Free Republic

Khobar Towers The Clinton administration left many stones unturnd. BY LOUIS J. FREEH Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. Ten years ago today, acting under direct orders from senior Iranian government leaders, the Saudi Hezbollah detonated a 25,000-pound TNT bomb that killed 19 U.S. airmen in their dormitory at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The blast wave destroyed Building 131 and grievously wounded hundreds of additional Air Force personnel. It also killed an unknown number of Saudi civilians in a nearby park. The 19 Americans murdered were members of the 4,404th Wing, who were risking their lives to enforce...

Glenn Stewart, a U.S. veteran of the first Gulf War a quarter of a century ago, has a deadly dilemma. Stewart, who served as a communication specialist in the U.S. forces tasked with taking back Kuwait from the clutches of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1991, wants to see his grandchildren grow. But at the same time, he also waits daily to hear the “good news” of his impending death. The 54-year-old suffers from what is commonly known as Gulf War syndrome (GWS) or Gulf War Illness (GWI), a cocktail of ailments. Its multiple symptoms are both physical and psychological...

When Sergeant Major Michael Jarnevic finally retires from the Army on July 8, it will be the end of a career that began in 1973 when he enlisted as a Marine and was deployed to Vietnam. He is now nearing his 60th birthday and has spent three quarters of his life fighting for his country. In fact, Sgt Major Jarnevic appears to be the last Vietnam veteran on active duty in the whole of the Army. During his 42 years of service he has served in Honduras during the Contra wars in the 80s and Kuwait in the 90s during...

Liz Cheney said Sunday that some of the stories in print about her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, were "fantasies" cooked up by some of his old Bush administration rivals. Responding to a question about Dick Cheney's role in pushing for aggressive interrogations, Liz Cheney pointed to Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, for spreading inaccurate information about her father. Wilkerson "has made a cottage industry of fantasies about the vice president," she said on ABC's "This Week." "It's important to look at the source" of media reports, Cheney said. "Nobody talking about...

In August of 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait triggering a quick response from the United States. Ground troops and aircraft were rapidly deployed to protect the country of Saudi Arabia. The first boots on the ground were from the historic 82nd Airborne Division- America's Guard of Honor. Now, almost 25 years later there are very few accounts of what it was like for the soldiers on the ground. The photo book "Always Out Front: a Photo History of an Airborne Company" will tell the story of B Co 313th Military Intelligence Battalion in their own words and photos.

Today is the 23rd anniversary of the start of the First Persian Gulf War also known as Operation Desert Storm. I was a 29-year-old Captain in the First Infantry Division, “The Big Red One” at Ft. Riley in Kansas. Angela and I just celebrated our first wedding anniversary in December 1990 and now I was deploying into combat — something she had seen her own dad do twice to Vietnam. I was the Fire Support Officer for Task Force 2-16 Infantry (call sign Ranger 14) in the 2nd Brigade (Dagger). Our mission was to be the lead task force of...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

Leadership: The hero of Desert Storm gave America a taste of victory after the wasted sacrifice of Vietnam and demonstrated that only the sometimes-unwise decisions of politicians can keep us from victory over our enemies. Schwarzkopf, called "Stormin' Norman" because of his reportedly explosive temper, led America to two sorely needed military victories: a small one in Grenada in 1983 and a big one as de facto commander of allied forces in the Gulf War in 1991. Grenada was the first step in a recovery from the legacy of Vietnam, where defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory in...

Picture Emerges of Teen Suicide Pilot CHARLES BISHOP: To some, he was a smart, humorous student, which makes his suicide flight all the more incomprehensible. By CURTIS KRUEGER, KATHERINE GAZELLA and ED QUIOCO © St. Petersburg Times published January 8, 2002 ----------- Charles Bishop was a teacher's dream. He read Shakespeare in class, pulled together a middle school literary magazine and enjoyed a good game of flag football. Friends and family members who knew him best described Charles as a patriot. The teen who flew an airplane into the Bank of America building, carrying a note sympathizing with Osama bin...

