Blog

I want to go Home

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 01:32:00 -0500

My longing for Ireland and the Sea...has been all my life. I'm Irish/Scot/Cherokee....which makes for a temper, but it takes a bit to stir it up....lol.....lol.
My daughter from my one and only marriage, is all grown up now, wanting to fly and leave the nest, so to speak. My Mother passed away suddenly from cancer we never knew she had until it was too late. We only had her four short months after we found out. My mother was my best friend, even though we never agreed on anything, because we are so much alike.
Since Mom has passed, the family has fallen apart. I've seen my one & only sister maybe 3 times since mom has past? ....and that being only at the most 30 minutes. I send her e-mails, texts.....and somehow, her life is soooooo important, and sooooo busy, she can't even click on "reply" and say "hi, sis, thank you, I'm fine, love your sister". and then click "send". It takes all of what 5 minutes? My father comes by my apartment every other day, to go right behind where I live to the store and NEVER stops. When you try and ring him on his cell or house phone......NO answer.
I only have one person left in this world, that I must utterly and completely trust and know he cares about me......and he is not even blood related. That would be my Bro, Vamp! Who lives all the way in Ireland. We are in contact like real family should be. By computer, texts, phone.....how ever....and we each have things to do, but, only a couple of days can go by without one of us, looking for the other one. He IS truly my Friend & Family.
So after my daughter graduates this year, and is on her own with her bo or going to school......instead of sitting here dying a lil each day in this dark apartment......it's time for me to start my life, anew. We only live once, and one thing that Mom's death taught me, is NEVER take tomorrow for granted, live EACH day as it was your last. Thus, my life anew, in Ireland.
I'm a country girl, from the hills of Tennessee, which my Irish/Scot roots settled these mountains. I guess that's where we get a "Hillbilly" accent. Which I am very proud of. The old mountain music, is only old Irish/Scot tunes handed down generation to generation. I Love the music. It just bothers & saddens me sooooooo, that the youth of today, DO NOT care where they came from, and worse yet, DO NOT care where they are going. Old traditions that have been handed down, are quickly fading. They do not care. It breaks my heart. I just cannot concieve how they can care so lil' about thier life.
Thus, I guess I'm a dying breed, no doubt.....so, I'll go to a quant town in Ireland by the sea to live out my days in peace...and maybe die a happy old lady by the sea, in her rockin' chair.
be blessed.........haney

Wed, 13 May 2009 23:05:00 -0400

Thank you, Mr. President Jackson.........

for the uncaring and purposely murdering of thousands and thousands of 1st Nation American Indians!!

You NOT only done this to the Cherokee People, but to the Chichasaw People, Choctaw People, Muscogee-Creek and Seminole People also.

Just think, of how many lives that YOU are ultimately responsible for taking out of GREED!!!

Eventually, ALL 1st Nation Indian Tribes.......were taken over and affected by the "white man".

LOL......LOL......"Land of the FREE"?

Depends on who's eyes you are looking out of!

You once said, "the only good Indian, is a dead Indian"...and as a man of your worthless word, you meant it. What if it had been even so, forIrish Imigrants? Of which you were born? You may not have been here.

The things that really happened in history....hummm, seemed to have been left out of my history book in school. But, then again.....I WAS NOT forced away from my parents, my hair cut, my clothes changed, my own language forbbiden to use, and taught the way I should act, and should be!

I guess this is such an outrage to me, becuase I in my mind, cannot concieve of doing these things to an animal, let alone another human being!

This is what one of your U.S. Soliders wrote about what he saw, at the Removal of the Cherokee People:

"I fought through the War Between the States and have seen many men shot, but the Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."

?- Georgia soldier who participated in the removal,

He is one of the many you had to do your "dirty work" for you. Moving People, real, live, loving People around like they were pawns on a chest board or something.

In the winter of 1838 the Cheroke began the thousand mile march with scant clothing and most on foot without shoes or moccasins. The march began in Red Clay, Tennessee, the location of the last Eastern capital of the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee were given used blankets from ahospital in Tennessee where an epidemic of small pox had broken out.Because of the diseases, the Indians were not allowed to go into anytowns or villages along the way; many times this meant traveling much farther to go around them.

