. Others enlist for college money. A few are grandmothers; many more are in their 20s.

Almost all serve anonymously, though a few have captured headlines back home. Former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski made news as the highest-ranking officer punished in the

Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Jessica Lynch, the former prisoner of war, rocketed onto the nation's TV screens when she was portrayed as a guns-blazing, all-American heroine — a depiction she herself disavowed.

But Lynch's job — Army supply clerk in a maintenance company — illustrates one of the realities of the war: No place is safe. As the insurgency took hold, that grew even more apparent. Front lines don't exist. Combat troops still face the heaviest losses and while women are mostly in support roles, a mortar or bomb can strike anywhere from a mess hall to a supply convoy.

"My dad has friends who constantly tell him, 'Oh, your daughter's fine in Iraq. She's not in harm's way or she's not involved in combat,'" says Capt. Mary Caruso, who served two tours in Iraq, one as a platoon leader in the 194th Military Police Company.

"I don't think the general public really sees what females are doing over there," she says. "We don't have a linear battlefield anymore. The enemy's everywhere."

Women are barred from units assigned to direct ground combat — the infantry, armor and artillery, for example. While many remain in traditional jobs, such as health care, they've also served as translators and mechanics, commanded police companies and support battalions, flown jet fighters and attack helicopters.

They've been heroes, too.

In the Kentucky National Guard's 617th Military Police Company, Army Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester became the first woman since World War II to win the Silver Star for heroism. After a supply convoy was ambushed, she and others counterattacked, killing more than two dozen insurgents.

Spc. Ashley Pullen, another member of the unit, received a Bronze Star for valor, risking her life to help save a wounded soldier in the same attack. In recommending her for a medal, her company commander praised her "incredible courage."

"We now know women can hold their own, they're brave, they do have the physical and mental stamina to face combat-like situations," says retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, director of the Women in the Military Project at the Women's Research and Education Institute in Washington, D.C. "We now know that men don't go to pieces and the American public doesn't go to pieces if women are killed. And we know that women, in fact, can defend men."

Manning says that represents a change in perceptions.

"I used to get a lot of guff that women can't do this, that women are weakening the military, women are feminizing the military — that's gone with the wind," she says. "The debate about whether they belong there seems to be over."

Not quite. Though women are widely viewed as essential with the nation's fighting forces stretched thin and they perform jobs off-limits to men for cultural reasons — searching Iraqi females, for instance — the critics have not been silenced.

"Engaging the enemy in this uncivilized thing we call war is a job for men, not women," Kate O'Beirne, a conservative pundit and Washington editor of the National Review, said in a radio interview this spring. She likened it to a man sending his wife or daughter to check out a possible home break-in.

Martin van Creveld, a prominent military historian and Iraq war critic, argues the contribution of females in the conflict has been dramatically exaggerated. "They're not occupying any particularly important positions or fighting in the front ... If there were not a single woman (deployed), the war would be the same," he says.

The Center for Military Readiness, a conservative think tank, contends that the Army has ignored its rules that prevent female soldiers from being in units that "physically collocate and remain with" ground combat troops.

Elaine Donnelly, the center's president, says that creates the potential for romantic involvement, morale problems and physical hazards. A woman, she says, might not be strong enough to rescue a wounded male soldier.

"All these social issues do matter," she says. "Cohesion is what lives depend on. It's all about survival. If you start causing doubts, you make the job more difficult or dangerous for everybody."

Last year, some members of Congress tried to curb the role of women in combat zones, but retreated after running into opposition from the Pentagon and lawmakers from both parties.

Capt. Christine Roney was tangled in the debate in 2004 when she was about to take command of a forward support company that would accompany a combat battalion.

She says she was told several male captains fired off e-mails to members of Congress and the Center for Military Readiness opposing the move. One captain, she says, messaged one of her peers asking: "What are you guys doing sending a female over here?"

When plans changed and a man was chosen to take command, Roney says she was disappointed at first, then reconsidered. "I probably did think having a female would have been disruptive in some sense," she says. "They might think they have to act differently with a woman."

Roney, who ended up commanding a logistics company that conducted more than 500 missions in the streets of Baghdad, thinks gender walls will crumble as more women and men work together.

"Sometimes," she says, "they need to get females in the unit to see they have some of the same abilities, the same competencies as the male soldiers."

Some of that already has happened.

Capt. Tara Stiles was a platoon leader in the 194th Military Police Company supporting the First Marine Expeditionary Force. "At first, they were kind of leery," she says. But after a few weeks "they'd rather have my platoon vs. one of the others led by males. .. They needed their backs covered and we were there. And vice versa."

Stiles' company was commanded by Capt. Terri Dorn, who says she noticed some Marines were uncomfortable dealing with females, but she didn't detect resentment.

"I never felt like someone was trying to tell me we're in the wrong place," she says. "It was, 'Oh my God, what do we do?' ... Really what you're doing is teaching that person how to deal with a female."

Dorn says when men would tell her they'd never had a woman in their unit, she'd reply: "Don't think of them as females. Talk to them as soldiers."

It was advice she, too, found useful. "I wasn't a female," she says. "I was a company commander."

Dorn says some Iraqi military leaders proved a far bigger obstacle. There were those, she says, who refused to shake her hand. "It didn't hinder our conversation," she says. "It didn't hurt my feelings ... I proved myself by not allowing them NOT to speak with me."

For decades there have been questions about men and women bunking in the same quarters and whether they could serve together without distractions. While problems such as sexual harassment and assault remain, some say that gender lines blur when lives are on the line.

"Traditionally, the front is the most sexless place in the world. Behind the lines is where trouble happens," says Joshua Goldstein, a professor emeritus of international relations at American University and author of "War and Gender."

