Free Republic

Posted on 07/22/2004 6:11:56 PM PDT by NotchJohnson "I cannot recall when Hollywood last released a big-budget mainstream feature film as partisan as this one at the height of a presidential campaign." So believes NY TIMES's Frank Rich about the upcoming PARAMOUNT thriller MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. "Freed from any obligations to fact, MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE can play far dirtier than FAHRENHEIT 911," writes Rich in a column set for release this Sunday, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE. "This movie could pass for the de facto fifth day of the [Democrat] convention itself." MORE "The American people are terrified," says Streep's villainous senator early...

Bill Clinton says that no government could have failed to act against Iraq after the 11 September 2001 attacks in view of intelligence provided. The former US president told the BBC that UK intelligence on the activity of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was more "aggressive" than Washington's. He added that the world was right to demand weapons inspections in 2002. But he said war could have been avoided if the UN had passed a resolution threatening military action. Such a resolution would have given the inspectors more time to finish their job, he said. However, the former president added,...

Although I am aware that my words of comfort will not lessen your grief and our rage and anger will not make your pain and burden any lighter, I want you to know that Saudis, near and far, mourn with you the loss of your husband Mr. Paul Johnson. When I saw you on TV last week, and heard your faint voice, I felt you were a relative of mine. Surely the bond of humanity that unites us created this feeling in my heart. Like all Saudis, I was deeply touched that, even at a very difficult time in your...

This is from an email I rec'd from an Ex-aramcon. It purports to be two emails exchanged between ARAMCO manageers. I am going to talk tough, so here is my opinion...... There are contract "hired guns" available. Ex-SAS, US Special Forces and ex-CIA operatives have set up private security firms. We should consider hiring these chaps. We want a team who can take action within minutes and take out permanently any unauthorized armed intrusion. The exodus of ex-pats has begun. Many of those leaving are close to retirement or have young families. So we lose our experience and our most...

Old high school friend has an 18 year old son with leukemia. His outlook is really good- the chemo is working, and they haven't found any cancer cells for several months. He's probably NOT going to need a bone marrow transplant The thing is, the curent treatment involves repeated, growing doses of chemo- kind of a "scorched earth" approach to making sure no cancer is left. He's a jock, he's a scrapper, but it's tough- they basically ramp up the doses until the chemo's about to kill you. I'd like to be able to tell him that his situation has...

Mr. Abd spoke with no particular anger at the American occupation, though he has seen it closer than most Iraqis. In six months in prisons run by American soldiers, in fact, he said most of them had treated him well and with respect. "Most of the time, they wouldn't even say, `Shut up,' " he said. That changed in November...when punishment for a prisoner fight at Abu Ghraib degenerated into torture. That night, he said, he and six other inmates were beaten... ...an American military investigator came to visit him. He showed Mr. Abd the pictures and said he needed...

Does anybody have a "canonical" list of statements by Gore, Clinton, Kerry, German Intel, French intel, Chirac etc.? If not, then please post whatever statements/quotes that can be cited- we don't need "well my cousin's hairdresser heard X say blah blah blah" What I'm looking for is stuff like "On june 15 2000 in the NYT Pres. Clinton was quoted as saying 'Sodom has wmd'" A compilation of this stuff would make a neat little "fact bomb" for shutting up 'Rats...

<p>Just found out a friend of mine I've known for thirty years, and was the closest thing to a brother I'll ever have, was one of the 20k people killed in the recent earthquake.</p> <p>He and I grew up in Saudi as oil brats- he was a wonderful, wonderful guy. He and his girlfriend were in Iran on a tourism junket. he always had to go and live on the local economy- i.e. he didn't want to stay at the hilton, he wanted to stay at the sort of places a local truck driver might stay at. That was where he was when the quake hit, and he was buried in the rubble. He and his girlfriend were extricated, but from what I gather he died in the car on the way to a hospital. She's hurt, but will survive.</p>

A reader sends in a lovely little extract from the 1790 edition of the Falconer Dictionary of the Marine, a British reference work. Here's the definition of "retreat": "RETREAT, the order or disposition in which a fleet of French men of war decline engagement, or fly from a pursuing enemy. The reader, who wishes to be expert in this manoeuvre, will find it copiously described by several ingenious French writers, particularly L'Hôte, Saverien, Morogues, Bourdé, and Ozane; who have given accurate instructions, deduced from experience, for putting it in practice when occasion requires. As it is not properly a term...

US troops are suffering three to six dead and 40 wounded a week, the top US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, told reporters Thursday Any death is a tragedy for the troop involved, and his/her loved ones. Below, please find a link listing the number of deaths among military personnell from 1980-2002, from all causes. I am not in any way trying to minimize the suffering or sadness involved in losing even a single troop. But I do think the numbers in the chart give a useful perspective on what is happening. http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/casualty/Death_Rates.pdf

Lessons From the Killing of Uday and Qusay Amr Mohammed Al-Faisal Last week, US forces surrounded and killed the sons of president Saddam Hussein. I have never been a supporter of Saddam Hussein or his regime. Nor do I wish them well today. However, the way that Uday and Qusay were killed needs to be examined carefully so as to derive useful lessons. Let me briefly recap the events that led to their death. US forces, based on a tip-off from a friend of the Hussein family (in return for a $30 million reward), surrounded a house in Mosul in...