After crossing Tennessee and Kentucky, they arrived in Southern Illinois at Golconda about the 3rd of December, 1838. Here the starving Indians were charged a dollar a head to cross the river on "Berry'sFerry" which typically charged twelve cents. They were not allowed passage until the ferry had serviced all others wishing to cross andwere forced to take shelter under ?Mantle Rock,? a shelter bluff on theKentucky side, until ?Berry had nothing better to do?. Many died huddled together at Mantle Rock waiting to cross. Several Cherokee were murdered by locals. The killers filed a lawsuit against the U.S.Government through the courthouse in Vienna, suing the government for$35 a head to bury the murdered Cherokee. And the crazy thing is......they GOT it.

The population of the Cherokee Nation eventually rebounded, and today the Cherokees are the largest American Indian group in the United States. How do ya like them apples.......Mr.President Jackson? And all the lil' heathens that worked under him,with NO back bone to give a fight for human life and rights.

So, all I have to say in closing.......is to you,

Mr. President Jackson......"Si Yu"!

Cherokee for "hello"...."is it hot down there"?

be blessed..........

haney

The Storms of Life

Wed, 13 May 2009 22:56:00 -0400

"God IS the Answer"!!!!

No matter how fierce the

Storm of Life,

......He WILL always be there"!!

Pslams 94: 22

But the Lord is my defence;

and my God is the rock of my refuge.

be blessed........

haney

The Facts ARE the Facts

Wed, 13 May 2009 22:32:00 -0400

The Blog I did before this one, was NOT based on opinnion.......but, actual FACTS & EVENTS. The "Trail of Tears" really happened! Our president, Andrew Jackson,from Tennessee, which I am from, was pregidest against the Indians.These "peaceful" people were raped of their homes & lands. All for the ultimate price of GREED!

I mean, think about it........go back......Yes! Indiansdid attack settlers........becuase they were invading their land. TheEuopeans that came here, in "search of a new world"......did NOT find a "new world". But, one that was already occupided, settled, inhabited. Our ancestorswere the "bullies" that came with more fire power than the nativeshad......and by force, took what they pleased!

If someone came onto your land, what would you do? Think about it. Read. It IS True. It's FACT!

be blessed........

haney

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:36:00 -0400

Daughter's evidence forces Josef Fritzl to admit:

'I'm guilty of all charges'

After 24 years of abuse, father changes plea and acknowledges cruelty

As he shuffled into court today without the most potent symbol of this trial, which out of shame and embarrassment he had held up to cover his face during previous sessions, he made a decision that elicited gasps from the public gallery.

"I recognise that I am guilty of all the charges presented," he said. "I regret what I've done."

Asked by the stunned judge, Andrea Humer, what had made him change his mind so suddenly, and prompted him to admit to the charges of murder and slavery that he had previously rejected, Fritzl said: "Because of the video testimony of my daughter."

On a large television screen the previous day, Elisabeth, 42, had confronted her father with the full horror of her 24-year ordeal in hour after hour of harrowing prerecorded testimony. She detailed everything, from the years of violent sexual abuse, often in front of her children, to how he tortured her in the dark, damp and cold cellar, and let her repeatedly give birth without medical help, allowing one of her children to die.

A point in that testimony which reportedly left a searing impression on the court was her remark: "I screamed many times during all those years, but nobody ever heard me."

Fritzl told the court in a strained and croaky voice: "I should have realised it before, but I only realised yesterday for the first time how cruel I was to Elisabeth."

"You mean," the judge asked him, "you recognised for the first time what she had experienced just as she depicted it?" - to which Fritzl nodded.

Reports were rife today that Elisabeth had slipped into court on Tuesday to watch the man who stole her life squirm as he heard her damning testimony.

