Free Republic

There are lots of hypocrisies surrounding the recently released executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program. But they pale in comparison to the current Democratic silence about President Barack Obama's policy of targeted drone assassinations. Since 2004, drones have killed an estimated 2,400 to 3,888 individuals in Pakistan alone, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. An estimated 345 to 553 individuals in Yemen have been killed in drone strikes over the same period. The BIJ reports that the Obama administration has "markedly stepped up the use of drones. Since...

The United States Congress approved a massive defense spending bill Friday that provides for an enhanced air campaign against the "Islamic State" terror group, as well as the training of Iraqis and moderate Syrian rebels. The legislation, which passed 89 votes to 11 in the Senate, includes US President Barack Obama's $5-billion (4-billion-euro) request for funds to combat the Islamic State. Of that, $3.4 billion will be allocated to the deployment of US forces as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, and $1.6 billion will be used to equip and train Kurdish forces for two years. "American air power had changed...

Health Overhaul: Jonathan Gruber isn't the only one who got rich off ObamaCare. Several big government contractors are raking in megabucks to help the government take over the nation's health care system. Gruber made news when it came to light that the Obama administration had paid the stupid-American-calling MIT economist roughly $400,000 to help build ObamaCare, and several states paid him big bucks as well to build their exchanges. But this is just the tip of the ObamaCare bonanza.

Defence experts said it is 'hugely embarassing' that defence cuts mean Britain can no longer patrol its own waters Britain called in Nato sea patrol planes to hunt for a suspected Russian submarine off Scotland last month, after the Government scrapped its own similar aircraft in defence cuts, it has been disclosed. Maritime patrol aircraft from France, America and Canada flew to Scotland to join Royal Navy warships hunting for the suspected submarine after it was spotted at sea, west of Scotland. At the height of the hunt in late November and first days of December, four allied patrol planes...

Defense Threat: China conducts its third test in a year of a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to evade our missile and other defense systems, including the Aegis defense system guarding our carrier battle groups. As we downsize our military, scale back weapons procurement and development, China proceeds at top speed towards weapons designed to counter our once-huge technical advantage and qualitative superiority. Case in point is the third flight test of a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), dubbed the WU-14 by the Pentagon, following earlier tests on Jan. 9 and Aug. 7 of this year. The U.S. Navy is particularly concerned,...

Last year, David Carlson of Sparrow Bush, New York, was a principal actor in a tragic situation involving a fugitive who was facing statutory rape charges.   Norris Acosta-Sanchez had fled the police and was living in a cabin not far from the Carlson's home.  Carlson got to know him; well enough to invite him to dinner in his house several times.   Acosta-Sanchez eventually confided in Carlson that he was a wanted man, though he did not disclose the charges against him. Carlson tried to cooperate with police to have Acosta-Sanchez taken into custody.   In a sequence of events worthy...

WASHINGTON— Ashton Carter, the former deputy defense secretary, is the leading candidate to become the next Pentagon chief, but senior officials said President Barack Obama wouldn’t make an announcement Tuesday. The president could announce his pick for defense secretary later this week, a senior White House official said. Mr. Carter, who was out of town Tuesday, is seen as the likely choice, officials said. But the White House is continuing to look at other candidates, including former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig and former assistant Secretary of State Kurt Cambpell. Mr. Obama could still change his mind and opt for one...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: In the weeks after voters cast a vote of no confidence on President Obama and his fellow Democrats, the president has gone on a scorched-earth campaign, unilaterally declaring amnesty for some 5 million illegal aliens, firing the only Republican in his Cabinet and rolling out a new federal rule dubbed “the most expensive regulation ever.” Yes, this is the real Barack Obama, the one Americans cast their votes against Nov. 4 in an election in which the president had declared his agenda most definitely “on the ballot.” “We all knew that an unrestrained Obama would be dangerous, but we...

Among Democrats, fighting is breaking out all over. The Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), is hurling criticisms toward the White House over Barack Obama’s handling of the recession and his myopic and politically ruinous obsession with reforming the nation’s health care system amid that economic downturn.In response, the White House took what Reuters called the “unusual step” of publicly pledging to veto an overdue plan to reform the nation’s tax code which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been in the process of negotiating with House Republicans. When Obama announced his intention to extend legal status to...