By Israel Shamir 05/25/03: War is crime, but this is the manly crime defying effeminate mores and rigid society. The most convinced pacifist can be carried away by the sight of charging cavalry, attacking troops, roaring tanks and fighter jets taking off a desert strip. Not in vain, women admired warriors, poets sung their mighty deeds, and priests anointed their heads. We can fetch a Roman adage or a Koranic verse, a line from Shakespeare or Nietzsche to praise a leader of men and disregard the costs of war. We can forgive a bloodshed, it's sordid affairs that can't ever...

Following was received from a friend residing in Dhahran. -----Original Message----- For those of you who have been here, this makes perfect sense. Things are quiet here - just the way we like them. Certain areas of town are under heavy security, so we don't go out much. There's something discouraging about having a 50 cal machine gun pointed at you. Got a great story which actually happened to friends of ours: They were going to a local compound and had to go thru 3 checkpoints to get there. At each checkpoint they were stopped, trunk inspected, license checked., etc....

Has anybody seen the "NVG Instructor Preparation" video? It shows impact after impact of guided, unguided, cluster bomb, and FAE weapons set to the song "BOOM" by POD. It apparently was put together by a SSGT in the Air Force, and it ROCKS! I got it in an email from a friend who got it in an email, and I'm trying to find it online so I can post a link here. Not really my kind of music, (heavily rap influenced rock) but it really is a hoot to see the weapons screaming in, or, in the case of the...

Analyzing the decline and fall of the Roman Empire from the security of a politically liberal and rapidly developing-if hardly very democratic-London in 1776, Edward Gibbon concluded that modern Europe possessed a prophylactic that Rome had lacked. Rome, as every schoolgirl once knew, fell to a combination of barbarians without and a loss of belief within. Thus, the glory that was Rome "insensibly declined with their laws and manners." By contrast, Gibbon considered that the threat posed by barbarism to modernizing 18th-century Europe had "contracted to a narrow span." This was for two reasons. First, in the spirit of liberal...

Disapointed in General Vincent Brooks' performance in the CENTCOM Breifing this morning. STRAC, Professional, etc.. But he failed to mention the crucial role played by the heavy mortar units in our successes so far. As everyone but a benighted Red-Leg knows, mortars are the sina-qua-non of army success. General Brooks should know this- he commanded the 4.2" mortar platoon I served with in the 82d. twenty some years ago. Sir, I'm very disapointed....*grin* Death and Destruction, High Angle Hell- Nuns and Orphans in the Open! FOUR DEUCE, ON THE LOOSE!!

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. -- A suicidal sophomore student was arrested Friday after he briefly held about 25 classmates and two teachers hostage at gunpoint, police said. The unidentified boy was tackled by two classmates, who took a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic gun from him, police Sgt. John Allen said. No injuries were reported. Police were called to Arroyo Grande High School at 9:11 a.m. after they received a report of a student with a gun, Allen said. The unidentified 15-year-old pulled out the loaded weapon and pointed it at two teachers in his sophomore English class, ordering them to sit...

Pyongyang is the real victim By GREGORY CLARK Western and Japanese reactions to North Korea's recent nuclear activities and warnings have been strange. Pyongyang makes it clear that its main aim is to get a nonaggression treaty with the United States and to revive the dialogue for normalization of relations that was promised in 1994. In that year Pyongyang agreed to mothball its plans for a plutonium-based nuclear-power facility, in exchange for the dialogue and for U.S. cooperation in providing a light-water reactor-based nuclear-power facility. U.S. foot-dragging on both issues, especially since the arrival of the Bush administration, would normally...

I've been emailing friends with a couple of addresses to send condolences to the Australian. I've seen a couple of freepers mock them for "giving up their guns" frankly, I think that's appalling. These guys have fought beside us in wwII, Korea, and Viet Nam. Regardless of what their government has done, the Aussies themselves deserve some sympathy- particularly given how they have memorialized our dead from 911. here are some newspaper addresses: Sydney Morning Herald letters@smh.com.au The Age letters@theage.com.au The Australian News: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/sectionindex2/0,5746,ausletters1^^TEXT, 00.html# Embassy: public.affairs@austemb.org

Just finished Martin Amis' Koba the Dread- Laughter and the Twenty Million. This book is a stunning account of Soviet terror, and a rebuke to Western soi-disant "progressives" who excused, or refused to acknowledge, the mind-boggling savagery of the Soviet regime. Amis contrasts the horror and hostility we hold for Hitler, facism, and the holocaust, with the equivocation and fear of being labled a "red-baiter" that attends any hostility toward the Soviet Union or Communism. Below, please find the first words of the book: "Here is the second sentence of Robert Conquest's The harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivazation and the...