The respectable Kurier newspaper reported that she had been brought to the court under cover of darkness from the nearby clinic where she and her family are living for the duration of the trial. A member of staff from the clinic told the newspaper: "She's planning to write a book and simply wanted to gather her impressions." In the evening, amid tight security, she was taken back to the clinic and her six children, all of whom were born in the cellar, the source said.

Her testimony had a "devastating effect" on Fritzl, according to his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer. He said the full force of it hit Fritzl when he returned to his prison cell that evening and requested to see a counsellor.

Mayer would neither confirm nor deny whether Elisabeth had been present at the court. But he told the Guardian: "If Elisabeth was indeed in the court then I'm of the opinion that it would have been the trigger for his devastation.

"He asked to see a psychiatrist afterwards, so crushed was he. The testimony which he saw for the first time had a profoundly devastating effect on him and led to the change of direction in this trial."

Mayer's client had not informed him in advance of his decision to plead guilty, he said. "I was indeed surprised, not least because someone with such a personality disorder as he has - which involves keeping up appearances and giving the impression that he's the one with the power - finds it difficult to drop his trousers in front of the world."

"personality disorder"????? My ass!!!!!!!! One can NOT do this for 24 years, and not have second thoughts about it. This man KNEW what he was doing. He is just pure EVIL.

Fritzl's decision to confess to the murder through third-party negligence of his son Michael, born to Elisabeth in 1996, who died of severe respiratory problems after 66 hours of life, brought to a close to one of the most controversial aspects of the trial. Asked by Humer why he had not taken the sick child out of the dungeon and sought medical help, Fritzl whispered: "I don't know why I didn't help. I just overlooked it. I thought the little one would survive. I should have recognised that the baby was doing poorly."

Earlier in the week, state prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser had told the court how Elisabeth had given birth to Michael and his twin Alexander without any medical assistance, as she had all her children, and using just a pair of unsterilised scissors, a dirty blanket, a 1960s manual on childbirth and a bottle of disinfectant.

She also presented the jury with a box of objects from the cellar which were still contaminated with the rancid, damp smell that Elisabeth had lived with for 24 years, urging them: "Smell, smell those 24 years."

As he was escorted into court today flanked by 11 guards, the sallow-skinned Fritzl cut the figure not of a tyrant, but of a broken man, his hands shaking, his back curved and his shoulders stooped under the same black and grey small-check jacket he was wearing when he was arrested in his home town of Amstetten in April 2008.

He listened passively, his hands crossed on his lap, alternatively sitting with his legs crossed or nervously jigging his left leg and wiping his nose with a tissue, as psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner told the court that his mother's failure to love him as a child was central to understanding Fritzl's subsequent behaviour and his need to dominate and possess a person for himself.

I'm sorry........can you say "bullshit"........how about just down right mean!!!!!!! There IS NO excuse for this behavoir!!!!!

"Herr Fritzl spent most of his childhood in a state of anxiety," Kastner said. She added that the more children Elisabeth had given birth to in the cellar, "the more power he felt he had over her".

Reports by technical experts read out in court went some way to explain how Fritzl operated his underground empire. They concluded that a timer switch, which he claimed would open the door after a set period in case he died or fell ill, did not in fact exist.

......and you want to tell me, he just now......realized what he had done???? Bullshit!!!

Until today's confession, Fritzl had stubbornly refused to admit that he had caused Elisabeth much suffering, arguing instead that he had saved her from a life of ruin and debauchery when he lured her into the cellar at the age of 18, at a time - he falsely claimed - when she was living a life dominated by drink and drugs. He told authorities she had joined a sect, and that over the years had dumped three of her children on his doorstep, unable to cope. It was a story that they failed to question for more than two decades.

Fritzl's defence lawyer had insisted to the court earlier this week that his client was not a "monster" as he has been portrayed in much of the media.

you sure could fool me........."Actions" speaks LOUDER than words ever can!!!!!!!

Mayer argued that Fritzl had struggled to look after both his family upstairs - wife Rosemarie and three of Elisabeth's children, whom he had brought up from the cellar to live with them upstairs - as well as his "underground" family. He brought them food, school books, a television, and even a Christmas tree, Mayer said.

awwwww, wasn't that thoughtful.........NO!!!!!!!!!

