Free Republic

In the summer of 1988, the Islamic Republic took the lives of thousands, nay, tens of thousands of the most conscious, most decent loving human beings in our society who wanted nothing but freedom and happiness for all. Do not think of these prisoners as strangers among the people, no, you all know them: they were our friends, our relatives. They were our sisters, our brothers, our children, our folks, our comrades. Each and every one of them was a family’s loved one; our loved ones. Some believed in communism, some were religious. However, they had one thing in common:...

A new Islamic advocacy group in Boca Raton is under scrutiny for its ties to William W. Baker, a former chairman of the neo-Nazi political party of presidential candidate David Duke who was run out of town last year when he attempted to speak at Florida Atlantic University. Local Jewish and civic leaders said Friday they were alarmed that the Assadiq Islamic Education Foundation, whose headquarters are listed at 831 E. Palmetto Park Road in Boca, had invited Baker back to Boca as featured speaker at an April 30 banquet at the Boca Marriott. Invited by Muslim students to speak...

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

The three ambassadors who died violent deaths were Cleo Noel Jr.,killed in March 1973 when Palestinian terrorists struck an embassy in Sudan; Adolph Dubs, killed in 1973 when Afghan police stormed a hotel room where he was being held by terrorists; and Arnold Raphel, who died in 1988 when a plane crashed. Receiving waivers as longtime diplomats with military service were William Rivkin and Philip Crowe. Rivkin, who died in 1967, served as ambassador to Senegal, Gambia and Luxembourg and spent five years of in the Army during World War II, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Crowe, who...

From crushkerry.com New Kerry TV Ad Mirrors His Mentor Dukakis' 1988 "Tank Ride" Rebuttal We're students of history here at crushkerry.com. That's why our antenna went up when we saw this new Kerry TV spot in which he criticizes the President's portrayal of his position on Iraq and the war on terror as "despicable" and accuses the President of "using the appalling and divisive strategy of playing of politics with the war on terror". In essence he's crying "Mamma, wittle Georgie's not pwaying fair. He's saying I'm a weak, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, Whhaaaa!". This Kerry ad...

Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley, Dallas, TX: Verity Press, 1998, 692 pages, hardback One of the most ingrained stereotypes that plague the 3.3 million Americans who served in Vietnam is the tainted image of the Vietnam vet as scruffy, jobless, homeless, mentally unstable, addicted, suicidal, and stranded on the fringes of society. It is an image that has been reinforced by innumerable TV dramas, movies, and newscasts. It is also usually tied to stories about the horrors of war, atrocities, and other dark deeds that,...

January 25, 1988: In his infamous January 25, 1988 CBS Evening News interview an aggressive Dan Rather grilled VP George Bush about Iran-Contra, repeatedly cutting him off and arguing with him. Rather declared "You've made us hypocrites in the face of the world." [go to the site to watch videos of Dan rather in action] In the interview, Dan Rather kept trying to implicate George Bush, trying to get Bush to say that he was involved in Iran-contra. Over and over again, Rather would ask Bush a question about his knowledge of the imbroglio. When Bush wouldn't concede that he...

The 2004 Presidential election is shaping up like it could be summed up by Yogi Berra's famous quote, 'It's deja vu all over again'. A Republican named George Bush running against a Massachusetts liberal, can you say 1988? I knew you could. As much as Kerry would like to be that moderate, tax cutting, anti-communist John F. Kennedy, he just can’t pull it off. He is a commie-sympathizing social liberal elitist, just like the man he served as lieutenant governor for, Michael Dukakis. Many internet folk have been calling the ridiculous picture of Kerry in the spacesuit his Michael-in-the-tank moment,...

Swift Boats and the Lessons of DukakisBy ROBIN TONERPublished: August 29, 2004 ASHINGTON — This is not the first time Senator John Kerry's advisers have heard the guns of August.Sixteen years ago, several of them were working for Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, who began the month with a substantial lead in the polls, only to see it disappear under a steady onslaught from the campaign of Vice President Bush, an onslaught aided by rumors and third-party attacks. Democrats bitterly complained that these outside attacks - including a baseless charge that Kitty Dukakis had once burned an American flag...

