Free Republic

As usual, no one in the media is asking pertinent questions, and they sure aren’t demanding answers. So, please allow me: Louis E. Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, publicly stated that he “approved” of a “mission over New York” and assumed full responsibility for the fallout it caused. If the plan did not originate with Caldera, who created the “mission” and where did it “originate?” According to a memo obtained by NYC CBS Channel 2, “Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off...

An Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly used by the president, flew low over parts of New York and New Jersey on Monday morning, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, so Air Force photographers could take pictures high above the New York harbor. But the exercise — conducted without any notification to the public — caused momentary panic in some quarters and led to the evacuation of several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City. By the afternoon, the situation had turned into a political fuse box, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying that he was...

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Former eBay boss Meg Whitman isn't really a California cowgirl, but she plays one on the cover of Fortune magazine. When Whitman, who wants to be California's next governor, did a photo shoot in Half Moon Bay for the lead story in this week's issue, she used a four-legged prop named Brandy. In a note at CNNMoney.com, Fortune editor at large Patricia Sellers revealed that it was a rent-a-horse that appeared on the cover and in a picture inside. "The horse on the cover, Brandy, isn't Whitman's, but she does ride in Telluride, Colorado, where she and her neurosurgeon husband,...

<p>UNSCOM's pursuit of Iraq's security system led it in some surprising directions. There was the trail, for instance, of the Baghdad ice cream trucks.</p> <p>"The big thing with concealment was movement," Ekeus recalled. "Ritter excelled at his ability to penetrate organizational structures."</p> <p>What he found, initially with Israeli help, was that the SSO used two dedicated fleets of vehicles to move weapons contraband. By day it used red-and-white refrigerator trucks painted with markings of the Tip Top ice cream company. At night, it used unmarked green Mercedes tractor-trailers from the fleet of Segada Transportation Co., named for the wife of Saddam Hussein.</p>