Extraterrestrial

Extraterrestrial

Indian HOLOCAUST My Father`s Life and Time - One Hundred EIGHT
Palash Biswas



Extraterrestrial life is an old concept. Star War and Cold war experiences proved the relevance of monopoly in space research. Thus, we all know what means NASA for White House, PENTAGAN or any power centre in this world!

Is it a mere coincidence that EUROPEAN astronomers say they have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our solar system, one that could have water and perhaps even life and at the same time,U.S. House approves Iraq pullout date, despite likely veto? The daily Tribune de Geneve also praised the scientists, but couldn't help taking a shot at the world's traditional leaders in the study of the cosmos — the United States.

"American scientists recently estimated that the discovery of an exo-planet resembling the Earth would probably take 20 years," it wrote. "The Europeans didn't wait for them."


March 23, 1983: Star Wars
Tony Long 03.23.07 | 5:00 AM
1983: President Reagan announces his "Star Wars" missile-defense program.

The program, known formally as the Strategic Defense Initiative, was meant not only to shield the United States and its allies from a massive Soviet missile attack, but to put as much pressure as possible on the Soviet economy by forcing the Russians to try and keep pace technologically.

SDI earned its "Star Wars" sobriquet from detractors who mocked the idea of space-based battle stations and laser-equipped satellites, which were features of the Reagan administration plan. The lasers were to be used to destroy incoming Soviet ICBMs, something, which in 1983, seemed about as plausible as running into a bunch of ex-pat aliens at an intergalactic bar.

In any case, it wasn't the feasibility of SDI that doomed it, but the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

In 2007, U.S. missile defense remains pretty much what it has always been: a ground-based missile system designed to cope with individual ICBMs, and not the all-encompassing shield envisioned in SDI.

(Source: Various)
March 23, 1983: Star Wars

Did "Star Wars" Win the Cold War? Evidence from Newly Discovered Soviet Documents
Social Science Seminar

DATE AND TIME AVAILABILITY
4/19/2007 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
http://cisac.stanford.edu/events/4844/


In the Year of Darkness, 2029, the rulers of this planet devised the ultimate plan. They would reshape the Future by changing the Past. The plan required something that felt no pity. No pain. No fear. Something unstoppable. They created 'THE TERMINATOR'
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/



Leading astronomers are describing the discovery of the new planet as a big step in the search for life in the universe because it is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at about 190 trillion km away.

But there is still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, named 581 c, discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile. The telescope, which Mayor helped design, has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wavelengths, revealing the possible existence of other worlds.


WASHINGTON: The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved a $124 billion war spending bill that would require American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq by Oct. 1, setting the stage for the first veto fight between President George W. Bush and the Democratic majority in Congress.Only hours after General David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, told lawmakers he needed more time to gauge the effectiveness of a troop buildup there, the House voted 218 to 208 Wednesday to pass a measure that sought the removal of most combat forces by next spring. Bush has said unequivocally and repeatedly that he will veto it.
"Last fall, the American people voted for a new direction in Iraq," said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. "They made it clear that our troops must be given all they need to do their jobs, but that our troops must be brought home responsibly, safely and soon."

Republicans accused Democrats of establishing a "date certain" for America's defeat in Iraq and capitulating to terrorism.

"This bill is nothing short of a cut and run in the fight against Al Qaeda," said Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky.
A sharply divided House of Representatives has brushed aside a veto threat and passed legislation that would order US President George W Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq by October 1.The 218-208 vote on Wednesday came as the top US commander in Iraq told lawmakers the country remained gripped by violence but was showing some signs of improvement.Passage puts the bill on track to clear Congress by week's end and arrive on the president's desk in coming days as the first binding congressional challenge to Bush's handling of the conflict now in its fifth year.

''Our troops are mired in a civil war with no clear enemy and no clear strategy for success,'' said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat.

Republicans promised to stand squarely behind the President in rejecting what they called a ''surrender date'' handed to the enemy.

''Al-Qaida will view this as the day the House of Representatives threw in the towel,'' said Republican Jerry Lewis, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.