He said if he had only wanted to keep his daughter as his sex slave, he would not have had children with her. But if the jury felt any sympathy whatsoever towards the man whom the prosecutor said gave many the impression that he was the "nice old man from next door", it was then hit by the full impact of Elisabeth's evidence, which laid bare the horror of her life. Counsellors were on hand, as well as four replacement jurors ready to step in if the evidence proved too hard to stomach.

Fritzl will face a sentence of between 20 years and life imprisonment. But it is possible that his confession will lead to a reduced sentence.

I'm sure....this had NOTHING to do with his confession, though. NOT!!!!!!!!!!

"It all depends on whether the jury and the judges take the confession to be a mitigating circumstance," said the vice-president of the court, Franz Cutka.

The court's judges retired at around midday to formulate a series of questions for the jury, which will be put to them this morning. The jury will then retire to decide their verdict based on both the evidence and Fritzl's confession, and to determine the sentence.

The court is expected to hear their decision this afternoon. Authorities will then decide over the next two weeks where Fritzl will be sent.

It is likely that he will be transferred from his prison cell in St Pölten to a psychiatric institute following Kastner's recommendation yesterday that he needed to undergo intensive therapy to treat a serious personality disorder,

there goes that "bullshit" again!!!!!!!!

and that untreated, he was capable of carrying out further crimes even at his advanced age.

DUH!!!!!!!! Ya think???? He would still be getting away with it if he could.

Fritzl is on suicide watch, meaning at the end of each day's court sessions guards remove his tie and belt to ensure he cannot use them to harm himself.

That would be to good for him. And only a 20 year life sentance????? Why not at least 24 years????????

This is soooooooooo upsetting to me. This goes to show how crazy our world has gotten. Especially the justice system in this world!

be blessed...........

haney

*all type in this dark plum color is my statements, responding to the news article. These are my feelings. haney's!

Russia announces rearmament plan

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:46:00 -0400

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said Moscow will begin a comprehensive military rearmament from 2011.

Mr Medvedev said the primary task would be to "increase the combat readiness of [Russia's] forces, first of all our strategic nuclear forces".

Explaining the move, he cited concerns over Nato expansion near Russia's borders and regional conflicts.

Last year, the Kremlin set out plans to increase spending on Russia's armed forces over the next two years.

Russia will spend nearly $140bn (£94.5bn) on buying arms up until 2011.

Higher oil revenues in recent years have allowed the Kremlin to increase the military budget, analysts say. But prices have averaged $40 a barrel in 2009 compared with $100 last year.

Outdated equipment

In his first address to a defence ministry meeting in his capacity as supreme commander, Mr Medvedev said considerable sums are being channelled towards developing and purchasing modern military equipment.

"Despite the financial problems we have to cope with today, the size of these sums has remained virtually the same as planned."

Analysts say the brief war in Georgia exposed problems with outdated equipment and practices within Russia's armed forces and led to calls for military modernisation.

President Medvedev's remarks also appear significant for what they say about the diplomatic game between Moscow and the new administration in the United States, says the BBC's James Rodgers in Moscow.

Both sides are looking for a solution to issues - such as US missile defence plans in Europe - which bitterly divided the Kremlin and the White House during the Bush administration. Neither, though, seems willing simply to abandon previously-held positions, our correspondent adds.

The Russian Security Council is currently developing a new military doctrine which is expected to reflect current and forthcoming international developments, including any changes Nato may set out this year, missile defence deployments and WMD proliferation.

"The Security Council will approve Russia's national security strategy until 2020 in the near future," President Medvedev said.

Watch Tim Whewell's films on the Russian military on Newsnight on Tuesday, 18 March and Wednesday, 19 March, 2009 at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

The Bible is fufilling soooooooooooooooooooo FAST, now!!!!!!!!!! The King is Coming!!!!!!! Do you KNOW where you are going?

be blessed............

haney

RE: "Only in America" posted June 6, 2008

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:46:00 -0500

"Only in America"

This is reguarding the article I done on June 6, 2008 ......about a web site called "the muslim pad". Well...........I have GOOD news to bring.........the site NO LONGER exsist :D!!!!!!! I guess he tucked his tail and rode out of town very quitely. Any way.......one down.........several to go!

be blessed..........

haney

Post-Soviet nations to form military force.......Bible fufilling.......

