Free Republic

**SNIP** But that isn’t what made the Hur report so poignant, so interesting—so funny. It’s something neither party nor much of the news coverage mentioned at all; the biggest missing detail from the stories elected officials told about the Hur report isn’t any legal technicality in the decision not to prosecute Biden for holding on to classified documents. It’s what Biden held on to, and why. The centerpiece of the investigation is a lengthy memo Biden wrote in 2009 to then-president Barack Obama, which investigators found—along with classified materials used to draft it—tucked in a cardboard box in Biden’s garage...

The Qataris, and their ruling al-Thani family, are slavers, narcotics traffickers, and financiers of international terrorism. They also happen to be America’s closest ally under Obama. When analyzing the foreign policy interventions of the Obama administration with respect to the Middle East, it is hard to reconcile their respective approaches Libya (2011) and Iraq (2014). In 2011, Obama justified the military action to remove Muammar Gaddafi on the basis of anticipated genocide by the Gaddafi regime. Speaking at the National Defense University on March 28, 2011, Obama explained “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves...

Trevor Atkins was 11 when his father, Army Staff Sgt. Travis Atkins, was killed while serving in Iraq a dozen years ago. On Wednesday President Trump will present the Medal of Honor to the Atkins family to recognize Travis for his heroism in saving fellow soldiers while losing his own life. “My true treasure is what people say about him,” Trevor tells an interviewer for an Army video tribute to Travis Atkins. “That’s what makes me the most proud.” Trevor has plenty of reason to feel proud lately. Earlier this month the White House announced that his father would...

Reading former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s op-ed in the New York Times the other day reminded me of John Kennedy’s aphorism that success has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. In this case, Rumsfeld is attempting to claim paternity for the so-called surge and the success we’ve witnessed in Iraq during the last 22 months. The problem is that the reality is at odds with what he is now claiming. It is not that some of the specific claims Secretary Rumsfeld makes in his op-ed aren’t accurate. He is right, for example, about the progress we were...

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has harsh words for Vice President Joe Biden’s foreign policy judgement in his soon-to-be-released memoir. According to the New York Times, which obtained an early copy of the memoir, Gates calls Biden “a man of integrity,” but questions his record. “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” Gates writes, according to the Times. Gates, the only high-level holdover from the Bush administration to the President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, reveals he nearly quit his post in September 2009 while Obama reviewed...

His name is David Aguina and he’s an Army reservist. His UCMJ claims against Soltz seem thin to me — Article 88 prohibits “contemptuous words” directed at the president, not criticism, and Article 91 seems to apply only to lower-ranking soldiers and only when on duty — but it’s hard not to be moved by his story about his experience with Iraqis. Meanwhile, via LGF, one of the yKos panelists parries right-wing criticism of the incident with some clever stammering about chickenhawks. Unmentioned in his post: Glenn Greenwald, Atrios, Max Blumenthal, Ken Layne, and the countless millions of other...

"..To many in the anti-Iraq war movement, the liberal opposition to the bill was as maddening as it was mystifying. ?You really have two options here: One is that you can vote for a change of course here and say we?re going to find a way out of Iraq, or, two, you can vote against it and hand George Bush a victory,? said Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and co-founder of the anti-Iraq war VoteVets.org . ?It doesn?t make sense to me. George Bush got us into the war. They have challenged him on everything. Why would they give...

MRC president Brent Bozell appeared on “The Kelly File” with substitute host Martha MacCallum to discuss new e-mails about Benghazi and Fox News coverage of Benghazi. The e-mails are between State Department PR operative Victoria Nuland and friendly Associated Press reporter Matt Lee, discussing the alleged “BS” on Fox during “The O’Reilly Factor” on September 13, 2012, two days after the consulate attacks. Bozell thought the Obama publicist and the AP reporter sounded way too much like each other. (Video, transcript below)

In a book just released, The Story: A Reporter's Journey, Judith Miller, a key witness in the Libby prosecution, states that Patrick Fitzgerald had offered repeatedly to drop all charges against Lewis Libby if he would "deliver" Vice President Cheney to him. In addition, she charges that Fitzgerald manipulated her into incorrectly testifying about a critical conversation she had with Libby and withheld exculpatory evidence from both her and the defense in order to induce her mistaken testimony – testimony the prosecution knew was made because she was acting under a false belief....[must read snip]....Rizzo, of course, is focused only...