On a trip to Afghanistan during President Barack Obama's first term, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was stunned to find a telephone line at the military's special operations headquarters that linked directly back to a top White House national security official. "I had them tear it out while I was standing there," Gates said earlier this month as he recounted his discovery. "I told the commanders, 'If you get a call from the White House, you tell them to go to hell and call me.'" To Gates, the phone in Kabul came to symbolize Obama's efforts to micromanage the Pentagon and...

It isn’t often that left, right and center agree about the Obama White House. But the firing of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this week produced a near-unanimous reaction: President Obama’s foreign policy team is dysfunctional and in need of a stronger tonic than the exit of a low-profile cabinet member with a light policy footprint. Both Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and The New York Times editorial page agreed that, in the words of the Times, Hagel “was not the core of the Obama administration’s military problem. That lies with the president and a national security policy that has too often...

Last August, I flew halfway around the world with Chuck Hagel to try to see what made him tick, and why he’d been chosen as Secretary of Defense at such an unsettled, seemingly crucial period for our national security. I watched Hagel in bilateral meetings with Southeast Asian ministers of defense, and I watched him take questions from American marines in Hawaii. I saw him in a bathing suit (he’s an avid morning lap-swimmer), and I saw him in a business suit, and I saw him in leisurewear on the interminable flights across the Pacific. I interviewed him twice, generating...

It’s no secret that Barack Obama wants to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, although his zeal for the project has often been questioned. Obama’s first action as President consisted of a directive to close the prison, but almost six years later, it’s still in operation — and relatively popular, at least in contrast with the alternatives. Obama has embarked on a strategy to close Gitmo through default by emptying it of its detainees, but there has been one impediment to that strategy. Congress requires the Secretary of Defense to attest that any released detainees pose no threat...

Michèle Flournoy, widely seen as the front-runner to replace Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense, abruptly took herself out of the running for the job Tuesday, complicating what will be one of the most important personnel decisions of President Barack Obama's second term. Flournoy, the co-founder and CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank that has served as a farm league for future Obama administration officials, would have been the first female secretary of defense had she risen to the position. The news of her decision to withdraw was first reported by...

Now that Hagel is on his way out, the only question that remains is, "Who's next?" The Obama administration is cleaning house, or members of the failed Obama presidency are running for their political lives. They each have their reasons, political ambitions, and the way the media has been spinning each departure, but the reality is clear: President Barack Obama is a failure (or a success, if you are a hard left statist calling for an authoritarian regime in the White House), and he is expanding the executive branch’s powers in ways the framers of the United States Constitution never...

President Obama will be naming his fourth secretary of defense in six years. Will he choose the first woman to run the Pentagon? Even before Chuck Hagel's resignation from the Defense Department became official, the names of a pair of longtime Pentagon veterans had already surfaced as top contenders to replace him as secretary: Michele Flournoy and Ashton Carter. Flournoy and Carter have been through this wringer before: Both were floated as possible Pentagon chiefs earlier in Obama's presidency, and both have served at the highest levels of the department. A third candidate, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said...

The White House’s defenders will attempt to knock down claims that Defense Sec. Chuck Hagel’s resignation is loaded with implications for the future of this administration. Cabinet officials come and go, they’ll note, but this White House has made a point of standing by its embattled figures. Former Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius resigned in Aril of this year, well after the controversy surrounding the botched debut of Healthcare.gov. Some speculated that the delay was an intentional effort to disassociate her resignation from the controversy that likely hastened it. Similarly, the political press was shocked when Obama...

United Technologies Corp. Chief Executive Louis Chenevert abruptly stepped down, startling people inside and outside the industrial conglomerate he led for six years.

The New York Times reports that President Barack Obama is about to dismiss Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. The reason given? That the White House recognized that "the threat from the Islamic State would require a different kind of skills than those that Mr. Hagel was brought on to employ." In other words: Hagel was brought on to downgrade the military radically, but now the military turns out to be necessary, after all. Yet that cannot be the only reason, absent any sign that Obama is committing to a sudden, steep increase in the defense budget, and reversing the non-sequester...

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is stepping down under pressure, the first cabinet-level casualty of the collapse of President Obama’s Democratic majority in the Senate and the struggles of his national security team amid an onslaught of global crises. The president, who is expected to announce Mr. Hagel’s resignation in a Rose Garden appearance on Monday, made the decision to ask his defense secretary — the sole Republican on his national security team — to step down last Friday after a series of meetings over the past two weeks, senior administration officials said.