Free Republic

In 1939, Stalin began his play for Soviet domination of Europe. Years earlier, in a secret speech to the Communist Party Central Committee in January 1925, Stalin had laid out the strategy from which he never swerved in foreign policy: "But if war breaks out [in Europe] we shall not be able to sit with folded arms. We shall have to take action, but we shall be the last to do so. And we shall do so in order to throw the decisive weight into the scales, the weight that can turn the scales." Stalin's Marxist-Leninist view was that any...

Free Republic 2001http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a70b8577a8c.htm Clinton's Costly Vietnam Trip -- More than $63.5 MillionSource: Far Eastern Economic Review Published: 2-1-01 Clinton's Costly Vietnam Trip The massive cost of airlifting Bill Clinton and his entourage to Vietnam last year has ruffled some feathers in the U.S. military. The former president paid historic visits to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the former South Vietnamese capital Saigon, in November. Informal research conducted by officers and staff of the Strategic Assessment Centre and the School of Advanced Airpower Studies says 74 U.S. Air Force aircraft, including 26 giant C-5 Galaxy transports, were used to ferry...

Sep 21, 1883: Karl Marx's theories on Socialism were expounded at length yesterday before the Senate Committee on Labor and Education by Dr. Adolph Douai of the Volks-Zeitung. Mr. Erastus D. Goodwin, a farmer from Falls Village, Conn. appeared as an advocate of "free trade", or at least a change in the tariff which would permit the importation of raw materials free of duty. Such a change would, in his opinion, be of great benefit to both the agricultural and industrial laborer. At today's hearing, Mr. F.B. Thurber will be heard in advocacy of anti-monopoly principles.

Summary: - Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W. Bush in Florida. - Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population. - In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes. - We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not...

Arriving home from the hospital after being treated for a heart attack, 84-year-old Carol Barnes inched up the steps into her Sunset District home and headed straight for her absentee ballot. "She said, 'That ... Bush, I can't allow him to be president again,' " said her son, Bo Barnes. " 'I want to vote for Kerry to make the world safe.' " Too exhausted to do more than cast votes for president and two propositions, the widow of an Army major signed the ballot and told her son they'd complete the rest later. Three days later, on Oct. 17,...

Monday October 30 6:47 PM ET Bush Leads in Reuters Poll, But Gore Rises in Key States By Alan Elsner, Political Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican George W. Bush (news - web sites) kept his three-point lead over Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) in Monday's Reuters/MSNBC national daily tracking poll, but separate surveys of nine key battleground states showed Gore making inroads. The state polls showed Gore widening his lead in Florida, overtaking Bush in Pennsylvania and closing the gap in his home state of Tennessee. The national survey of 1,213 likely voters in the Nov. 7 election,...

WASHINGTON – To approving hoots, hollers and thunderous applause, hundreds of activists Thursday night rated CBS anchorman Dan Rather the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporter for 2001.Of the six Dishonors Awards bestowed at Media Research Center's annual banquet, Rather won hands down in two categories: The Flakiest Comment of the Year and the Sore Losers Award (for Refusing to Concede Bush’s Victory in Florida).The Sore Losers Award, presented by syndicated columnist David Limbaugh, spotlighted Rather’s coverage of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris’ formal declaration that George W. Bush had indeed carried Florida. Dan Can't Handle the TruthThe news clips...

---Al Hubbard is the executive director of the Vietnam Veterans against the War. I first met him the morning of April 21 at the VVAW "camp-in" on the Capitol Mall in Washington. He was sitting on a flatbed truck, explaining to a circle of six hundred or so members of his group that the Supreme Court had upheld the earlier ruling that the Veterans would not be allowed to sleep on the Mall that night. He was very calm and soft-spoken about it all, at one point interrupting himself to ask that volunteers take down a Vietcong flag someone had...

Former Clinton White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke is preparing to tell the Independent Commission Investigating the Sept. 11 Attacks this week that the Bush administration failed to act on a Clinton administration plan to attack Osama bin Laden. And in a "60 Minutes" interview set to air Sunday night, Clarke blasts Bush for doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism." But just a year ago Clarke was singing a different tune, telling reporter Richard Miniter, author of the book "Losing bin Laden," that it was the Clinton administration - not team Bush - that had dropped...

We are in a cabin deep down below decks on a Navy ship jam-packed with troops that’s pitching and creaking its way across the Atlantic in a winter gale. There is a man in every bunk. There’s a man wedged into every corner. There’s a man in every chair. The air is dense with cigarette smoke and with the staleness of packed troops and sour wool. “Don’t think I’m sticking up for the Germans,” puts in the lanky young captain in the upper berth, “but…” “To hell with the Germans,” says the broad-shouldered dark lieutenant. “It’s what our boys have...

 Congressional Leaders Tell White House They Are Dismayed At Iraq Policy (August 12, 1999) Congressional leaders Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, Richard Shelby, Benjamin A. Gilman, Joseph I. Lieberman, J. Robert Kerrey, Sam Brownback and Howard L. Berman submitted the following letter to the White House on August 11, 1999: Congress of the United States Washington DC 20515 August 11, 1999 The President The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: As the principal proponents of last year's Iraq Liberation Act, we are writing to express our dismay over the continued drift in U.S. policy toward Iraq. We were greatly...

August 13, 1999 With Little Notice, U.S. Planes Have Been Striking Iraq All Year Related Articles Issue in Depth: Attack on Iraq By STEVEN LEE MYERS ASHINGTON -- It is the year's other war. While the nation's attention has focused on Kosovo, American warplanes have quietly, methodically and with virtually no public discussion been attacking Iraq. Over the past eight months, American and British pilots have fired more than 1,100 missiles against 359 targets. That is more than triple the targets attacked in four furious days of strikes in December that followed Iraq's expulsion of U.N. weapons inspectors, an...

This war...in my opinion is already lost: Ritter Ritter: US will lose war against Iraq Former UN weapons inspector says US does not have military means to take over Baghdad, defeat inevitable. LISBON - The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said. "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening. "We do not have...

Former UN weapons inspector says US does not have military means to take over Baghdad, defeat inevitable. LISBON - The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said. "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening. "We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat...

When he was President, Richard Nixon, for good or ill, always sought to take charge - of his party, his country, the world. In his final book, the elder statesman sums up a lifetime of involvement in foreign affairs by admonishing his successors to do the same. "If the U.S. is to continue to lead in the world," writes Nixon, "it will have to resolve to do so and then take those steps necessary to turn resolution into execution." Bill Clinton has not got the message. Now, 15 months into his term, the President seems to be approaching a kind...

August 19, 1998 - The full text of the statement made by President Bill Clinton from the Oval Office in Washington on US military strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan. Good afternoon. Today, I ordered our armed forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan because of the imminent threat they presented to our national security. I want to speak with you about the objective of this action and why it was necessary. 'Target was terror'Our target was terror. Our mission was clear - to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama Bin...