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 02:02:00 -0500

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN)  -- A Russian-led bloc of post-Soviet
nations has agreed to establish a rapid-reaction military force to
combat terrorists and respond to regional emergencies, Russian media
reported Wednesday.

 The decision came a day after reports that Kyrgyzstan is planning
to close a strategically important U.S. military base that Washington
uses to transport troops and supplies into Afghanistan.

 On
Wednesday, the Collective Security Treaty Organization -- made up of
Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan -- decided on the rapid-reaction force at a Kremlin summit,
the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti reported.

 The group's
security council "spent a long time discussing the central issue of
forming collective reaction forces and, generally, of rapid reaction to
possible threats," said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

 "Everyone agreed that the formation of joint forces is necessary," he said.

 Officials told Russian media that all the members had signed the agreement, though Uzbekistan submitted a special provision.

   Uzbekistan
doesn't mind contributing military units to the rapid-reaction force
"but does not consider it necessary for the moment" to attach emergency
responders, drug-control forces and other special services,
organization spokesman Vitaly Strugovets told Interfax.

 Russian
media reported that the force will be used to fight military
aggressors, conduct anti-terror operations, battle regional drug
trafficking and respond to natural disasters. The force will be based
in Russia under a single command, with member nations contributing
military units.

 On Tuesday, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev
announced at a Moscow news conference that "all due procedures" were
being initiated to close Manas Air Base, RIA-Novosti reported. The
announcement was made after news reports of a multimillion-dollar aid
package from Russia to Kyrgyzstan.


Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East
and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, was in Kyrgyzstan last month,
partly to lobby the government to allow the United States to keep using
the base. He said he and Kyrgyz leaders did not discuss "at all" the
possible closure of the base and said local officials told him there
was "no foundation" for news reports about the issue.

 The United
States is planning to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan
to halt a resurgence of the Taliban. Petraeus described Manas as having
"an important role in the deployment of these forces" and in refueling
aircraft.

 The relationship between the United States and
Kyrgyzstan was damaged when a Kyrgyz citizen was killed by a U.S.
airman in December 2006. The airman was transferred out of Kyrgyzstan,
and the dead man's family was offered compensation. Petraeus said in
January that the investigation was being reopened.

 As he
announced the base closure Tuesday, Bakiyev said he was not satisfied
with the inquiry into the accident and his government's "inability to
provide security to its citizens" was proving a serious concern.


Medvedev also weighed in on the issue Wednesday, saying the base
closure shouldn't hamper anti-terrorism operations, according to
Interfax.

 "It would be great if their numbers
meant there were fewer terrorists, but such action depends on other
things as well," he said.

   "The Bear is coming back together, for it's strength.".........

be blessed.........

haney101

Commentary: Obama is right to reach out to nonbelievers..........

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:34:00 -0500

By Randall Balmer
Special to CNN

Editor's note: Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest, is professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a visiting professor at Emory University. His most recent book is "God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush."

NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Obama's mention of "nonbelievers" in his inaugural address represents an important broadening of the circle of acceptability in American life, an acknowledgement of our growing diversity and a fuller embrace of the principles articulated in our nation's charter documents.

One of the hallmarks of American life, dating to the 17th century, is its religious pluralism.

The Atlantic seaboard during the colonial period was home to everyone from Puritans, Roman Catholics and Dutch Reformed to Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, Swedish Lutherans, Anglicans, Huguenots, Mennonites and Schwenckfelders. Jews arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654, refugees from South America after the Portuguese takeover of Recifé.

Somehow it all worked, especially in the crucible of religious pluralism in the Middle Colonies: New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where William Penn launched his "Holy Experiment" of religious toleration.

