Free Republic

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysian-led activists will hold a symbolic trial this month for former President George W. Bush and British ex-leader Tony Blair on charges of committing crimes against peace in the Iraq war, the event’s organizers said Tuesday.

Former British Prime MInister Tony Blair has made an impassioned defence of his close ties with the Gaddafi regime and confirmed that he had tried to persuade the Libyan leader to give up power after the start of the revolt against his regime. Mr Blair said he had no regrets about setting aside decades of hostility between Britain and Libya and holding out an olive branch in 2004. In return, Col Gaddafi agreed to give up his programme of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). "No," he said in an interview with the Reuters news agency to mark the tenth anniversary...

Tony Blair calls for regime change in Iran and Syria as he blames Tehran for prolonging the conflict in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. In an interview to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the former prime minister warns that the Middle East would be "very, very badly" destabilised if Iran acquired nuclear weapons.

LONDON (AP) — Middle East envoy Tony Blair says Barack Obama launched his peace initiative because he's concerned about what might happen to Israel if Palestinians unilaterally declare statehood. Blair told an audience of business leaders gathered in central London on Thursday that Obama is "frankly worried about the position that Israel is in." The ex-prime minister says that Obama's initiative — rejected by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu — is "an attempt to fill a vacuum which he sees as dangerous, particularly dangerous for Israel in the run-up to September." Mideast watchers have speculated that Washington launched its peace initiative...

The day that LSE sold its soul to Libya: BP chief makes oil deal with Gaddafi... and drags prestigious university into disrepute By Michael Seamark Last updated at 1:33 AM on 5th March 2011 . •BP boss who signed £545m oil pact was lobbying for university too In a desert tent outside Colonel Gaddafi's home town of Sirte four years ago, Tony Blair shook hands with the Libyan dictator in a controversial 'blood money' deal which laid the foundations for the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Also inside the tent was Peter Sutherland, then chairman of BP, who subsequently announced...

Tony Blair used his final foreign trip as prime minister to sign a confidential deal with Muammar Gaddafi to train Libyan special forces and supply him with Nato secrets. A copy of the accord obtained by The Daily Telegraph shows that the two leaders agreed to co-operate on defence matters in a range of areas, including exchanging information about defence structures and technology. It was signed during the former Labour prime minister’s “Blair-well” tour of Africa in May 2007, in Gaddafi’s tent in the Libyan desert. Included in the document was an agreement on “co-operation in the training of specialised...

Former British PM Tony Blair testified in front of another Iraq inquiry today and for the second time this year he testified about the very real danger of Iran and al-Qaeda working together. Of course the storyline by the British papers, the biased MSM, and the lefty blogosphere, is regarding the regret offered by Blair over the loss of life: At the end of his evidence this afternoon he said it had never been his meaning. "Of course I regret deeply and profoundly the loss of life," I'm sure everyone else would cheer the loss of life huh? I...

LONDON — Former British premier Tony Blair criticised US President Barack Obama on Friday for being too soft on Iran, urging the West to deal with a "looming and coming challenge" from the Islamic republic.

As Tony Blair's press secretary, Alastair Campbell was at the heart of events in the early years of Blair's premiership, when conflicts with Iraq and Serbia dominated foreign affairs Alastair Campbell looks on as Tony Blair makes a point in 1998, the first full year of his decade as prime minister. The diary extracts cover events from 1997-1999. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton Hibbert/Rex Features The first tentative steps towards the most controversial event of Tony Blair's premiership – the 2003 invasion of Iraq – were taken during the period covered in these diaries. In late 1998 Blair sanctioned his first bombing...

Peter and Hazelmary Bull with supporters. January 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - It is illegal in Britain for guesthouse keepers to refuse to allow two homosexual men to share a bed in their homes, according to a ruling by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in a test case sponsored by the country’s leading homosexualist lobby group. Peter and Hazelmary Bull, devout Christians who own a guesthouse in a popular holiday resort in Cornwall, were ordered by the EHRC to pay a fine of £1,800 each to Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, two men who had booked a room in...