Potentially habitable extra-solar planet found

European astronomers have spotted what they say is the most Earth-like planet yet outside our solar system, with balmy temperatures that could support water and, potentially, life. The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth.

In pic: An artistic illustration released by the European Southern Observatory shows the new planet known as Gliese 581 c (L) orbiting a red dwarf star.
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14437321&page=1


NASA releases 3D images of sun

Beyond reacting on the working of the instruments, scientist Simon Plunkett and others were astonished at the images. He explained the images to a room full of journalists and scientists wearing 3D glasses. AP

In Pic: A photo of the sun released by NASA shows an image from the agency's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory.
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14436688

The decision to send Prince Harry to Iraq is being reviewed by senior British Army officers. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said his deployment had always been under ''constant consideration'' and it remained its intention to send him. The Army has always known the Prince would be a major terrorist target. General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the Army, will have to decide whether to stand by his original decision to sanction Harry's deployment, which comes amid continued violence in Iraq. Last week two British soldiers were killed while on routine patrol and earlier this month a Challenger tank was seriously damaged in an attack by Iraqi insurgents.

Harry, the third in line for the throne, is currently set to go to Iraq within weeks.

What about the common US and British soldiers deployed in the killing fields of Middle East?

Iraq: Suicide attack kills 9 US soldiers

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 (Baghdad)
An al-Qaida-linked group posted a Web statement Tuesday claiming responsibility for a suicide truck bombing that killed nine US soldiers and wounded 20 in the worst attack on American ground forces in Iraq in more than a year.The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group of Sunni militants that includes al-Qaida in Iraq, said it was behind Monday's attack on a US patrol base in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, an area that has seen a spike in violence since American troops surged into the capital to try to quell violence there.The victims were all paratroopers with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, and it was the highest number of casualties for that division since the Iraq war began, said Maj. Tom Earnhardt, a spokesman for the Fort Bragg, NC-based unit.

Meanwhile, police in the same area said gunmen disguised as Iraqi soldiers killed six Iraqis and burned five homes on Tuesday in an unrelated attack.South of the capital, a family of seven was killed en masse, shot to death in their beds at dawn by masked gunmen, neighbors and police said.

British forces transferred another military base to Iraqi troops in the country's south, ahead of the planned withdrawal this summer of about half of Britain's contribution to the US-led coalition.And in Baghdad, two bombs went off outside the Iranian Embassy on Tuesday for the second consecutive day. Six civilians were injured, and a car bomb was discovered and safely detonated hours later, police said.

A team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists found the planet that is about five times the mass of the Earth orbiting a red dwarf star known as Gliese 581.The researchers say the planet, detected by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in Chile, is the smallest found outside our solar system, and completes an orbit in 13 days."Its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky — like our Earth — or covered with oceans," said the study's lead author Stephane Udry, of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory.

The planet is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the sun but still lies in the habitable zone — the region around a star where water could be liquid — because Gliese 581 is smaller and colder than the sun.The scientists have estimated its mean temperature is between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, so water would be liquid.

So the Star Wars launched by Ronald reagan continues worldwide. Literature and Hollywood films based on the hypothesis of Extraterrestrial life always projected a Global Government, which obviously is run from washington DC. Now, in fact, Globalisation is a crude Reality. Washigton has made all nations into colonies and everything INDIGENous is destroyed worldwide. Demographies readjusted and nationalities and cultures, languages, societies, economies and polities annihilated accordingly. It is not an Earth at all .

It is the Free Hunting Ground for Hindu Zionist Corporate Imperialism!

And here you are! It is, of course. an Encounter of the Third kind!
And Super Power to be Sensex India is also in the RUN as an integral part of Star War Game plan!

European Union is open to co-operation with the up-and-coming Indian and Chinese space industries on its Mars operations but it will maintain control over the mission, the European Space Agency said on Thursday. "We're always open to co-operation," Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's director general, told reporters in answer to a question about working with India and China.

"The mission to Mars is one which is open to co-operation but (in) which we want to control our own input and our own timeframe," he said.