THE PROTOCOL AGREEMENT OF THE VATICAN AND ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE Signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on May 5, 1988 I, Marcel Lefebvre, archbishop-bishop emeritus of Tulle, along with the members of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X, which I founded: 1. We promise always to be faithful to the Catholic Church and to the Roman Pontiff, its supreme pastor, the vicar of Christ, successor of blessed Peter in his primacy and head of the body of bishops. 2. We declare that we will accept the doctrine...

It's beginning to look a lot like August 1988 By Howie Carr Recent Columns by Howie Carr Friday, August 20, 2004 John Kerry's August 2004 is beginning to look like Mike Dukakis' August 1988. Not a good month, in other words. It's probably too much to say that the wheels are coming off Kerry's campaign the way they did off his political mentor's 16 summers ago. He hasn't climbed into a tank yet, but isn't it odd that he reaches out to Mike McCurry almost 16 years to the day that Dukakis brought back a sleazemeister named John Sasso? Sixteen...

It's beginning to look a lot like August 1988 By Howie Carr Recent Columns by Howie Carr Friday, August 20, 2004 John Kerry's August 2004 is beginning to look like Mike Dukakis' August 1988. Not a good month, in other words. It's probably too much to say that the wheels are coming off Kerry's campaign the way they did off his political mentor's 16 summers ago. He hasn't climbed into a tank yet, but isn't it odd that he reaches out to Mike McCurry almost 16 years to the day that Dukakis brought back a sleazemeister named John Sasso? Sixteen...

PHOENIX, Ariz. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) on Tuesday rejected any suggestion that he release records of his 1988 divorce, calling it old history that had nothing to do with anyone else. "I have no intention of doing that at all," Kerry said during a campaign stop in Phoenix, Arizona, when a reporter asked if he would release the papers from his divorce from his first wife Julia Thorn. In a U.S. senate race in Illinois, Republican candidate Jack Ryan quit his campaign last week after the Chicago Tribune and other media sued to...

Madam Chairman, delegates to this convention and fellow citizens, thank you for that warm and generous welcome. Nancy and I have been enjoying the finest of Southern hospitality since we arrived here yesterday - and, believe me, after that reception, I don't think the ''Big Easy'' has ever been bigger than it is tonight. And with all due respect to Cajun cuisine - cooking - and New Orleans jazz, nothing could be hotter than the spirit of the delegates in this hall - except maybe a victory celebration on November 8th. In that spirit, in that spirit, I think we...

After steadfastly leading the Senate opposition to President Reagan's Star Wars (SDI) programs for the previous 4 years, John Kerry suddenly flip-flopped in 1988 as the fall of the Soviet Union became plausible: **************************************************************************************************** WASHINGTON -- After five years and $13 billion, President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, widely known as "star wars," finds itself besieged as never before. Reagan established the SDI program in March 1983, with a televised address that called upon the nation's scientists to devise new technologies that could render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." And even though most Democrats and a few Republicans criticize SDI --...

When Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry won the chairmanship of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee 17 months ago, lobbyists smirked and many Democrats were horrified. As Joseph P. O'Neill, president of the American Retail Federation, puts it: Kerry "had some serious problems with the business community." A founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and an outspoken critic of Reagan Administration policy in Central America, Kerry was a darling of liberals -- and anathema to the fat cats whose money could make the difference in close races. To add insult to injury, Kerry refuses to take money directly from political...

Is It 1988 Again? By James Pinkerton Published 05/18/2004 The Democrats will nominate a dark-haired fellow from Massachusetts as their presidential candidate, and the Republicans have picked as their standard-bearer a Texan named Bush. How many times do we have to watch this picture? Will the story in 2004 turn out differently than it did in 1988? And will an angry consumer-advocate-turned-presidential-spoiler strike one more blow against the establishment? I have a certain perspective on this question. I was the director of research for George H.W. Bush's presidential campaign back then -- yup, I'm the one who oversaw the effort...

Last update: May 15, 2004 at 7:04 PM Echoes of Dukakis' demise in Kerry's bid May 16, 2004SBERG0516 My mind drifts easily these days to the steamy summer of 1988 when, in the midst of my 15 years as a political reporter, I witnessed up close the perfect crime: the skillful, premeditated and gradual dismemberment of the Democratic presidential nominee. The chief executioner was Lee Atwater, the brilliant young Republican tactician. One morning over breakfast he told a bunch of us that Michael Dukakis' double-digit lead in the polls didn't mean squat. Then he coolly described what he would do...