In the new issue of Rolling Stone - on stands and online in the digital archives now (subscription required) — Robert Plant explains to writer Stephen Rodrick why he was unwilling to keep performing with Led Zeppelin after their 2007 reunion concert.

Five months ago, Tony Blair travelled to Kosovo at the invitation of the country’s prime minister, his friend Hashim Thaci, to receive the Golden Medal of Freedom. Mr Thaci has often lavished praise on Mr Blair for playing the leading role in ­‘liberating’ Kosovo from Serbian rule in 1999. Our former prime minister has some very bizarre friends. A new report from the respected Council of Europe accuses Mr Thaci of overseeing a ‘mafia-like’ organised crime ring in the late Nineties, which engaged in ­assassinations, beatings, human organ ­trafficking and other serious crimes. The report, which took two years to...

The former prime minister said it was true that "people commit horrific acts of evil in the name of religion". But Mr Blair, who converted to Catholicism after leaving government in 2007, said it was also true that religion inspires acts of extraordinary good. Sceptic Mr Hitchens, who has terminal cancer, likened God to a "celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea". He appeared to win over the audience, which voted two-to-one in his favour following the debate, which argued the motion "be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world".

London // The sister-in-law of Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who is now the UN special envoy in the Middle East, has converted to Islam. Lauren Booth, the half-sister of Mr Blair's wife Cherie, said she had converted from Christianity after a "holy experience" six weeks ago following a visit to the shrine of Fatima al Masumeh in Qom, Iran. Ms Booth, 43, a journalist who works for Press TV, the Iranian English-language broadcaster, announced her conversion at the Global Peace and Unity Event in London on Saturday. To cheers, she told the meeting: "What I wanted to...

It was only a matter of time. Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth has converted to Islam after a dose of “spiritual morphine” in Iran, although she talks about the world’s fastest-growing religion like it was the latest version of the Atkins Diet: “Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60. I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,” she said. And she’s even refused to rule out wearing a burka: “Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?” Politically Booth has always struck me...

Tony Blair's sister-in-law has converted to Islam after having what she describes as a "holy experience" during a visit to Iran. Journalist and broadcaster Lauren Booth, 43 – Cherie Blair's sister – now wears a hijab whenever she leaves her home, prays five times a day and visits her local mosque whenever she can. She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom.

BREAKING: JAYSON BLAIR NOW WORKING AT POLITICO!September 28, 2010 Excerpts from a Politico reporter who seems not to have been at the event he was allegedly reporting on, probably because he's homophobic: “The broad surge in the conservative grassroots made it as far as PayPal founder Peter Thiel’s grand apartment overlooking New York’s Union Square Tuesday night, where about 150 backers of the conservative gay group GOProud gathered to laugh at Ann Coulter’s red meat riffs on Democrats, blacks, and the Obamas at a fundraiser organizers touted as ‘Homocon.’” The event was Saturday night -- not "Tuesday" -- there...

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (R) chats with former U.S. President Bill Clinton after receiving the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 13, 2010. The Liberty Medal is awarded annually to honor men and women of courage and conviction who strive to secure the blessings of liberty to people around the globe.

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world today. He made the remark in a BBC interview marking the publication of his memoirs. Mr Blair said radical Islamists believed that whatever was done in the name of their cause was justified - including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

"taking from fiction movie! "

Dick Cheney wanted to invade several Middle East nations, not just Iraq, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals in his new book. Blair writes that the former Vice President had a goal to remake the power structure of several countries in that part of the world. Cheney "would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it -- Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.," Blair wrote in his memoir, "A Journey." The former PM told Christiane Amanpour on ABC's "This Week" that Cheney, 69, believed "the world had to be remade after...