The ESA has a Mars Express spacecraft orbiting the red planet, wants to send a vehicle to collect samples of Martian rock and ultimately aims to send a human there.

Dordain was speaking after the agency, together with the EU executive Commission, launched a space policy aimed at a more coordinated, focused and cost-saving approach.

The policy also aims at combining more parts of the space programs of ESA's 17 member countries as well as of the programs stemming from the defense and civil sectors.

The EU has launched several high-profile space programs, such as Galileo, a network of satellites aimed at creating a much more accurate navigation system than the U.S.'s Global Position System (GPS).

It is also in the process of launching Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security (GMES) which aims to find an efficient system of combining data collected from satellites and other information on the two issues.Astronomer and research team member Xavier Delfosse, from France's Grenoble University, believes the planet will become a target of space missions looking for extra-terrestrial life. "On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."

Gliese 581, which has one third the mass of the sun, is 20.5 light years away in the constellation Libra, making it among the 100 stars closest to us.

Australian astronomer Professor Chris Tinney, of the University of NSW, said the finding was interesting. "Because the star is so small and so faint, there's … a potential that if the planet is solid, is rocky, it could have liquid water in the surface," he said. Although hardly a certainty, he described it as "probably the best case we've come up with yet for a habitable system".

The European team made the discovery using a "planet-hunting" spectograph, an instrument that measures changes in the velocity of a star caused by the pull of an orbiting planet.

Their research is reported in a paper submitted as a letter to the editor of the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.

http://www.eso.org
Mayor predicted that NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder and the European Space Agency's Darwin satellite would make increasingly significant contributions in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He said these institutions will be able to directly look for "signatures of life" on other planets, similar to the high presence of oxygen in our atmosphere, within 15 to 20 years.

Stephen Hawking set to fly weightless

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - For a few seconds on Thursday, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking expects to feel the exhilaration of escaping his paralysis and floating free in zero gravity.

Slideshow: Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking

Hawking, 65, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, will be the first person with a disability to fly on the one of the flights offered by Zero gravity, a space tourism company. Flying from Kennedy space centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the jet creates the experience of micro gravity in 25-second bursts of steep plunges over the Atlantic Ocean. Normally, the plane conducts 10 to 15 plunges for its passengers who pay $3,750 for the ride, although that fee has been waived for Hawking.

On Hawking's trip, the jet will make a single plunge. Other plunges will be made only after doctors and nurses who are accompanying the astrophysicist on the ride have made sure that he is enjoying it.


Steven Spielberg's films have grossed approximately $1,500 million. He is 34, and well on his way to becoming the most effective popular artist of all time... What's he got? How do you do it? Can I have some?
'Super-intensity' is Spielberg's word for what he comes up with on the screen. His films beam down on an emotion and then subject it to two hours of muscular titillation. In Jaws the emotion was terror; in Close Encounters it was wonder; in Raiders of the Lost Ark it was exhilaration; in Poltergeist it was anxiety; and now in ET - which looks set to outdo them all - it is love.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,116068,00.html
http://www.et20.com/
http://dmoz.org/Science/Astronomy/Extraterrestrial_Life/

Extraterrestrial life
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is written from a scientific perspective. For aliens in popular culture see Extraterrestrial life in popular culture For other uses, see Extraterrestrial (disambiguation).

A 1967 Soviet Union 16 kopeks stamp. Space science fiction. Satellite of extraterrestrial civilizationExtraterrestrial life is the past or present existence of life originating outside the limits of the Earth. Currently, extraterrestrial life remains hypothetical, as there is no evidence of extraterrestrial life that has been widely accepted by the scientific community. Some, however, point to moons of Jupiter or Saturn (most notably Europa and Titan respectively, which are believed by scientists to have oceans of water under their icy surfaces) or other celestial bodies that might conceivably have some forms of life (bacterial or otherwise).

Most scientists think that if extraterrestrial life exists, its evolution occurred independently, in different places. An alternative hypothesis, held by a minority, is panspermia. This suggests that life could have been created elsewhere and spread across the universe, between habitable planets. These two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive.