Lt. Col. Cheri Provancha, who commanded a Stryker Brigade Support Battalion in Iraq with 700 soldiers, says she didn't detect a gender gap among her troops.

"It didn't matter if you were male or female," she says. "You're going through the same thing as your buddy. That creates a bond."

Provancha also says she has noticed firsthand how attitudes toward women have changed in her 23 years in the Army.

"In the 1980s when a male soldier walks in the door, the expectation is they are competent. The woman on the other hand, it was 'I've got to see what you have before I give you that level of confidence,'" she says. "Now when I walk in the door, I feel like the guys do."

But other officers say the military is far from having an even playing field.

Janis Karpinski, who was demoted to colonel after the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison, says she was a scapegoat — and she blames many of her problems on being a woman.

When the prison conditions started unraveling, she says, "there was not a good ole boy network to support me. They wouldn't let me in. ... There was not a male commander to say, 'Hey, Janis, you better watch out.' Had I been a man, I would have been aware of it all along."

Karpinski says the military is still regarded by many men in uniform — especially the older ones — as the "last bastion of male dominance and they're very reluctant to give up this turf to women."

And yet, some see progress, partly because younger men are moving up in the ranks along with women.

"Gender integration is not perfect by any stretch, but it's a heck of lot better than it was 30 years ago when women entered the military academy," says Mady Wechsler Segal, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and an expert on the military.

Women have a long history of military service going back to the Revolutionary War, when they sometimes disguised themselves as men to defend their country. Through the many wars, they've been spies and soldiers, nurses and pilots — and prisoners.

Relatively few, however, have fallen from enemy fire. In World War I, for example, nearly 360 servicewomen died, mostly nurses stricken by influenza, according to the Women's Memorial Foundation.

And in World War II, more than 330,000 women served both domestically and abroad, and more than 540 died, mostly from vehicle accidents, air crashes and illness, according to the foundation. Sixteen Army nurses died by enemy fire, the group says.

In the Persian Gulf War, about two-thirds of the 15 women who died lost their lives in non-hostile incidents. (In Iraq and Afghanistan, more than a third of the deaths have been non-combat fatalities.)

After the Gulf War, the Army opened thousands more jobs to women, including piloting attack and scout helicopters.

Maj. Tammy Duckworth — who recently lost a bid for Congress — says when she joined the Illinois Army National Guard, she picked aviation because it was a combat position open to women. "I wanted to be treated equally to the males in my unit ... and I felt part of that was accepting the same kind of risks," she says.

Early on, she says she adapted to being a woman in a man's world. "I tried to be one of the boys, to be tough or tougher," she says. But her attitude changed as she was promoted. "I knew I was a good enough officer on my own and I stopped trying to be extra-macho," she says.

Besides, she adds, some of the guys were already teasing her that she had "ovaries of brass."

But other women say they're mindful of being a minority and feel pressure — some of it self-imposed — to demonstrate their physical strength and their mental toughness so no one thinks they'll crumble when bullets start flying or bombs start exploding.

Alicia Flores says she earned the respect of male comrades in the Army's 92nd Chemical Company by hauling bodies, cleaning up feces, doing everything men did. "I had a lot of guys look up to me and say, 'How could you be out here doing this?' "

Flores says she was determined not to show weakness.

"I saw a lot of guys break down," she says. "Most of the times I did a lot better than they did. ... I wasn't going to break down and cry. Crying wasn't going to get me anywhere. It was just going to get me dirtier."

Aneta Urban stood out as the only women in her Marine police company during training in Camp Pendleton, Calif. She could feel all eyes on her.

"When it's 100 guys and you're the only girl, it's like proving yourself every day," she says. "When you're doing rifle training, close combat training, they're looking at you a lot more closely. They're wondering: Can she do it? Can she handle it? You don't want to be laughed at."

Two years later, when she was deployed, she felt she had measured up.

"They knew they could depend on me," she says. "They knew I could pull my own weight. They knew they could trust me if something happened."

Even so, Urban, a native of Poland who served as translator on a second tour, says she would never complain about "stupid girly issues" such as the lack of bathrooms.

"We were under enough stress as it is ... without worrying about finding a place to go pee," she says.

Some women say hygiene issues, whether it's going to the bathroom in a hole in the ground or not being able to wash your hair for a month, tend to be harder on females than men. Some find creative solutions.

Maj. Mary Prophit, for instance, secured her own shower, trading a Benchmade knife in exchange.

Prophit was part of a four-member Civil Affairs team and one of three women among a task force of 700. If that didn't set her apart, her age did. "I was old enough to be their mother," says the 42-year-old mother of three who is a library assistant in Glenoma, Wash. "I thought it was kind of cool."

Despite two decades in the Army Reserve, Prophit says she felt internal pressures to be a good model. "I knew if I screwed up, someone would say, 'That's why we shouldn't have women in the military,'" she says. "I want to make sure that no one thinks the mission dragged on because I'm there."

In January 2005, Prophit demonstrated her skills when the convoy she was in was attacked by a roadside bomb, ripping into the truck behind her that was carrying Iraqi soldiers.

With ammunition exploding from the blazing truck, Prophit used her body as a shield so a medic could tend to one of the badly burned Iraqis. Later, she laid down fire at a mosque where insurgents were hiding.

Prophit then propped up the critically wounded Iraqi with her body in the tight quarters of the Stryker armored vehicle, placed his head in her lap and tried to keep him conscious as they raced to the hospital.

"My performance was a testament that women can be in combat," she says. But she draws a line. "I definitely don't think women should be in the infantry. It's not because they're not mentally strong enough or physically strong enough. If you mix genders, that alters the dynamic of the group."

After the war ends, the military and Congress will evaluate these kinds of experiences and there will be renewed discussion about what combat is, but any changes will probably be incremental, not dramatic, says Manning, the military expert.