A candid former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stands by his and the Bush administration’s decision to pursue the Iraq war, even as he expresses regret for the lives lost in the conflict. “You can’t not have regrets about the lives lost,” Blair said. “I mean, you would be inhuman if you didn’t regret the death of so many extraordinary, brave and committed soldiers, of civilians that have died in Iraq, or die still now in Afghanistan. And, of course, you feel an enormous responsibility for that, not just regret.”

Defining 'New Labour,' defending the Iraq war, getting to know George W. Bush. It is now painfully obvious that Tony Blair—the man who led Britain for a decade, who transformed the country's dully orthodox Labour Party into dashing, moderate "New Labour," who faced down parliamentary opponents with brio and eloquently defended the invasion of Iraq—is no longer much of a hero in his own country. Indeed, he is intensely disliked, not least for his loyalty to the "freedom agenda"—the idea that, after 9/11, Western democracies had a duty to face down tyrants like Saddam Hussein and end the threat they...

To delegitimize Israel is an affront not only to Israelis, but to those "everywhere, in every part of humanity, who share the values of a free and independent human spirit," Quartet envoy Tony Blair said on Tuesday, in an exceptionally warm speech at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. ... Blair, who will be taking part in the launch of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Washington next week, said the last 60 years had been "remarkable for you, but what you have created is a remarkable example for the rest of us." "The issue of delegitimization is...

An aide to Tony Blair told the News of the World that the book launches a full defence of the much-derided US president, saying he was the only man with the courage to take on Al-Qaeda. "It is the biggest and most unapologetic defence of Bush and his ideas ever written," the paper quoted the aide as saying. "It is basically an extended love letter. Tony says he was wowed by Bush's strength, courage and conviction and saw him as a highly intelligent and visionary friend. "He says the Americans were the only ones with an effective vision on how...

May 29, 2008 By Andrew Walden (Hawai'i Free Press) Nadhmi Auchi, seen here with the Governor of Illinois, Rob Blagojevich (middle) at a 2004 Chicago dinner in Auchi's honor arranged by Antonin Rezko (potentially, right)[1]. All three men have been convicted of corruption related charges (Auchi 2003, Rezko 2008, Blagojevich 2009).[2] “A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser (dual US-Syrian citizen Tony Rezko) just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses. The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi,...

Tony Blair is set to earn millions of pounds advising an American businessman on how to make money from tackling climate change. The former prime minister will be paid at least £700,000 a year to act as a “strategic adviser” to Khosla Ventures, a venture capitalist firm founded by Indian billionaire Vinod Khosla. The Californian company bankrolls businesses hoping to profit from technology that helps reduce global warming and carbon emissions. Mr Blair secured the job thanks to his “influence” and high level international contacts, whom he will be expected to lean on to open doors. He has told friends...

Dennis Blair is a bright, talented patriot. He will find other work. But Admiral Blair's departure -- fair or not --as director of National Intelligence, isn't going to fix the problem. There is a long tradition in the Navy that when a ship runs aground, the captain of the vessel is relived of command. It doesn't matter if it was someone else's fault, if the ship was driven ashore by foul weather or even if it was because the design was faulty -- the captain is fired. That's what happened to Admiral Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)...

Dennis Blair stepped down as America's director of national intelligence last Thursday after his call for undercover operations to be halted was ignored. The proposed pact was overruled by Mr Obama who had concerns that France could elect a future president who undermined America foreign policy. When Mr Blair resigned last week, his departure was attributed to the failure of the 16 government agencies he ran to prevent the failed Christmas Day terrorist plane bombing in Detroit. A Nigerian man managed to board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with explosives hidden in his underwear despite warnings that he posed...

WASHINGTON — An already strained relationship between the White House and the departing spymaster Dennis C. Blair erupted earlier this year over Mr. Blair’s efforts to cement close intelligence ties to France and broker a pledge between the nations not to spy on each other, American government officials said Friday. The White House scuttled the plan, officials said, but not before President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had come to believe that a deal was in place. Officials said that Mr. Sarkozy was angered about the miscommunication, and that the episode had hurt ties between the United States and France at...