The putative study and theorization of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology or xenobiology. Speculative forms of extraterrestrial life range from sapient beings to life at the scale of bacteria. Since no examples of confirmed extraterrestrial life are available for examination, these studies presently remain within the realm of speculation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life
See also:
http://technorati.com/tag/extraterrestrial
http://www.resa.net/nasa/

Star Wars
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the series. For the 1977 film, see Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. For other uses, see Star Wars (disambiguation).

Opening logo to the Star Wars films Star Wars Portal
Star Wars, an epic science fiction-fantasy, started as an outer space saga and fictional universe created by writer/producer/director George Lucas, behind the story during the late 1970s. Over the next thirty years, Lucas and other writers developed the Star Wars saga with additional films, books, and other works. The first film was Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope), which was released on May 25, 1977, by 20th Century Fox.

The film became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, spawning five more feature films developed by George Lucas and an Expanded Universe of his films, which includes three spin-off films, five television series and an extensive collection of licensed books, comics, video games, action figures, trading cards, and other merchandise, all set within the Star Wars fictional "galaxy far, far away." In 2005, Forbes Magazine estimated the overall revenue generated by the entire Star Wars franchise (over the course of its history) at nearly US $20 billion, making it one of the most successful franchises of all time. [1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars

Soviet Star Wars
Monday, Oct. 14, 1985 Article ToolsPrintEmailReprints Why not curtail the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars, if that would mean a deal with the Soviet Union to reduce nuclear weapons? The Reagan Administration last week began a strenuous effort to explain why it is reluctant to do so: because the Soviets began missile- defense research long before the U.S. did, and may have a large lead.

In a major speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia and an interview with TIME, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger stressed that Moscow is "very far along" in missile-defense R. and D. President Reagan, in impromptu comments to the press on Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's criticism of SDI, ventured the surprising estimate that "the Soviet Union is about ten years ahead of us in developing a defensive system." To buttress such arguments, the Pentagon and State Department jointly released a 27-page pamphlet summing up what Washington knows about the Kremlin's version of Star Wars. Briefing journalists on the report, Defense Intelligence Agency Specialist James McCrery asserted that "for a long time" the Soviets "have been devoting very heavy resources" to developing all the technologies now involved in SDI.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,960124,00.html


Was God an ancient astronaut? Do centuries-old legends of gods and heroes tell of space travelers who came to earth from distant parts of the Cosmos? Are some of the ruins of antiquity remnants of great airfields, the favored landing sites of extraterrestrial craft?

"Yes!," writes Erich Von Daniken in his runaway bestselling book, "Chariots of the Gods?" This phenomenally successful book is now in its forty-fourth printing, with over four million copies currently in print. Von Daniken's sequels to this book, "Gods from Outer Space" and "The Gold of The Gods" are also selling well, as are flocks of imitations.

The popularity of such a sensational theory should not be surprising. Immanuel Velikovsky created a similar stir almost twenty-five years ago with the publication of his "Worlds in Collision", suggesting that the present state of the solar system can be explained by a series of spectacular cataclysms among the planets. It has been over twenty-seven years since "flying saucers" burst into the public's awareness, and UFOs still continue to generate excitement and controversy. Sensational hypotheses such as these generate such levels of interest that they tend to become self-sustaining, quite apart from the question of whether they are true.

Established science has always shied away from such remarkable claims. "It took courage to write this book. and it will take courage to read it", says Von Daniken. "Even if a reactionary army tries to dam up this new intellectual flood, a new world must be conquered in the teeth of all the unteachable in the name of truth and reality." (Presumably the reader here is expected to shout, "Right on!") Does science avoid Von Daniken because it is afraid to face up to the truth? Let's examine some of his many claims, to see if they are serious scientific theories, or mere humbug.

