Free Republic

...The latest Trump-Bush bout began in the most recent debate. In the CNN Republican presidential debate, Trump blamed George W. Bush’s unsuccessful presidency for giving us President Obama, prompting an immediate response from Jeb Bush. TRUMP: “Your brother – and your brother’s administration gave us Barack Obama, because it was such a disaster, those last three months, that Abraham Lincoln couldn’t have been elected.” BUSH: “You know what? As it relates to my brother, there’s one thing I know for sure. He kept us safe. I don’t know if you remember…” This exchange sparked a war of words between the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in an interview published on Saturday the size of a residual U.S. force left in Iraq after the withdrawal of combat troops would be "entirely conditions-based."

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Arabs keen to see the end of George W. Bush's presidency fear that a win for likely Republican candidate John McCain will bring little change to U.S. policies they blame for destabilizing the Middle East. For Arab politicians who have gained from U.S. policy in countries including Iraq and Lebanon, continuity may be a good thing. But Bush's many critics in the Arab world worry that McCain will continue current U.S. policies, which they fault for unleashing chaos in Iraq and providing unflinching support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. McCain wants to keep troops...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's war policies have failed in almost every regard, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group concluded Wednesday, and it warned of dwindling chances to change course before crisis turns to chaos. Nearly four years, $400 billion and more than 2,900 U.S. deaths into a deeply unpopular war, violence is bad and getting worse, there is no guarantee of success and the consequences of failure are great, the panel of five Republicans and five Democrats said in a bleak accounting of U.S. and Iraqi shortcomings. The implications, they warned, are dire for terrorism, war in the Middle East and...

Los Angeles -- Leaders of immigrant advocacy groups Wednesday denounced President Bush's brief mention of a guest worker program during his State of the Union address, saying it would separate families and is unrealistic. Two former workers of the Bracero Program — the U.S. guest worker system with Mexico from 1942 to 1964 — also said no new program should be started until all former guest workers collect unpaid retirement funds. Bush devoted less than 100 words to immigration out of a 50-minute speech Tuesday night, but it was enough to rankle immigrant advocates. About a dozen advocates gathered to...

RFE/RL: How are those indicted for war crimes by the Hague-based tribunal regarded in Serbia and Croatia? Our guests are: Natasa Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, and Zoran Pusic, president of the Civic Committee for Human Rights in Zagreb. The Serbian government recently saw off former General Vladimir Lazarevic, indicted for crimes committed in Kosovo, with what seemed like full honors as he left for The Hague. He was escorted by two ministers, and before leaving he had an audience with Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle together with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. Ms. Kandic, how do...

"Virtually no one in Washington expected such a snowballing of events following Iraq's elections," recently explained the deputy editorial editor of the Washington Post, Jackson Diehl. Said another way, virtually no one in Establishment D.C. expected things would snowball the way Bush had predicted. Still, reports Diehl, the evidence is obvious: "Less than two years after Saddam Hussein was deposed, the fact is that Arabs are marching for freedom and shouting slogans against tyrants in the streets of Beirut and Cairo--and regimes that have endured for decades are visibly tottering. Those who claimed that U.S. intervention could never produce such...

Nancy Soderberg, a Clinton aide and senior foreign policy advisor to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, recently appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and exposed, in the clearest of terms, what Democrats are thinking. Soderberg, who was promoting her book, "The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might", was describing the premise of her book by saying, "What I argue is that the Bush administration fell hostage to the superpower myth, believing that because we're the most powerful nation on earth, we were all-powerful, could bend the world to our will and not have...

Will the al Qaeda Attack on Russia Affect America? Lee Ellis Have you wondered why all the terrorist acts are taking place in various countries rather than here in the USA? Many people, and that includes me, think that it is due to the strength of President Bush and all he has accomplished through the Patriot Act, Homeland Security and other means to protect America and its men, women and children. Al Qaeda has always gone after the weakest links. Under Clinton, we had proved to be weak and had not fought back when our ships, embassies and other projects...

The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and his conservative rival, Edmund Stoiber, locked in a dead heat before the voting on Sept. 22, clashed sharply tonight over questions of unemployment and Iraq in their second and final televised debate. The two candidates, both wearing bright red striped neckties, dropped their tentativeness of two weeks ago to exchange barbs, interrupt one another and quarrel aggressively about their records, plans and even their upbringings. Iraq and its impact on German-American relations were the new elements in this debate for an electorate already well informed about Mr. Schröder's failure to keep his pledge to...