St. Petersburg , Florida -- Operation Desert Storm, which pushed Iraqi troops out of Kuwait but kept Saddam Hussein in power, took a huge toll on American servicemen and women. 159,705 veterans were injured or became ill, and 10,617 veterans have died of combat related injuries or illnesses since the initiation of the Gulf War during August 1990. Since the second Gulf War began, there have been another 5,884 casualties. Most of the veterans we talked to for this story say they are aware when they sign their name on the dotted line, they might not come home or could...

Kuwait's government has quit en masse in a dispute over the performance of several ministers in dealing with uprising in Kuwait's neighbor, Bahrain. According to the Financial Times, lawmakers had sought to question three ministers for supposed errors in office, in particular Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Sabah, over his failure to respond to pointed criticism of the ruling al-Sabah family on Bahraini state television last week. The sectarian tensions behind Bahrain's uprising -- between the Shia majority and the Sunni royal family -- are a sensitive matter in Kuwait, which also has a Sunni monarchy... Kuwait is seen as unlikely...

Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) is back in the news, thanks to a new study released by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and so is the persistent effort to label it a “mystery.” See, for example, the story by a HealthDay reporter headlined “Gulf War Syndrome Is Real, but Causes Unclear: Report.” Says the article, “its causes, treatment, and potential cure remain unknown.” A definite mystery, right? Well, no. There are two “causes” of GWS — the second of which is actually quite interesting, but not mysterious. The first explanation is a normal background rate of disease. That is, among the...

Just as the Obama administration tries to reassure people that the government can manage the health-care system more competently than what we have now, one of its single-payer systems demonstrates exactly what we can expect from ObamaCare. The VA mistakenly informed 1200 veterans that they have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a 100% fatal condition. They blamed it on a “coding error” (via JWF): At least 1,200 veterans across the country have been mistakenly told by the Veterans Administration that they suffer from a fatal neurological disease. One of the leaders of a Gulf War...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - At least 1,200 veterans across the country have been mistakenly told by the Veterans Administration that they suffer from a fatal neurological disease. One of the leaders of a Gulf War veterans group says panicked veterans from Alabama, Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming have contacted the group about the error. Denise Nichols, the vice president of the National Gulf War Resource Center, says the VA is blaming a coding error for the mistake.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The remains of Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher returned to his Florida home on Thursday, 18 years after his FA-18 Hornet was shot down on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War. Speicher's remains arrived at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station around 3 p.m. About ten minutes later his coffin was rolled off the plane draped with the U.S. flag. It was to remain at the All Saints Chapel on the base overnight.

Navy pilot Michael "Scott" Speicher was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of the Gulf War in 1991, and it was there he apparently was buried by Bedouins, the sand hiding him from the world's mightiest military. For nearly two decades, the family Speicher left behind, from outside Jacksonville, Fla., pushed the Defense Department to find out what had happened to him. On Sunday, the Pentagon disclosed that Marines had recovered Speicher's bones and skeletal fragments — enough for a positive identification. Shot down over west-central Iraq on a combat mission in his FA-18 Hornet on...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The nearly two-decade-old question of what happened to Navy Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher has been answered. The military says remains found in the Iraq desert have been identified as those of the pilot, whose plane was shot down on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War. The Pentagon says the remains were found after officials received new information from an Iraqi citizen last month, and were positively identified yesterday by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. The Pentagon initially declared Speicher killed, but changed his status to "missing in action" and later "missing-captured." His shattered plane...

<p>WASHINGTON (Aug. 2) - Navy pilot Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of the Gulf War in 1991 and it was there he apparently was buried by Bedouins, hidden in the sand from the world's mightiest military all these years.</p>

Here is a video report on the news that the U.S. Military has identified the remains of U.S. Navy Captain Scott Speicher, who was shot down over Iraq at the opening of the first Gulf War in 1991. His remains had never been found, and some had speculated he could be alive somewhere in Iraq, or that he had been held by the Saddam Hussein regime. Apparently an Iraqi in Anbar Province came forward and told U.S. officials that they knew where an American pilot was buried. The skeletal remains were found, brought back to the U.S., and testing has...

Breaking on Fox. Body now in US for further confirmation.