In what appears to be yet another desperate House Democrat attempt to stay relevant while in the minority, Rep. Lynn Woolsey accused General David Petraeus of using a “Charlie Sheen counter-insurgency strategy” in Afghanistan. Speaking at the Congressional Progressive Caucus Peace and Security Task Force, Woolsey made the comments while hearing testimony from Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings and other military experts: Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) on Wednesday sharply criticized David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and signaled agreement with an assessment from a Rolling Stone editor who likened the commander’s performance to that of...

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against retired Gen. David H. Petraeus for providing classified information to his former mistress while he was director of the C.I.A., officials said, leaving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to decide whether to seek an indictment that could send the pre-eminent military officer of his generation to prison. The Justice Department investigation stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, and focuses on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and other...

Well, this sounds a bit like a strategy, does it not? John Kerry’s essay in the New York Times this weekend (in one of the more sleepy news cycles of the year) raises echoes from both Bush administrations in dealing with a clear threat to global security, and in fact explicitly cites the first Bush coalition to repel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. That has its own irony, but we’ll get back to that in a moment. Kerry prefaces this call for a global coalition on the imminent and clear threat from ISIS, which Kerry argues exceeds that of any...

Washington continues to talk, but only talk, about the danger of Bashar al-Assad's increasingly desperate regime in Syria distributing its arsenal of high-tech or even nuclear weapons to terrorists throughout the Mideast. Meanwhile, the Israelis continue to act. Five years ago, they took out a nuclear reactor the Syrians were building without seeing any need to noise it about, realizing that action speaks louder than words -- and that much of the world, especially the Bush administration back then, would discreetly approve. This time the Israelis aren't saying anything official about what seems to have happened to a convoy of...

I ended the war in Iraq” is now a standard claim by President Obama. He makes the assertion in every debate and public appearance. The claim is wrong. It’s phony, and it’s made by a politician who tried relentlessly to block America’s most successful strategic operation of the war: the “surge.” On Feb. 5, 2007, and a few weeks later on Feb. 17, Sen. Obama voted against the surge. Among military analysts and historians, the surge of 20,000 additional troops into Iraq during the spring of 2007 is credited with reducing attacks on American troops and sectarian violence by 70...

... In November of 2011, the Washington Post reported that the Iranian government had mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon after receiving assistance from foreign scientists. The Post went on to say: An intelligence update will be circulated among International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] members... It is expected to focus on Iran's alleged efforts towards putting radioactive material in a warhead and developing missiles... Julian Borger of the Guardian-UK reported in November of 2009: The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design......

Tea Party Nation A message to all members of Tea Party Nation Setting The Record Straightby Sherry Phillips  Judson and I have stayed silent in the face of intense media scrutiny and attacks by former members.  As a wife and a mother, I have stood by my husband and family and stayed strong in the face of many baseless accusations and criticism.  We have refrained from responding to many of the attacks that have been thrown at us from other "Tea Party" groups, in the belief we did not want to spread the divisions that are already hurting this movement...

Even before she became the swing vote that forced consideration of Obamacare onto the Senate floor, two-term Arkansas senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln had a dubious distinction: "For 2010, she may be the most endangered Democratic senator in the country," says Public Policy Polling head Dean Debnam. Political handicappers began to note her vulnerability last summer when, in the face of the tea-party movement, Lincoln refused to hold town hall meetings with her constituents. In a conference call with Arkansas reporters, she called tea-party confrontations with politicians "un-American," and ever since, even though she relented and held a few town halls...

In early January 2007, 71 percent of Americans said the Iraq war was going moderately badly to very badly. Indeed, the war had been unpopular for much of the previous years, at times deeply so. But by this past September, a nationwide Pew survey found “a striking rise in public optimism about the situation in Iraq.” According to the poll, 58 percent of Americans now believe the war in Iraq is going well or very well, and the same percentage now also say that the U.S. will definitely or probably succeed in Iraq. This news is encouraging—and not terribly surprising....

So he didn't take my advice. Despite recommendations to the contrary in this column last week, President Bush announced Wednesday night that he's "committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq." That's the headline. But there's a lot more to the story. It's rife with risk -- and great opportunity. First, the good news: The most important statement of the speech was an accurate description of the present situation. Said Bush: "The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time." The president went on...

WSJ Book Review - "The War Within," by Bob Woodward -- During a videoconference with Baghdad, the president said, "George, we're not playing for a tie. I want to make sure we all understand this." Gen. Casey, Mr. Woodward writes, took this as "an affront to his dignity that he would long remember." ... Gen. Casey, after all, was the commander who all along maintained that the solution in Iraq was for America to draw down its forces -- even after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. He was the commander who later that year was given his...