Research tells me the nation is not going to be safer with James R. Clapper Jr. as DNI, because his track record is one of a bureaucrat, not a problem solver.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence—nor of the institution of DNI, for that matter. A fine naval officer, Blair seemed out of his milieu as DNI, often unaware of basic facts that someone in his position should know. Part the problem is inherent in the DNI concept—the conceit that some all-seeing super-bureaucrat could, simply by virtue of high rank, a big staff and an even bigger budget, fix all the problems with America’s intelligence community. But some of the problems resided with Blair himself. The Obama administration has come to...

US spy chief quits after intelligence failuresPosted: 21 May 2010 1657 hrs WASHINGTON: After a string of intelligence failures, US spy czar Dennis Blair announced his resignation, ending a 16-month tenure marred by rumblings of infighting in the US clandestine services. Blair, who announced on Thursday that he was quitting as director of national intelligence, will be the most high-profile figure yet to leave President Barack Obama's national security team. He faced heavy criticism after the attempt by an Al-Qaeda linked group to bring down a US airliner on December 25 and some of the 16 US intelligence agencies he...

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, says the resignation of Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair “is the result of the Obama administration’s rampant politicization of national security and outright disregard for congressional intelligence oversight.” ABC News reported today that President Barack Obama would be accepting Blair’s resignation tomorrow, and the Associated Press reported that the administration has already interviewed several candidates to replace him. Hoekstra, who formerly served as chairman of the intelligence committee, issued a written statement saying that Blair’s readiness to step down, considering his record of service...

BREAKING: President Obama will replace his Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, POLITICO has confirmed. "We expect Admiral Blair to offer his resignation tomorrow," an official said. "We have been interviewing several strong candidates to be his replacement. "

ABC News has learned that President Obama will replace the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair (ret.) His resignation will come as soon as tomorrow, sources tell ABC News. For several weeks President Obama has been holding serious conversations about whether to ask Blair to step down and has interviewed candidates to replace him. After a discussion this afternoon between the president and Blair on a secure phone line about the best way forward, Blair offered to resign and the president said he would accept, sources told ABC News. Multiple administration sources tell ABC News that Blair’s tenure internally...

SNIPPET: "And thus ends the saga of "Shiekh Umar Rabie, Emir of al Qaeda in the UK". I haven't commented publicly on this for some time because I was involved in the case. I testified at Ishaq Kanmi's terrorism trial last year and was asked not to comment publicly, but now that he's plead guilty that commitment has passed. I don't think I'm giving away too much when I say that long before UK authorities had "The Blackburn Resistance " under surveillance, they were on our radar screens. Why? Because a year before the "Emir of al Qaeda in the...

Obama, Brown, and the ‘Third Way’The Left loses its way by abandoning the “third way.”  Left parties are in trouble in the Anglosphere. Here in America, Democrats are doing worse in the polls today than at any time in the last 50 years. In Britain, the Labour party is on the brink of finishing third, behind both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, in the election next Thursday. All of which raises the question: What happened to the “third way� center-left movement that once seemed to sweep all before it? Only a dozen years ago, in 1998, President Clinton enjoyed...

(IsraelNN.com) The London Daily Telegraph and the London Daily Mail have published findings on former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Middle East financial interests as disclosed by the official UK government committee which vets former ministers’ business interests. The Daily Mail described Blair as waging an “extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq”, referring to the just revealed fact that Mr. Blair serves as advisor to a South Korean firm, UI Energy, since August 2008, and has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Blair had convinced the...

Blair's fight to keep his oil cash secret: Former PM's deals are revealed as his earnings since 2007 reach £20million Tony Blair waged an extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq. The former Prime Minister tried to keep the public in the dark over his dealings with South Korean oil firm UI Energy Corporation. Mr Blair - who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007 - also went to great efforts to keep hidden a £1million deal advising the ruling royal family...