On page 9, Von Daniken serves up a "basic rocket equation," derived by one Professor Ackeret, purporting to show how time slows down for space travelers who zip along at velocities near the speed of light. This is an important consequence of Einstein's theory of relativity. Yet a quick glance at this "rocket equation" shows that it isn't an equation at all! Every equation is a mathematical statement of the equality of two quantities: this equals that. But his "equation" contains no equal sign, and hence it cannot be a real equation; it must be intended as window dressing, since it serves no legitimate mathematical purpose. Yet that is not the only absurdity in this non-equation. A term in the denominator is multiplied by a very strange constant: ONE! Did Professor Ackeret think that multiplication by one was a necessary step in his calculations? Von Daniken himself must have known better, as even schoolchildren learn that any number times one equals itself! There are, of course, many legitimate equations which deal with this aspect of the relativity of time. Why then has Von Daniken selected such an obvious humbug to support his "scientific " claims?

What is the history of our earth-moon system? ". . . a satellite was captured by the earth. As it was pulled toward the earth it slowed down the speed of the earth's revolutions. It finally disintegrated and was replaced by the moon." (p. 19)

Proof of this theory, he writes, can be found in the symbols on the Great Idol in the Old Temple at Tiahuanaco, one of his favorite archeological Wonders. Supposedly this message, dating back 27,000 years, tells of how this satellite emeritus made 425 revolutions around the earth a year, which was then only 288 days.

If the earth formerly circled the sun every 288 days, Kepler's third law implies that the earth must have been at that time much closer to the sun, almost where Venus is now. Are we expected to believe that during the great Ice Ages the earth was some twenty million miles closer to the sun than it is today? On the other hand, if the year remained unchanged but each day is shorter, we are faced with another difficulty: since the year is now 365 days, the earth's rotation is faster than in 25,000 B.C., not slower as Von Daniken claims. How could a satellite slowly spiraling earthward pull both earth and satellite farther away from the sun? Where are the fragments of this disintegrated moon, and where did our current moon come from? Von Daniken gives no answers.

On ancient Egyptian astronomy: " ... why a Sirius calendar? . . . If Sirius appeared on the horizon at dawn at the same time as the Nile flood, it was pure coincidence ... this very interest in Sirius seems rather peculiar because seen from Memphis, Sirius can be observed only in the early dawn just above the horizon when the Nile floods begin." (p.64-65)Reader, beware - we're dealing with one who knows the art of deception! Sirius, he neglects to mention, is the brightest star in the sky. His claim that Sirius was hardly visible at all to the Egyptians is simply false. Sirius, in fact, is visible from anywhere on earth except the extreme North Polar region, and observers in Egypt see that star higher in the sky than we do here in the northern United States, where it dominates the sky on crisp winter evenings.

There is no dark mystery behind the development of the Sirius- based calendar in Egypt. The priests there noticed a simple regularity: each year, when that brilliant star first became visible in the morning sky, the Nile flood began. Does this not prove that the Egyptians had contact with a race of space travelers?

On the mysteries of the great Pyramid of Cheops: "is it coincidence that the area of the base of the pyramid divided by twice its height gives the celebrated figure Pi = 3.14159?" (p. 77)

Here our slippery trickster has made a claim which is easy enough to understand, but its refutation requires a higher level of mathematical sophistication, which is all the better for letting the deception go unnoticed! Without going into too much detail, let us observe that the famous number Pi is what is called a "dimensionless constant": it is a pure number, with which no units of measure are associated. However, the ratio of an area to height is not dimensionless, hence such a ratio cannot yield Pi. By choosing our units carefully, we can obtain the number 3.14159, but the ratio will not really be Pi, which is independent of any units of measure. If we measure the same pyramid, Von Daniken style, in inches, feet, and yards, we will obtain three different ratios. Choose your own units, and the ratio can be made to equal any number at all! Von Daniken writes that the pyramid of Cheops "has inspired hundreds of crazy and untenable theories". Not satisfied with this collection, he has given us one more.
http://www.debunker.com/texts/vondanik.html


US Monopoly in space research and NASAPage 1 of 40,531 results ·Options ·AdvancedResults
Can Art Break Science's Monopoly Grip On Space?
Can Art Break Science's Monopoly Grip On Space? By Greg Clark ... reaches orbit, nine people will be in space: seven on NASA's ... Even the most fundamental space-based research is really just ...