In the context of the New World, these religious groups learned to coexist with remarkably little conflict, and when it came time to configure the new nation, the founders in their wisdom elected not to designate any group as the state religion.

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," the First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads.

This provision set up a kind of free market for religion in America, allowing religious groups to compete in a marketplace unfettered by government interference. Indeed, American history is littered with religious entrepreneurs (to extend the economic metaphor) who have peddled their wares in this marketplace and thereby contributed to the vigor and vitality of American religious life.

The story of religion in America life has been one of expansion and ever-increasing diversity. Although Roman Catholics were present in the colonial period -- Maryland, named for the wife of Charles I, was founded by Catholics from England -- Catholics arrived in great numbers from Ireland, Germany and Italy over the course of the 19th century.

Many Protestants, their hegemony threatened, resisted, sometimes with violence. Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe came as well.

Most of the resistance was episodic. With notable -- albeit unfortunate -- exceptions, we Americans eventually rise to our better selves and embrace the principles of equality and toleration enshrined in our charter documents. And we can trace these changes in our rhetoric.

The term "Judeo-Christian," although coined late in the 19th century, became popular in the 1930s as the clouds of war were gathering in Europe. In 1955, after World War II, when so many sons of Jewish and Catholic immigrants fought the Axis powers, sociologist Will Herberg published a book entitled "Protestant-Catholic-Jew," arguing that any of these religious expressions was legitimately "American."

The following decade saw still more changes. The civil rights struggle brought the vibrancy of African-American religious life to national attention, and Lyndon Johnson's signature on the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act in 1965 removed immigration quotas.

In the decades since, the arrival of people from around the world, especially from South Asia and Southeast Asia, has literally recast the religious landscape of the United States. Muslim mosques, Hindu temples, Sikh Gurdwäräs and Buddhist stupas have sprouted across the nation, from cities to the countryside.

And our rhetoric has evolved as well. Whereas America might once have been described as a "Protestant" nation and then a "Christian" nation (to reflect the inclusion of Roman Catholics), we moved to "Judeo-Christian" and then "Protestant-Catholic-Jew."

More recently, we have talked about the "Abrahamic Traditions," Jews, Christians and Muslims, thereby broadening the circle to include Islam, one of the three major monotheistic religions. Even with this broadening landscape, however, presidents have generally acknowledged only believers and failed to mention atheists or agnostics.

Our rhetoric, in fact, has always lagged behind our reality. When President Obama declared, "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers," he sent a signal that it's time, once again, to enlarge the circle of inclusiveness, consistent with the great American tradition of equality and toleration.

Although I'm sure that Buddhists and Jains and Sikhs and countless other religious adherents would like to have been included in the president's roll call, the message was clear: We are a diverse nation, and the "free exercise" of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment also protects the exercise of no religion at all.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Randall Balmer.

Now.........for my two words...............

Why not. Go ahead and let the non-believers have their recozition ..............they are only spitting in the faces of the reasons, our founding people came here in the first place. God, was in the picture. They had different reason of how to worship and believe about God..........but, GOD WAS IN IT!!!!! But, why shouldn't they have a dog in the race? I mean we're already giving the Muslim/Islam community........their dog in the race. They are only the one's behind 9/11 and the terrosits that are totally against this country........especially us "christains". Dosen't it all make perfect sense??? Of course......only in America.

The opinions expressed in this lil commentary are solely those of haney101.

Women as Bombers............

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:36:40 -0400

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The mother's voice lacks emotion as she recalls how her daughter became a suicide bomber.

A woman used this car in a February 13 attack in Iraq. "God willing, she went to heaven," her mother says.

"She wanted to die in the name of God," she says on a videotape, her face peering out from under a dark brown head scarf.

"She told me she is sick of this life. ... So she spoke about the Americans. I told her, 'Where will you get Americans?' She said she will go after the Americans." Watch as the mother tells her story �

The daughter is one of 19 female suicide bombers this year, a number much higher than in previous years. According to the U.S. military, women carried out eight bombings in all of 2007.