"Air Force strikes in Gaza" SNIPPET: "IDF retaliates for deadly Qassam attack: Air Force hits several Gaza targets, including metal foundry, smuggling tunnel; Vice PM Shalom says Israel to offer strong response to rocket attack that killed Thai worker Thursday" SNIPPET: "IDF aircraft struck at least four targets in the Gaza Strip on Friday, a day after a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave killed a Thai worker in Israel, Hamas security officials and witnesses said." SNIPPET: "Israel also sent a letter of complaint to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is due to visit Israel at the weekend,...

Tony Blair is preparing to launch a "faith offensive" across the United States over the next year, after building up relationships with a network of influential religious leaders and faith organisations. With Afghanistan and Iraq casting a shadow over his popularity at home in Britain, Blair's focus has increasingly shifted across the Atlantic, to where the nexus of faith and power is immutable and he is feted like a rock star. According to the annual accounts of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a UK-based charity that promotes cohesion between the major faiths, the foundation is to develop a US arm...

LONDON -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told an official inquiry into the 2003 invasion of Iraq on Friday that going to war had been the right decision and that he had provided the necessary funding for military action. Mr. Brown, appearing just weeks before an election to discuss a war that still rankles with many Britons, said Iraq's failure to comply with United Nations resolutions justified war. But he distanced himself from concerns about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Mr. Brown...

Although it hardly made the American news, the Rt. Hon. Anthony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007, was called to the hot seat in London in February, testifying before Britain’s Chilcot “Iraq Inquiry” in what was ubiquitously referred to as his “Day of Judgment.” It seemed the political and media classes in Great Britain expected him to beat his breast in biblical lamentation for his vile sin of deposing Saddam Hussein’s monstrous regime in 2003. Perhaps the media and political classes at least hoped to see him sweat, or even see him beg for forgiveness,...

Senator Jim Risch (R-ID) provided a tutorial on why Miranda warnings did not ever need to be provided to Flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab. It took place on February 3, 2010, during testimony by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and FBI Director Robert Mueller before the Senate Intelligence Committee (2 minute 54 second video here.) Attorney General Eric Holder decided on Christmas Day to direct that Abdulmuttalab be read his rights. By doing so, he prevented the immediate gathering of further intelligence because Abdulmuttalab elected to remain silent and speak to a lawyer before answering further. Not reading...

A bad sign of the times when a war is nothing more then a police action. That was the question put to President Obama’s director of national intelligence at a Senate hearing today. Dennis Blair simply refused to answer a simple question. They can’t answer the question, probably because the White House staff will need to “measure the political winds” if the subject ever comes up.

It’s official. Tony Blair (pictured above as Hitler in the British paper The Daily Mail), former Prime Minister of the once-great nation of the United Kingdom, has been branded a liar and a murderer by current Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Chilcot Inquiry, and by a British national press that has lost its collective senses. The leftist British government’s fear of Muslim mass violence as retaliation for resisting England’s ongoing Islamization is now greater than the fear of incremental surrender to the Forces of Islam, and what that surrender will eventually bring to the English people – Sharia. Blair testified eloquently...

Information given to the police can be flawed, even from eye-witnesses. One night I went on a call to a domestic disturbance. My dispatcher asked the caller if there were any firearms in the home. The hysterical woman said there were none. At the door, an intoxicated male allowed me to come in, turned from me and quickly ran up the entry stairway. Halfway up the stairs, with no place of cover, I found myself staring down the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun. As I drew my weapon to fire, he yelled at me to stop, lowered his weapon, broke...

A twisted drama is playing out in England. The Chilcot Inquiry into the legality or illegality of Britain’s entry into the Iraq War grows uglier by the day. The words “War Criminal” and “War Crimes” are being waved about by Members of Parliament, anti-war activists and British journalists, all directed at former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair is scheduled to take the witness stand on Friday. The International Criminal Court (ICC) always waits just across the English Channel in The Netherlands. Members of the Obama administration must certainly be following this Inquiry very closely, especially Attorney General Eric Holder’s Office....