www.space.com/news/spacestation/iss_isadora_000423.html · Cached page
Space Frontier Foundation - Space Transportation Policy
The government monopoly on many space activities must be ended. The socialist model of NASA must be ... incentives for applied research, and purchasing space ... growth and predominance of US space ...

www.space-frontier.org/Policies/spacetranspolicy.html · Cached page
Space Frontier Foundation - NewSpace News - April 2007
RocketPlane Kistler and NASA sign Space Act Agreement to ... and celebrate the power and beauty of space and what it means for each of us. Yuri's ... SpaceX's Falcon 1, a possible Boeing/Lockheed monopoly ...

www.space-frontier.org/NewSpaceNews · Cached page
+Show more results from www.space-frontier.org
obvious
NASA looses their monopoly, but must do more research and push farther into space to support ... GOVERNMENT AND SPACE COMPETITOR OR REGULATOR NASA is in a very bad position, bad for us ...

web.wt.net/~markgoll/mgcm5.htm · Cached page
NASA Experimental Communications Satellites 1958-1995
When the Kennedy Administration decided to give the monopoly ... spacecraft as well as the ATS series of NASA research satellites. ... Technicians at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD ...

roland.lerc.nasa.gov/~dglover/sat/satcom2.html · Cached page
NASA Watch .info NASA watchdog regarding space
... tax-supported bureaucrats for access to space, than to empower us ... mantra regarding the murderous Space Shuttle monopoly that ... for SpaceRef's collaboration with the NASA Haughton Mars research ...

www.spaceprojects.com/NASA · Cached page
NASA opportunism in space
... though, a single mission with NASA's space shuttle monopoly here in ... NASA would have us believe that there is a huge demand for microgravity-related research and yet universities are reluctant to ...

www.spaceprojects.com/washtimes110500 · Cached page
+Show more results from www.spaceprojects.com
Tag Archive for space at Ministry of Tech | The Best of Tech
NASA, governments no longer have monopoly on Space? by Matthew Sparkes March 21st, 2007 in Space ... with the scientists and facilities at the NASA Ames Research ... This leaves us curious as to how […]

www.ministryoftech.com/index.php?tag=space · Cached page
Space archive at Ministry of Tech | The Best of Tech
NASA, governments no longer have monopoly on Space? by Matthew Sparkes March 21st, 2007 in Space ... with the scientists and facilities at the NASA Ames Research ... This leaves us curious as to how […]

www.ministryoftech.com/category/space · 4/25/2007 · Cached page
+Show more results from www.ministryoftech.com
Starship Modeler: Real Space Modeling
... galvanized the US into supporting a space program. It led to the foundation of NASA ... long enjoyed a monopoly on manned space ... Achievements in space could never have occurred without extensive research ...

www.starshipmodeler.com/real/rsintro.htm · Cached page


Chronology of attacks

Tuesday's attack was one of the worst on American ground forces in Iraq.
On February 19, 2006, insurgents struck a US combat post in Tarmiyah, about 50 km north of Baghdad, killing two soldiers and wounding 17 in what the military called a ''coordinated attack.''
Twelve soldiers died when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Diyala on January 20, 2006. The military said it might have been shot down but the investigation is still ongoing.
On December 1, 2005, a roadside bomb killed 10 Marines and wounded 11 on a foot patrol near Fallujah.
In other devastating attack, 14 Marines were killed when a roadside bomb struck an amphibious assault vehicle near the western town of Haditha on August 3, 2005.
A suicide bomber struck a mess tent in a base near Mosul on December 21, 2004, killing 22 people, including 14 US soldiers and three American contractors.
American troops are facing increasing danger as they step up their presence in outposts and police stations in Baghdad and areas surrounding the city, as part of the security crackdown to which US President George W Bush has committed extra 30,000 troops.

Sunni militants are believed to have withdrawn to surrounding areas such as Diyala where they have safe haven. The US command also deployed extra 700 soldiers to the province last month.