I have some LED's and on thier data sheet it says they have a 12V internal resistor and a forward voltage of 14. I would seem to me that that means hooking it up to a 9v battery directly would be okay, but poof no more light. i don't get it...
maybe 'poof' backwards?
or "oof", not enough voltage at 9?
depends how much current they do at 12
Did it light up for an instant before it went "poof"?
it lit up and dimmed out very quickly. I am really confused right know, The LED are from my arduino starter kit and from what I can tell the numbers on the data sheet don't make sense and I thought resiters were measured in ohms ?
edit-
After much reading I've decided to leave the starter kit components in the starter kit and start over from scratch, I am going to start a new thread with an appropriate title and details on my proposed project.
If you were to cite the datasheet, we might have a fighting chance of helping.
the data sheet is here...http://arduino.cc/documents/datasheets/LEDR-L-7113ID-12V(Ver1287713938.7).pdf
Absolute Maximum Reverse Voltage 5 V.
So connecting it backwards with 12V might be an issue.
Given that they are rated for 12V operation, and that you connected them the correct way around to a 9V battery, I can see no reason they would not work.
Try (one of) them on an actual 12V supply and see if they work.
i did, and it dimmed out and stopped working But I know that my thought process is correct, so I'm okay with that and like I said before I will leave those LED's where they came from and move on.
Hi.
You are connecting the longer of the two LED legs to positive and the shorter leg to negative?
If so, is your 9V battery knackered, (sorry, term used a lot in Australia, usually when referring to the economy) have you retried testing them?
Tom..... 
i tested them everwhich way from tuesday trying to understand the concept but unless I use a resitor they burn out, leads me to believe that one of things is going on, the leds are defective or the term "internal resistor is very loose and does not neccisarily mean the led can be used with out a resitor.
Maybe there is no internal resistor? And you have regular LEDs?
OK, wire (one of) them up to 12V via a 1k resistor. That should result in about 10 mA current. Measure the voltage across the LED itself. If it is less than 4V, they clearly do not have an internal resistor.