Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to craft a lasting political settlement or improve their security capabilities in the next year and a half, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a report that raises new uncertainty about the prospect for withdrawing American troops. Months in the making, the collaborative assessment by 16 spy agencies says that growing and entrenched polarization between Shia and Sunni Muslims, inadequate Iraqi security forces, weak leaders, and the success of extremists' efforts to use violence to exacerbate the sectarian war all create a situation that will be difficult to improve. "We think it...

Bush Turns Attention to Daunting 2nd Term 2 hours, 18 minutes ago By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent WASHINGTON - President Bush turned from inaugural pageantry to a daunting second-term agenda Friday while his administration scrambled to explain his newly declared goal of ending tyranny around the world. The president's expansive pledge, the major theme of his inaugural address, raised questions about whether Bush intended to apply new standards to allies or partners that are not ideal democracies, or aren't democracies at all. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and other countries fit that description. Bush "made clear it was not...

The generals who face the most daunting challenge of their lives By Rupert Cornwell in Washington 25 March 2003 Lt-Gen David McKiernan is so low-key that he makes even Tommy Franks, the dry and understated head of US Central Command who is running the 2003 Gulf war, look like an ego-driven celebrity hound. Yet Lt-Gen McKiernan, who sometimes speaks so quietly you strain to hear him, is the man who commands coalition forces on the ground in Iraq. Like General Franks, he is a soldier's soldier, steeped in the entrenched culture of the Pentagon, in style and temperament far removed...