In the February 13 attack, the daughter posed as a journalist with an English-speaking male accomplice, claiming that they had an interview with a prominent Iraqi tribal leader who works with U.S. forces.

Four guards protecting Sheikh Ifan al-Isawi were killed in the attack. Al-Isawi brought the mother in for questioning, and CNN obtained the video of the interrogation.

"God willing, she went to heaven," said the woman, whose son also was a suicide bomber in 2004. "She told me, 'Mom, I want to do it.' "

The latest bombing involving a female came Friday, when a man and woman targeted an Iraqi police checkpoint in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The explosion wounded three police and two civilians, said an official with the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

Authorities said that al Qaeda in Iraq actively is recruiting women and that increasing numbers of women are offering themselves up for missions. The officials said the women are desperate and hopeless. Most have pre-existing ties to the insurgency, and their main motive is revenge for a male family member killed by U.S. or Iraqi forces in the war, authorities said.

"We do see certain members of cells attempting to persuade women, specifically in many cases wives or those who have been killed as terrorists, to conduct suicide operations," said U.S. Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, whose area of operations includes the volatile province of Diyala.

"Since October, there have been nine suicide bombers who were female, seven of whom were recruited in the last 90 days," Hertling said.

Hertling's troops in Diyala have launched operations targeting members of families of suspected female bombers trying to break up the rings that are recruiting the women and girls. The U.S. military said it has six females in custody who were would-be suicide bombers. The youngest is 14, one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Intelligence gathered from detainees indicates that al Qaeda in Iraq is looking for women with three main characteristics: those who are illiterate, are deeply religious or have financial struggles because most likely they've lost the male head of the household.

"They are also looking for someone who is young," Hertling said. "They will bypass an older widow."

Sheikh Adel Fahdawi, a Sunni leader, added, "If the woman's psychological state is bad, they try to lure her with the illusions that she will be going to heaven. ... All of them come from the families of terrorists, and they are being recruited and pressured."

In one bombing this year, a woman approached a police station in Diyala sobbing about her son. One witness said the woman referred to the local police commander as a "good man," adding, "I came for help." While she was being searched, her explosives detonated.

A woman who went to the bomb scene expressed outrage that another female would carry out such an attack.

Another female bomber used a similar tactic at an Iraqi army headquarters in Yusufiya, south of Baghdad, asking for the commanding officer, authorities said. As he approached, she blew herself up. The U.S. military detained a woman who it said confessed to being her handler.

"She was the person on the ground responsible for coordinating the final day or two of the attack," Capt. Michael Starz said. "[She] helped her prepare the device. ... She helped her affix it to her body."

According to U.S. intelligence, al Qaeda in Iraq uses suicide missions carried out by women to pressure its male fighters to step up and offer themselves up for attacks.

Classified documents given to CNN also indicate that the terrorist group is having increasing difficulty smuggling foreign fighters across the border from Syria after a recent military crackdown in the north.

The nationalities of most female bombers are unknown, but those identified in recent attacks are mainly Iraqi.

Females always have played a role in the insurgency in Iraq, helping feed militants, hiding them in their homes and helping sneak weapons around the country. They have proven to be highly effective in their operations as a result of the cultural convention that women are not to be searched.

Against a backdrop of such suffering and violence, U.S. and Iraqi officials said they fear that even more Iraqi women will turn themselves into bombs.

Fahdawi, the Sunni sheikh, said that more needs to be done to raise awareness through Iraq's imams, mosques and the media that al Qaeda in Iraq is preying on women.

"They need to expose the crime of al Qaeda. It is like the whole world is targeting Iraq," he said.

Hello..........the crimes HAVE BEEN exposed!!! No one seems to want to "step on peoples toes, to tell them they ARE WRONG!!!!!!" It might "HURT THEIR FEELINGS". "HURT THEIR FEELINGS????" Meanwhile, they DO NOT care to blow US up with a bomb!!!!! But, Lordy NO!!!! Don't hurt their feelings. STEP UP, AMERICA!!!!!!!!

BE BLESSED........
HANEY